http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/fo...Bellamy-reveals-great-fear-kid-d-nothing.html
CRAIG BELLAMY EXCLUSIVE: Sir Alex Ferguson wanted me at United, Jose Mourinho hugged me after my last game and said I was a champion... and the Premier League manager who tried to tempt me out of retirement
Craig Bellamy is taking his coaching badges and is keen to move into management
Bellamy says he was offered the chance to come out of retirement by a Premier League club - but turned down the chance
Bellamy reveals Sir Alex Ferguson tried to sign him when he was at Newcastle
By Ian Ladyman for the Daily Mail
Published: 23:06 GMT, 19 March 2015 | Updated: 01:47 GMT, 20 March 2015
A couple of weeks ago Craig Bellamy’s telephone rang and the caller made an unexpected offer. ‘I had an offer to come and play in the Premier League again,’ revealed Bellamy. ‘A manager asked me if I could come back and play the last few months of the season.
‘I said it wasn’t for me. So then he said I could play for 10 minutes here and there. But I believe that once you retire you have to stick to that. I can’t tell you which club it was. That wouldn’t be fair. But they were serious. There was not a bit of me that was tempted and that was the interesting thing. That part of my life is over.’
Bellamy’s 18-year playing career ended in the 76th minute of Cardiff City’s final game of last season, a 2-1 home defeat by Chelsea. The last man to shake his hand on a football field was Jose Mourinho. ‘He just gave me a hug and said: “You are a champion”,’ he recalls.
‘And that was it. That was me done. It felt right. I was comfortable with it. My decision was made solely for me and I can’t go back on it. My body was ready. I wasn’t able to do what I wanted to do on the pitch and I couldn’t torture myself trying to find a different way any more.’
Ten months on and Bellamy already lives a vastly different life. We meet at his well-appointed restaurant — Pier 64 — at Cardiff’s Penarth Marina and we are joined for breakfast by three teenage African footballers from the successful football academy he has established in Sierra Leone.
Bellamy’s construction company is building apartments further down the bay and he claims his golf is improving. Football, though, continues to sit at the centre of his professional life.
Currently working three days a week — unpaid — at Cardiff’s academy, he is taking his UEFA Pro Licence with a group of coaches that includes Patrick Vieira, Garry Monk and Tim Sherwood. This week he is with the Wales Under 17 squad in Russia.
Management remains the long-term ambition, but not just yet. He turned down the chance to take over at Cardiff when Malky Mackay was sacked at Christmas in 2013 and recently took a call from Tony Pulis about coaching possibilities at West Brom.
‘He wanted to talk about some coaching,’ revealed Bellamy. ‘I love Tony, he is brilliant. He doesn’t get the credit but he is outstanding.
‘We may be slightly different in how we see the game but that’s fine. More importantly, our mentalities are the same. I could really learn from him. But I said no because of the timing. I will go up and see him a lot and maybe be involved a bit.
‘The Cardiff job was different. Malky and I are very close. I wouldn’t do that to him. I am not into all that “Oh but it’s my opportunity, it’s a dog eat-dog world…”
‘No, I’m very loyal, both to Cardiff but also to Malky. I was disappointed he was going. Also, was it best for me? No it wasn’t. I didn’t need the gamble. Fifty per cent of managers take a job, get sacked and never get back in. I wasn’t going to take that risk at Cardiff.’
Equally, however, Bellamy’s first experiences as a coach at the club’s academy are proving enlightening.
‘I don’t get paid because the club can’t afford it but it’s been one of the best things I have ever done,’ he said.
‘I’m learning so much. I’m 35 and would like to manage by the time I was 40. After that I want to be in it for the next 20 years. Full tilt.
‘I saw what happened to Kenny (Dalglish) when he went from playing straight into management at Liverpool.
‘He just got burned — it made Kenny ill — and I will never forget that. I don’t want that to happen to me.’
Bellamy grew up in Cardiff with a fear of making nothing of his life. A school truant, he believes he owes his life to his sport. It’s one of the reasons he can’t let it go.
‘Football has given me everything I have,’ Bellamy said. ‘The discipline I have in my life, the character I have been able to grow into. It’s all been from football. I have never touched a drug, not since I was 16 years of age. I thank football.
‘I was always worried that the world would never hear of me or know my name. I was terrified of amounting to nothing. I wasn’t very good at school. I didn’t go a lot. I was going to be a footballer so what did I need school for?
‘I thought I knew everything but I knew nothing and if I could run that tape back I would be in school every day trying to learn.’
Bellamy’s behavioural issues during his playing career are well documented. He has also spoken in these pages before of a battle with obsessive superstition that he has only recently managed to beat.
‘Once I made peace with those things, I became a much more enjoyable person,’ he said. ‘Nicer to others, for sure, but nicer to myself too.’
When we met, Bellamy was on typically animated form. Enthusiastic, opinionated and generous. It was always a side that only a few people were ever allowed to see.
‘The “you don’t really know me” thing was fine by me,’ said Bellamy. ‘I was stand-offish and that worked in terms of my career. But people who know me know what I am really like.’
These days he looks only forward. There are few regrets. The hyper-activity familiar to those who shared dressing rooms with him remains, however. Take, for example, his response when I asked him what he has done to make up for the lack of a conventional education. ‘You have to watch a lot of TV like I do to catch up,’ he laughed. ‘I don’t sleep much and I have my certain schedules so it will be anything from the History Channel to the Discovery Channel on at a certain time. As a player, I would go to sleep watching it and wake up with it still on. Some of the information would seep through!
‘I’m certainly not a great sleeper now. My mind races. It’s difficult. I have to be up at a certain time. If I don’t I feel worse so I stick to my routine, even now I am retired.’
Bellamy was an obsessive footballer. Obsessed with training, with order, with routine. More than anything, though, obsessed with the game. For him, it worked but one wonders whether the young footballers he works with will mirror that obsession and, indeed, how he will cope if they don’t.
‘It depends what motivates you,’ he said. ‘I was talking to the (Cardiff) 12-year-olds recently and I asked them who they wanted to play for. It was Barcelona, Real Madrid, one kid was Chelsea which didn’t impress me. One said Liverpool. None of them said Cardiff and that’s fine. They should aim high.But if they want to do that they need to be aiming to be in the Cardiff team at 16.
‘When I was a kid all I cared about was playing in my first team by the age of 17 and you know why? That was because Ryan Giggs had done that.
‘I didn’t care about contracts. I didn’t care about being pro. I just wanted to do what Giggs had done. I had to do that. He was my benchmark. You have to prepare these kids for what football is and it’s one of the toughest environments.
‘There will be intensity and there will be intimidation going on. That happens at some clubs. Don’t think it doesn’t.
‘Someone wants your place. They will do whatever it takes to get it. That’s the way the group can work.
‘You have to be mentally strong and you have to be prepared for the bad times because there are plenty of them. For me, it’s a challenge working out how much to tell them.
‘It’s like my seven-year-old daughter. Snow White doesn’t have a completely happy ending does it? So do I tell her that or do I tell her that everything is perfect?
‘Does that prepare her for life or not? I don’t know. I am still trying to find a way to get round that one…’
A Liverpool supporter as a youngster, Bellamy played twice for his boyhood club.
Had things been different, he may also have played for Manchester United and Sir Alex Ferguson.
‘Fergie met with my agent in 2002 and said: “Can you get him out of Newcastle?”’ he revealed.
‘The honest truth is my knee. I had just had an operation. I knew that if I went to Man United I would have to hit the ground running and with my knee that would have been impossible.
‘I did think that maybe I should just go and deal with it then. Just get there… but I would have got caught out at United and that would have been terrible.
‘I have to live with myself and sometimes that hasn’t been easy. But I had to be honest with myself so I was.’
Honesty was a recurring theme of our conversation. Bellamy has thought hard about his management style.
‘If a manager is lying, or talking c**p, players will smell it, sense it, feel it,’ he said. ‘Honesty is everything but some managers don’t get it.
‘There isn’t a player I know who can’t accept a manager being honest. But if he doesn’t trust you then you are in trouble.
‘What I didn’t like was that sometimes managers don’t get results and instead of dealing with their own shortcomings they then have to start fires to detract attention away from the real problem.
‘You hear managers say all those things... “It’s not my team. They aren’t fit enough”.
‘Oh, come on. Fans aren’t fooled by all that. If you are as good as you think you are — and if you do things right — you will get to where you deserve to be. If you aren’t then you won’t. It’s as simple as that.’
Bellamy was never great with team-mates who didn’t train with his intensity, players such as the Brazilian Robinho at Manchester City. I ask him if he is really ready for the challenges of modern management.
‘The best players I played with also had the best attitude,’ he said. ‘Gerrard, Kompany, Speed.
‘I always thought if you trained bad you played bad. If you are asked to run round a cone then do it. Don’t just run up and touch it.
‘For me, it was the example people like Robi set to other players that annoyed me. Some people do what’s best for them and they can still turn it on, so fair enough. But at City we had young players who were looking at him and thinking that if he wasn’t trying then why should they?
‘It’s the wrong message and we weren’t good enough at City to carry him or to have his attitude ourselves. I don’t care about players who rant or moan in training. I was renowned for it. Let them carry on. As long as they are doing the work. The work is the key.
‘As a manager, I would prefer to go hard early doors. This is where we are, this is what we do, and then we start easing off. Then let the players start taking responsibility for themselves. Then they start to have their say. You listen to them.
‘We are all different. What works for one person may not work for another. If I didn’t understand that as a manager then I wouldn’t last very long.
‘I had a reputation as a player. I know that. But that was from people who didn’t know me, didn’t really want to know me.
‘I look back on my managers and many of them tried to re-sign me or did re-sign me.
‘Martin O’Neill tried at Villa, Gordon Strachan, Mark Hughes, Zola when he was at Watford. Kenny took me back to Liverpool. Brendan asked me to stay. Even JC (John Carver, who he fought with at Newcastle) asked me to go on holiday this summer! He was pestering me to go. I have a lot of time for JC.’
Next up for Bellamy is a residential week in Switzerland as part of his pro-licence. A week back at Manchester City is also planned, as is some time at his beloved Liverpool.
‘I have enjoyed the pro licence more than I thought, simply because of the people on the course,’ he said. ‘There are people like Vieira and Garry Monk — who is a natural — but I have learned so much off the Welsh League managers.
‘They have had the coaching hours that I haven’t had. I probably do their heads in asking so many questions but I can’t help it. They are amazing.
‘I don’t ever want to go into football management only having my experience as a player to draw on.
‘I want coaching hours. I need the experience. I’m not sure I will be a coach. I think I would be better as a manager. That is what fits my personality. But I will have this experience to fall back on.’
Still as lean as he was this time last year, Bellamy certainly looks as though he could play again.
Is there really no way back? What if Brendan Rodgers called?
‘I may have said yes to him!’ joked Bellamy. ‘So at least you know the club wasn’t Liverpool. I had offers from India and America and Australia, in good cities, which would have been a great lifestyle choice. But timing is everything and the timing was not right.
‘As I said, it’s over. Time for the next stage of my life.’
CRAIG BELLAMY EXCLUSIVE: Sir Alex Ferguson wanted me at United, Jose Mourinho hugged me after my last game and said I was a champion... and the Premier League manager who tried to tempt me out of retirement
Craig Bellamy is taking his coaching badges and is keen to move into management
Bellamy says he was offered the chance to come out of retirement by a Premier League club - but turned down the chance
Bellamy reveals Sir Alex Ferguson tried to sign him when he was at Newcastle
By Ian Ladyman for the Daily Mail
Published: 23:06 GMT, 19 March 2015 | Updated: 01:47 GMT, 20 March 2015
A couple of weeks ago Craig Bellamy’s telephone rang and the caller made an unexpected offer. ‘I had an offer to come and play in the Premier League again,’ revealed Bellamy. ‘A manager asked me if I could come back and play the last few months of the season.
‘I said it wasn’t for me. So then he said I could play for 10 minutes here and there. But I believe that once you retire you have to stick to that. I can’t tell you which club it was. That wouldn’t be fair. But they were serious. There was not a bit of me that was tempted and that was the interesting thing. That part of my life is over.’
Bellamy’s 18-year playing career ended in the 76th minute of Cardiff City’s final game of last season, a 2-1 home defeat by Chelsea. The last man to shake his hand on a football field was Jose Mourinho. ‘He just gave me a hug and said: “You are a champion”,’ he recalls.
‘And that was it. That was me done. It felt right. I was comfortable with it. My decision was made solely for me and I can’t go back on it. My body was ready. I wasn’t able to do what I wanted to do on the pitch and I couldn’t torture myself trying to find a different way any more.’
Ten months on and Bellamy already lives a vastly different life. We meet at his well-appointed restaurant — Pier 64 — at Cardiff’s Penarth Marina and we are joined for breakfast by three teenage African footballers from the successful football academy he has established in Sierra Leone.
Bellamy’s construction company is building apartments further down the bay and he claims his golf is improving. Football, though, continues to sit at the centre of his professional life.
Currently working three days a week — unpaid — at Cardiff’s academy, he is taking his UEFA Pro Licence with a group of coaches that includes Patrick Vieira, Garry Monk and Tim Sherwood. This week he is with the Wales Under 17 squad in Russia.
Management remains the long-term ambition, but not just yet. He turned down the chance to take over at Cardiff when Malky Mackay was sacked at Christmas in 2013 and recently took a call from Tony Pulis about coaching possibilities at West Brom.
‘He wanted to talk about some coaching,’ revealed Bellamy. ‘I love Tony, he is brilliant. He doesn’t get the credit but he is outstanding.
‘We may be slightly different in how we see the game but that’s fine. More importantly, our mentalities are the same. I could really learn from him. But I said no because of the timing. I will go up and see him a lot and maybe be involved a bit.
‘The Cardiff job was different. Malky and I are very close. I wouldn’t do that to him. I am not into all that “Oh but it’s my opportunity, it’s a dog eat-dog world…”
‘No, I’m very loyal, both to Cardiff but also to Malky. I was disappointed he was going. Also, was it best for me? No it wasn’t. I didn’t need the gamble. Fifty per cent of managers take a job, get sacked and never get back in. I wasn’t going to take that risk at Cardiff.’
Equally, however, Bellamy’s first experiences as a coach at the club’s academy are proving enlightening.
‘I don’t get paid because the club can’t afford it but it’s been one of the best things I have ever done,’ he said.
‘I’m learning so much. I’m 35 and would like to manage by the time I was 40. After that I want to be in it for the next 20 years. Full tilt.
‘I saw what happened to Kenny (Dalglish) when he went from playing straight into management at Liverpool.
‘He just got burned — it made Kenny ill — and I will never forget that. I don’t want that to happen to me.’
Bellamy grew up in Cardiff with a fear of making nothing of his life. A school truant, he believes he owes his life to his sport. It’s one of the reasons he can’t let it go.
‘Football has given me everything I have,’ Bellamy said. ‘The discipline I have in my life, the character I have been able to grow into. It’s all been from football. I have never touched a drug, not since I was 16 years of age. I thank football.
‘I was always worried that the world would never hear of me or know my name. I was terrified of amounting to nothing. I wasn’t very good at school. I didn’t go a lot. I was going to be a footballer so what did I need school for?
‘I thought I knew everything but I knew nothing and if I could run that tape back I would be in school every day trying to learn.’
Bellamy’s behavioural issues during his playing career are well documented. He has also spoken in these pages before of a battle with obsessive superstition that he has only recently managed to beat.
‘Once I made peace with those things, I became a much more enjoyable person,’ he said. ‘Nicer to others, for sure, but nicer to myself too.’
When we met, Bellamy was on typically animated form. Enthusiastic, opinionated and generous. It was always a side that only a few people were ever allowed to see.
‘The “you don’t really know me” thing was fine by me,’ said Bellamy. ‘I was stand-offish and that worked in terms of my career. But people who know me know what I am really like.’
These days he looks only forward. There are few regrets. The hyper-activity familiar to those who shared dressing rooms with him remains, however. Take, for example, his response when I asked him what he has done to make up for the lack of a conventional education. ‘You have to watch a lot of TV like I do to catch up,’ he laughed. ‘I don’t sleep much and I have my certain schedules so it will be anything from the History Channel to the Discovery Channel on at a certain time. As a player, I would go to sleep watching it and wake up with it still on. Some of the information would seep through!
‘I’m certainly not a great sleeper now. My mind races. It’s difficult. I have to be up at a certain time. If I don’t I feel worse so I stick to my routine, even now I am retired.’
Bellamy was an obsessive footballer. Obsessed with training, with order, with routine. More than anything, though, obsessed with the game. For him, it worked but one wonders whether the young footballers he works with will mirror that obsession and, indeed, how he will cope if they don’t.
‘It depends what motivates you,’ he said. ‘I was talking to the (Cardiff) 12-year-olds recently and I asked them who they wanted to play for. It was Barcelona, Real Madrid, one kid was Chelsea which didn’t impress me. One said Liverpool. None of them said Cardiff and that’s fine. They should aim high.But if they want to do that they need to be aiming to be in the Cardiff team at 16.
‘When I was a kid all I cared about was playing in my first team by the age of 17 and you know why? That was because Ryan Giggs had done that.
‘I didn’t care about contracts. I didn’t care about being pro. I just wanted to do what Giggs had done. I had to do that. He was my benchmark. You have to prepare these kids for what football is and it’s one of the toughest environments.
‘There will be intensity and there will be intimidation going on. That happens at some clubs. Don’t think it doesn’t.
‘Someone wants your place. They will do whatever it takes to get it. That’s the way the group can work.
‘You have to be mentally strong and you have to be prepared for the bad times because there are plenty of them. For me, it’s a challenge working out how much to tell them.
‘It’s like my seven-year-old daughter. Snow White doesn’t have a completely happy ending does it? So do I tell her that or do I tell her that everything is perfect?
‘Does that prepare her for life or not? I don’t know. I am still trying to find a way to get round that one…’
A Liverpool supporter as a youngster, Bellamy played twice for his boyhood club.
Had things been different, he may also have played for Manchester United and Sir Alex Ferguson.
‘Fergie met with my agent in 2002 and said: “Can you get him out of Newcastle?”’ he revealed.
‘The honest truth is my knee. I had just had an operation. I knew that if I went to Man United I would have to hit the ground running and with my knee that would have been impossible.
‘I did think that maybe I should just go and deal with it then. Just get there… but I would have got caught out at United and that would have been terrible.
‘I have to live with myself and sometimes that hasn’t been easy. But I had to be honest with myself so I was.’
Honesty was a recurring theme of our conversation. Bellamy has thought hard about his management style.
‘If a manager is lying, or talking c**p, players will smell it, sense it, feel it,’ he said. ‘Honesty is everything but some managers don’t get it.
‘There isn’t a player I know who can’t accept a manager being honest. But if he doesn’t trust you then you are in trouble.
‘What I didn’t like was that sometimes managers don’t get results and instead of dealing with their own shortcomings they then have to start fires to detract attention away from the real problem.
‘You hear managers say all those things... “It’s not my team. They aren’t fit enough”.
‘Oh, come on. Fans aren’t fooled by all that. If you are as good as you think you are — and if you do things right — you will get to where you deserve to be. If you aren’t then you won’t. It’s as simple as that.’
Bellamy was never great with team-mates who didn’t train with his intensity, players such as the Brazilian Robinho at Manchester City. I ask him if he is really ready for the challenges of modern management.
‘The best players I played with also had the best attitude,’ he said. ‘Gerrard, Kompany, Speed.
‘I always thought if you trained bad you played bad. If you are asked to run round a cone then do it. Don’t just run up and touch it.
‘For me, it was the example people like Robi set to other players that annoyed me. Some people do what’s best for them and they can still turn it on, so fair enough. But at City we had young players who were looking at him and thinking that if he wasn’t trying then why should they?
‘It’s the wrong message and we weren’t good enough at City to carry him or to have his attitude ourselves. I don’t care about players who rant or moan in training. I was renowned for it. Let them carry on. As long as they are doing the work. The work is the key.
‘As a manager, I would prefer to go hard early doors. This is where we are, this is what we do, and then we start easing off. Then let the players start taking responsibility for themselves. Then they start to have their say. You listen to them.
‘We are all different. What works for one person may not work for another. If I didn’t understand that as a manager then I wouldn’t last very long.
‘I had a reputation as a player. I know that. But that was from people who didn’t know me, didn’t really want to know me.
‘I look back on my managers and many of them tried to re-sign me or did re-sign me.
‘Martin O’Neill tried at Villa, Gordon Strachan, Mark Hughes, Zola when he was at Watford. Kenny took me back to Liverpool. Brendan asked me to stay. Even JC (John Carver, who he fought with at Newcastle) asked me to go on holiday this summer! He was pestering me to go. I have a lot of time for JC.’
Next up for Bellamy is a residential week in Switzerland as part of his pro-licence. A week back at Manchester City is also planned, as is some time at his beloved Liverpool.
‘I have enjoyed the pro licence more than I thought, simply because of the people on the course,’ he said. ‘There are people like Vieira and Garry Monk — who is a natural — but I have learned so much off the Welsh League managers.
‘They have had the coaching hours that I haven’t had. I probably do their heads in asking so many questions but I can’t help it. They are amazing.
‘I don’t ever want to go into football management only having my experience as a player to draw on.
‘I want coaching hours. I need the experience. I’m not sure I will be a coach. I think I would be better as a manager. That is what fits my personality. But I will have this experience to fall back on.’
Still as lean as he was this time last year, Bellamy certainly looks as though he could play again.
Is there really no way back? What if Brendan Rodgers called?
‘I may have said yes to him!’ joked Bellamy. ‘So at least you know the club wasn’t Liverpool. I had offers from India and America and Australia, in good cities, which would have been a great lifestyle choice. But timing is everything and the timing was not right.
‘As I said, it’s over. Time for the next stage of my life.’
