Introduction
Idon’t know what you see when you look at me. A human snarl, maybe. That’s pretty much been my image for the last 15 years. A snarling, snapping, hungry, feral player who loathed himself and everyone around him. Someone who was unhappy. Someone who had a lot of things eating at him. Someone always moving on. Always falling out with people. Always running.
I have always been restless. That’s true. Restless in my personal life and in football. In my own world, maybe I feel I deserve more respect than I get as a player so I am always chasing it as aggressively as I can. And if I don’t get it in one place, from a manager or from a crowd, I search for it in another place.
Steven Gerrard says I am driven by my insecurities. He’s right. I’m always looking for a chance to show people how good I am. I went through much of my career without winning anything. So I started to chase trophies. I went to clubs where I thought I would win medals. When I failed, I moved on. I wanted something to show for my career. If I didn’t win medals and trophies, my career was just a big waste. I was convinced of that. The fear of failure was one of the reasons I kept on moving.
That changed in November 2011 when my friend Gary Speed died. I was playing for Liverpool then and the club doctor, Zaf Iqbal, said he was worried about my mental state. He said he thought I needed help. He recommended that I went to see Steve Peters, the psychiatrist who is probably most famous for working with Britain’s gold medal cyclists Sir Chris Hoy and Victoria Pendleton.
I had always refused to see a psychiatrist before. You may not be surprised to know it had been suggested to me several times. And there were excellent practitioners available at several of the clubs I played for. But I thought it was weak to seek that kind of help. I thought I was doing okay. I was a good footballer. I didn’t want to talk to anyone in case it opened up a mess of issues that would affect my game. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. That was what I thought. But it clearly was broken. I was broken. I was just in denial about it.
As a young kid, I was happy. I grew up on an estate on the outskirts of Cardiff. I had loving parents and a group of close mates, many of whom spiralled off into delinquency and drugs. I loved football and played every minute I could. I was a daydreamer, yeah, and I didn’t achieve much at school. But I was happy. And then I had to move away when I was 15.
I moved to the other side of Britain, to Norwich, to play football, to pursue my dream. It sounds melodramatic but it killed a part of me. It taught me to isolate myself, to be single-minded, to be selfish, to exclude others, to keep everything inside. I learned to be emotionally detached. I grew distant from my mum and a lot of people who were close to me.
The more I rung home back then, the more I missed home. Nothing makes it better. In fact, everything seems to make it worse. You ring home, you get upset, your parents get upset because they can tell how unhappy you are and they can’t do anything about it. And then you start feeling guilty because you’re upsetting them. And before you know it, you’re in a phone booth outside a fish and chip shop in Norwich crying your eyes out.
That’s what it was like for me. That’s what it was like for a year. A year of homesickness that hurt like hell. A year of trying to conceal my feelings. A year of trying to cope with everything that was being thrown at me as a young footballer trying to make it with hard taskmasters for coaches and senior professionals that enjoyed treating you like shit. Sounds like self-pity, doesn’t it? Well, I was the master of self-pity.
I spent most weekends on my own. I played a match on Saturday morning, watched the Norwich first team play in the afternoon. Then I’d stick around, clean up all the kit, watch the players and study their happiness in victory or the raw pain of defeat. Then it was the long walk home to my digs at The Limes, half an hour in the dark. Sit in my room for a while on my own. Then go to the chip shop. And the phone box.
I had a girlfriend by then. Claire and I got together before I left Cardiff. In time, we had three beautiful children together. We got married in the end. And we stayed married until 2012 when she decided she’d had enough. Enough of the moving and the following me round. Enough of the absentee husband. Enough of the selfishness and the black moods and the times when I wouldn’t talk to her because I was worried about a knee injury.
So we got divorced and it nearly tore me apart. I have had months of guilt about not being the husband I should have been. And not being the father I should have been, either. For a while, I didn’t think about the lifestyle I had been able to give Claire and my three children, the life I have been able to give my kids who mean more to me than anything in the world. The pride in what I have been able to provide, the pride in some of the sacrifices I made, has come back now.
I caused the breakdown of my marriage. Not football. It’s about more than football. I suppose this is controversial because people will say that no two people are the same but I feel that high-profile sportsmen and sportswomen are different. We’re wired differently. We’re not the same as other people. The same goes for a lot of other people who are very successful at what they do.
Why? Because we have to sacrifice so much. And some people can cope with that and maintain a happy family life. And some people can’t. I had no experience of being around people who were doing something similar. There were no people in my area who were following that path. I had to learn for myself. I never asked for advice and saw how they behaved.
The way I saw it, my life would begin when I was 35. When I finish football, my life starts. That’s how I looked at it. Until then, nothing matters. It’s the game and that’s it. I want to be as successful as I can. I want to earn as much money as I can for my children. And then I can sit back and relax.
The thing is, you have to enjoy what you are doing at the time as well. Otherwise you’re just punishing yourself. The sacrifice is too great. I didn’t understand that. Not until it was too late. Too late for my marriage anyway. I missed out on years and years of fun. I didn’t enjoy it. Not even close. I didn’t enjoy my career. If a team-mate made a mistake, I might not speak to him for a week. It was bullshit.
If I did something good in a game, I’d just tell you about all the bad things I did instead. That’s what kept me up at night. And I thought keeping myself up at night was improving me. If I woke up at 3am, thinking about something I didn’t do, that’s what made me a better player. If I wasn’t doing that, I thought I was taking my eye off the game. If there was a game on television on Friday night and I didn’t watch it, I thought I was showing football a lack of respect and I would pay for it on Saturday. That’s how crazy I was.
I wouldn’t leave the house two or three days before a game because I wanted to save my legs. If I didn’t save my legs, I thought I would pay for it on Saturday. If I won on a Saturday, I would wake up at the same time the next Saturday, leave the house at the same time, drive the same route to the game, wear the same suit. If I was forced to do something differently, I was convinced I was going to lose. It was borderline insane.
So, yes, I was difficult to live with. I worked away a lot. I was apart from my wife and family for long periods. Several years ago, they moved back to Cardiff to give my children a stable base for school and I commuted from London or Liverpool or Manchester or wherever I was playing to see them. It’s hard to have a successful relationship when you’re living like that.
Being away from my kids on a daily basis made me very unhappy so why the hell was I doing it? Why did I put myself in that situation? I felt that when I came home, it wasn’t my home. I felt guilty for not being around the children so I tried to make up as much time as I could with them in the short while I had. But I also had a young wife who wanted my time and affection and I couldn’t do it all at once and the next thing I am back up the road.
That was part of the reason I became the human snarl. I was unhappy and if I was going to be unhappy, I wanted to make damn sure everyone knew I was unhappy and that they were unhappy, too.
It took the death of Gary Speed for me to step back and find happiness within myself. It wasn’t my wife’s fault that I had been unhappy. It wasn’t a club’s fault or a manager’s fault. It wasn’t because I had had an argument with Graeme Souness or Roberto Mancini. I was stopping myself from being happy. I’d been doing it since I left Cardiff at the age of 15.
If I had not got help, if I had not begun talking to Steve Peters, I was facing a dark, empty future. Gary Speed’s death, the fact that he apparently took his own life, shook me to the core. It scared me. There are a lot of similarities between me and Speedo.
I understand myself a lot better now, I think. I have been able to cope with the separation and divorce from my wife. I still find it very hard not being able to see my children when I want to but I am coping. I am not sure how I would have dealt with it if it had happened a few years ago.
It’s not always been pretty but I am a better man for having been involved in football. It’s taken me to different countries. It’s put me in a position where I have been able to found a football academy in Sierra Leone and try to help people make a better life for themselves through the game. Maybe one day, people will be able to see beyond the snarl.
There was a time when I thought that when I retired from playing, I would have a period away from the game but I know now that I can’t be without football. I would miss it too much. If anyone else comes into my life, they have to be prepared to share me with football. It doesn’t drive me mad any more but it still consumes me. Any job can make you unhappy if you let it. Finally, just in time, I’ve come to understand that if I love football this much, why not just enjoy it.
And I am enjoying it. I’m enjoying it more than I’ve enjoyed it at any time since I was a little kid dashing around on ABC Park in Trowbridge with my mates. I’m enjoying it more than I’ve ever enjoyed it. It’s the greatest game in the world but it’s nothing more than that. Apart from my children, it’s been the best thing in my life. I wake up every morning and I can’t wait to go to training. I feel grateful for that.
Craig Bellamy, 2013