Budgie - The Autobiography Read online

  Working with the players could be a weird and wonderful experience too. One day a player, who was meant to be a full-time professional, came up to me and told me bold as brass: ‘I won’t be in at training tomorrow; I’m taking my mum shopping in Dubai.’ I couldn’t believe what I was hearing and told him he needed to come in to do some weight training. He obviously feared his mother more than he feared me because he said he still wasn’t coming. When I fined him a week’s wages for missing training, he was straight on the phone to the Sheikh to complain. Imagine something like that happening under Ron Saunders or Alex Miller! I must say though, the attitude of players in the Gulf has come on in leaps and bounds since then and they have started to grasp what being a professional means and the rewards that hard work and dedication can bring.

  I loved my job in Al Ain, but I couldn’t bear being apart from Janet and I missed Muscat. The Oman FA re-hired me, and I returned to work under their new German coach Bernd Stange. It was my association with Stange – a brilliant character – that led to the most bizarre job offer I had ever received…to go and work for Saddam Hussein!

  CHAPTER 26

  SADDAM OR BE DAMNED

  ‘If I took the job in Iraq, my boss would be Saddam Hussein!’

  After Bernd Stange moved on from Oman, he landed the post as coach of Iraq, and it wasn’t long before he got in touch to say he wanted me to come and be his goalkeeping coach. The one little snag, as far as I could see, was that Saddam Hussein was still ruling the roost in Iraq at the time and his eldest son Uday was in charge of the football federation. Effectively, if I went there, my boss would be Saddam Hussein – and more immediately I’d be working for Uday, who had an even worse reputation than Saddam!

  I had already heard all the stories in the aftermath of the 2002 World Cup about Saudi Arabia’s players returning home in disgrace and having their faces slapped in public as a punishment because they had lost 8-0 to Germany. But being slapped was nothing compared to the stories you heard coming out of Iraq if their players had underperformed or returned from a particularly bad tournament. We heard that Uday had put some of his players in stocks before thrashing their feet with a cane. There was even talk of players being shot. There were also rumours about what went on within the football stadium in Iraq. The story went that because it was the biggest outdoor venue in the country, Saddam would use it get as many people as possible to come to his rallies, where he could rant and rave like Hitler. I was told that he actually used to take women who were accused of committing adultery out onto the pitch at half-time and have them shot in the goalmouth.

  But Bernd insisted there was absolutely nothing to worry about. Because the war on Iraq was kicking off at the time, for safety reasons the Iraq football team could no longer train and play in their home country, and were based most of the time in neutral countries like Jordan. Bernd pushed and pushed and got the Iraqi FA – with both Saddam and Uday’s names appearing on the top of the letterhead – to send me a written offer of $200,000 a year to be their goalkeeping coach.

  At first, I turned it down flat because of all the scare stories that I heard. But Bernd was quite upset that I had dismissed it out if hand and kept on at me, assuring me it wasn’t bad and insisting that the threat of any violence had been lifted. My head had been full of all these rumours about executions and players getting whipped, and I naturally thought to myself: ‘What if one of my keepers makes a howler? I could get marched out of the dressing room and shot in the head!’

  Bernd kept ringing me, urging me to keep an open mind, and eventually I thought ‘sod it’ and agreed to come to Baghdad and listen to what Uday had to say. This sounds crazy, but one of the reasons I went was because I had always wanted to go there since I was a kid, because I used to watch the old film The Thief of Bagdad!

  The plane I travelled on to Iraq was unbelievable. There was only one flight a week from the region to Baghdad, so it was the only one I could get. It was meant to be first class, but it was an old converted Russian cargo plane, and I was one of only five or six passengers on board. When we got into the air, I went down the back of the plane and I couldn’t believe what I saw. It was like a flying department store. There were kitchen sinks, car wheels, and a whole load of luxury items like shoes and salad cream – it was rammed full of stuff Iraqis couldn’t get because of the sanctions against their country.

  When I arrived, I was taken to a palace in Baghdad and given an amazing room. I only stayed the one night there, which was a pity, because it was old and ornate and obviously had a lot of history. The next day I was taken to another building and formally introduced to Uday, and even though I only spoke with him for 10 or15 minutes, he had immaculate English and came across as a nice guy. He didn’t seem cruel at all, although I know that you can’t judge someone by a brief meeting and I’m now aware of what he was capable of and his reputation as a butcher. I would have loved to have met Saddam as well, but funnily enough he was keeping a low profile at the time!

  I went back to Oman and politely declined the job, but I would have liked to have worked for Iraq on a purely football basis because they had some magic players. I actually told Kevin Keegan when he was at Manchester City to sign a player called Nashat Akram. The kid was absolutely first class and he went on trial at City. He passed all the tests and Kevin wanted to sign him, but the British government wouldn’t give him a work permit. He had great tricks, could run box to box, was full of energy and could score goals. He played under Steve McClaren at Twente in Holland, and has 100 caps for Iraq now, but it’s a shame he wasn’t allowed to come to England because he would have been a star in the Premier League.

  Without the benefit of my expertise, Bernd didn’t do too badly for himself with Iraq. He’s now coach of Belarus, and we stay in touch. Uday was less fortunate. He was hunted down and killed in a bunker by the Americans. When the FBI posted their list of most wanted war criminals, rating them by playing cards, Uday was rated as the Ace of Hearts. Now that more is known about his reign of terror, I can see he might not have been the best man to get on the wrong side of. According to the Iraq national team’s Wikipedia page: ‘Under Uday’s leadership, motivational lectures to the team included threats to cut off players’ legs, while missed practices resulted in prison time and losses resulted in flogging with electric cable or baths in raw sewage, if penalties or an open goal was missed or own goals were scored then that person would have their feet whipped with thorns.’ It doesn’t mention what happened to goalkeeping coaches but I’m mighty relieved I didn’t get to find out.

  I didn’t really have to take the job in Iraq anyway, because when I’m not coaching I don’t just sit about on my arse. I need to be busy all the time and I’ve been lucky enough to land some regular work as a television pundit.

  The media work is always great fun. I’ve had the odd bit of stick for what I’ve said, but I’m not one for sitting on the fence and if you get people talking about the show and a point that you’ve raised then that’s surely what it’s all about.

  I started working for a Saudi station called ART (Arab Radio and Television Network) about six or seven years ago. It was the perfect way to keep up to date with English football, which has a massive audience over here. To get paid for sitting watching live Premier League games and having my say on them is nice work if you can get it. I also got a regular gig alongside Joe Morrison on StarHub’s Football Channel, which is broadcast in Singapore, and a newspaper column for The Age newspaper here in Oman. I keep myself very busy and it’s nice being a local celeb.

  I’m still working alongside Joe on Ten Sports (Taj Entertainment Network), which broadcasts right across Asia. I drive him totally nuts, but he loves me really – despite what he might say! I gave him one of the most uncomfortable experiences of his broadcasting career during a game we covered. I had turned up in a tight-fitting suit, which I called my ‘Gimp Suit’ – it looked smashing, but it wasn’t the most practical thing to wear because by the time we’d been sitt
ing under the studio lights for a few minutes, I was sweating buckets. The suit was getting wetter and wetter, and it started to look like PVC. I decided I had to take the suit off, so I watched the rest of the first half in my vest and pants. I was so engrossed in the game, I forgot how close we were to going live on air again, and when the producer popped his head round the door to give us our two-minute warning, I had to try to throw my suit back on as quickly as I could. But in my haste to strip off, the trousers had got all tangled and I couldn’t get the bloody things back on! When we got the countdown – ‘5, 4, 3, 2, 1…and live’ – I was sitting behind my desk in my old apple-catchers trying to pretend like nothing was up. Joe was shifting about uncomfortably as – ever the professional – he tried to get on with his job, presenting the show and leading the half-time analysis, but he said later that every time he looked over at me he’d catch a glimpse of me scratching my nuts! We’re still going strong, and I always enjoy testing his professionalism to the limits!

  We’ve had a lot of good guests in the studio, and it’s always nice to catch up with friends from the past in English football when they are over in the Middle East. I remember one time Gary O’Reilly, the former Tottenham and Palace defender, was a guest. It was the first time he had been on the show, so I got together with Joe Morrison beforehand and hatched a wind-up. He told Gary I’d forgotten to take my medication and that I suffered from severe Tourette’s syndrome and could potentially go loopy at any time during the live broadcast. Joe told him it had happened once or twice before and just to be professional and try and roll with it.

  When Gary sat down, Joe and I pretended the cameras were rolling, and within seconds I started cranking up the volume of my voice and then twitching in my seat. You could see Gary tensing up, fearing an end to his own TV career. Joe asked him a question to him about the Champions League and then asked me what I thought. I put on my maddest face (and believe me, it is a mad one) and said: ‘Why don’t you just go and fuck off!’ I then stood up and started rocking the set, calling everyone bastards and shoving anyone who came my way. We got a couple of security guys to come and cart me away, and while Joe was trying to soothe Gary, I was still effing and blinding from the corridor. When I came back, we carried on and did the rest of the programme – with the cameras actually rolling this time – but Gary was a bag of nerves thinking I was going to kick off again. When we showed it to him later he took it well enough, although he called us a ‘bunch of bastards’ for stitching him up. Gary’s done well for himself as a broadcaster, though, and he probably just puts the day I went loopy down to experience now!

  I asked Joe to contribute a few choice words for this book of mine, and he said: ‘Budgie and I have fought with the Afghans during a “friendly” game in Safa Park, we have played together alongside the Arabs on the beach at sunset in Oman, driven through the desert night talking shite about football and spent thousands of hours arguing about the Premier League in Studio One.

  ‘I don’t believe he was a great goalkeeper (despite what he says), he is certainly not a great pundit (despite what he says) and he is absolutely not a great comedian (despite what he says) but he is a great character and he is great TV. Life needs colourful characters like Budgie and I believe that in football, as in television, the real characters are all disappearing. He is one of the last!’

  I managed to cause quite a stir during my weekly appearances on StarHub, especially with my dress sense. For a game between Arsenal and Manchester United I wore a yellow jacket over a bright pink shirt, and the local paper described me as a ‘camp European game-show host’.

  It didn’t bother me in the slightest. I took it as a compliment – I like to stand out from the crowd, as you might have gathered. ‘If you think I’m outrageous now, I’ve got more clothes in my wardrobe that would really make an impact – black leather suits and white ones with pink braids,’ I told the newspaper when they did an interview demanding to know what was on my clothes hangers at home. ‘I’m imploring StarHub to let me loose. Take the chains off me and let me wear what I want! I’d wear my catsuit, the leopard-skin suit. The bright orange leather one. With nothing underneath. Football is an entertaining game. People want to see entertainment. And television is visual, it’s about impact. I’m built like Tarzan – 95kg of sheer muscle. I’d take my shirt off.’

  CHAPTER 27

  OMAN IN THE GLOAMING

  ‘I would have won more than 100 caps for England had I been a strapping six-footer! I didn’t do badly for myself, though, considering that in goalkeeping terms at least, I am a bit of a shortarse.’

  After the battle to get back to fitness after my bicycle accident, life has been good again and I love it here in the Middle East. I live just beside the Indian Ocean. Janet and I own three houses in Oman, two within a new golf course complex plus a big cliff-top villa.

  For anyone who doesn’t know where Oman is, it’s about a three-and-a-half hour drive from Dubai. Everyone has heard of Dubai now, but not everyone has heard of Muscat. I may be sounding like a representative for the Oman tourist board, but for me there is no contest – I’m in one of the most stunning places in the world. If you went straight across the Indian Ocean as the crow flies, you would be in Goa in India.

  Millions of pounds are spent advertising the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Dubai and Abu Dhabi and Qatar, but take it from someone who lives here – there is only one naturally beautiful Gulf state and that is Oman. We have the mountains, the ocean and a picturesque city. The rest of the Gulf is mainly sand and desert, but here is very different and everyone is far more laid back. It’s also got everything that Dubai has, albeit on a smaller scale.

  People think that you can’t drink in the Gulf, but let me educate you – that’s a lot of bullshit. There’s one or two places where you can’t drink – like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait – but places like Oman, Bahrain, UAE and Qatar are as open as Britain. You can go and have a drink at any time. There are no pubs as such, as all the bars are contained within hotels, but they are nice and relaxed. There’s more of a café culture here and everything is a bit more relaxed. There isn’t anywhere near the level of drunkenness you see in Britain and, because of that, the crime rate is low. I can leave my car unlocked and not have to worry about it. You see guys heading to the beach for a kickabout after work instead of heading straight down to the pub. It’s all nice and laid back.

  Sitting in my hammock watching the waves of the Indian Ocean rolling by, it’s impossible to say that I miss England and what the last few governments have let it become. When you earn £3,000 a week in England they’ll take half off you in tax. I don’t begrudge paying some tax, but the last time I was in England I had a problem with a couple of teeth I had damaged in my accident. One of my caps had fallen out and it would have been a 10-minute job to fix. But when I went to the surgery in Blackpool, they wouldn’t help me out, giving me all the ‘Are you registered, sir?’ nonsense. I tried to tell them I’d paid millions of pounds in tax and played football for 32 years, but they weren’t having it. It bugged me, because there were people strolling in there who hadn’t paid one penny of tax.

  It’s the rip-off nature of Britain that bugs me too. I drive a Hummer and if I went to a British petrol station it would cost me about £170 to fill it bottom to top. In the Middle East, it costs me £15 at the most to fill it. In Britain, you work your balls off to earn a good salary and you get nothing back, but the government let anyone into the country and give them a house, free NHS and so on. The whole place is screwed up now. Me and Janet would never even think about going back. Sometimes I’ve flown back to Manchester, then got a train to Blackpool, and you see that the trains and stations are still like Victorian times, with people smoking and drinking their heads off on the trains. No wonder England’s skint. It’s full of freeloaders. I think it’s down to the politicians, and it’s wrong that people found guilty of fixing their expenses are still allowed to make the rules!

  As you can see, I enjoy a good rant!
I’ll never be too old to climb up on my soapbox and shout the odds. But, in all seriousness, I rarely miss Britain and I’m better off where I am now, with the sun on my back every day. I still keep as fit as I can, and still have the same 32-inch waist and 46-inch chest I had when I was playing. When I had my Oman job I worked maybe 60 days a year with the national team and the age group teams, and perhaps most importantly I’ve rediscovered my love of football and going to matches. I’ve come a long way from the headcase that was bundled into the Priory. I’ve got the odd regret about decisions I took in my football career, but there’s no point dwelling on them. My main regret is that I wasn’t two inches taller – I would have won more than 100 caps for England had I been a strapping six-footer! I didn’t do badly for myself, though, considering that in goalkeeping terms at least, I am a bit of a shortarse.

  My position within the Oman national team allowed me to visit places I can’t even spell! I’ve been to Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kathmandu, all over India and China, Korea, Japan, Sri Lanka, Australia, Malaysia, Mongolia, Iraq and Iran – places that are so interesting and where you can learn so much. You wouldn’t believe how many countries play football in Asia, and there are some bloody great players across the continent.