In light of the recent announcement of the death of Ray Wilkins, former English football player and manager, I thought that I would repost an interview with the man from January, 1997. It was originally published in the magazine "Total Football" and since the publication is now defunct, I have no contact for copyright information. I doubt that anyone would want to persecute me for it in any event.
Here is the text of the article:
Ray Wilkins is... The King of Calm
Ivor Baddiel attempts to annoy Ray Wilkins but discovers a man of great patience and tranquillity. Damn.
Ray Wilkins is the kind of bloke you want to be with in the event of an earthquake. As you're hurtling headlong down a bottomless pit, you can just hear him saying: "Yes Ivor, you're right, this is a difficult situation, but if we keep our heads, there's no need to panic."The guy is football's James Bond. He can be shaken, but never stirred. His repertoire consists of relaxed, slightly bored, mildly amused and, on the odd occasion, concerned. But outrage, psychotic temper tantrums and losing his rag, he just doesn't do.
Witness the recent Eric Hall video, Monster Hits - ish! where Ray is set up to believe that he's on a panel with Eric and Gary Stevens on a TV show being beamed live to 40 million viewers in the US. Halfway through the 'show', Gary admits to having been offered money to throw matches on a number of occasions and, at one point in his career, actually accepted one of these bribes.
Ray's reaction on hearing this is to rub his right eye a number of times, play with his wedding ring and explain how flabbergasted he is. At no point does he betray any signs of deep discomfort and, at the end, when Eric, in true Jeremy Beadle fashion, lets Ray in on the joke, he doesn't chase Eric around the studio brandishing a kitchen knife or laugh hysterically till he's sick. He simply smiles a lot and looks ever so slightly relieved.
"They set it up so well," says Ray, "and Gary, well, he must have his equity card now, the way he played it. But I kept thinking: 'Why are they just putting my face up on the screen?' 'cos I could see it on a monitor, and it was only afterwards when they done me, I thought: 'That's where I should've spotted it.' I felt a right mug after when he'd done me like a kipper, but it's typical Eric, isn't it? It's just a laugh. I got caught out. It was a bit of harmless fun.
Clearly no burning cesspit of resentment there but when I met up with Ray recently, I'd loaded my interviewer's gun with a few tricky bullets and was ready to fire a couple at him to see if he'd flinch. He took the first, concerning his none-too-successful venture into management squarely on the chin without a wobble.
"I enjoyed management. I think probably one of the biggest problems I faced as a manager was that all the players were my friends. I'd only finished playing with them six months before, so consequently picking the team was difficult. I could only pick 11, so naturally on the Monday morning the door's being knocked down by five or six. But that's management and it was tough. If I go back into it, I'll make sure I don't know the players for a start, but I don't think I'll do too many things differently. I just wanted to be as honest as I could and the players to be as professional as they could, and that was basically my philosophy on it.'
His brow unfurrowed, I went for a little jab just below the belt and suggested that playing at Hibs with lads half his age must be a bit odd.
"Yes, it's a strange feeling to be honest. I'm probably old enough to be some of the players' dad, but I've never really looked on it like that. I feel very young in spirit, so I don't have hang ups about it. Some of them are a bit cheeky, but I like that, because they're not putting me somewhere I shouldn't be. They're just treating me as one of them, and as a player I'll take that all day. It's not a problem."
Obviously, it was time to turn the heat up a little and delve deeper into the murky waters of Ray's past. His time at Paris St. Germain, for instance, can't have been overly joyous.
"That was probably one of the hardest periods of my footballing career purely. simply because they had three foreigners there, myself, Susich and Calderon. We had a lot of trouble scoring goals and as they were two forward players, the manager preferred to play them instead of me, so I was actually playing in their reserve side in the French Third Division. Going from AC Milan's first team to that was a bit of a shock to the system, but I wouldn't change anything. Although it was a bad footballing experience, I think you have to have them to appreciate the good times."
How very philosophical.
By now I was the one feeling the strain, but I hadn't finished yet, not by a long chalk. Everyone has their breaking point and I reckoned a sneaky question about Ray only ever playing a square ball might just tip him over the edge. I was wrong.
"One of the biggest problems I faced as a manager was that all the players were my friends..."
"I've really no qualms about that at all. Those critics have been media people. If you look back over the years and the managers who have bought me, I think they've got far more knowledge of the game than any of those critics ever had. My philosophy on football is if you've got the ball you can do something with it. If you give it away easily, then it takes you 10 minutes to get it back, and also you can't get a goal."Some people think that's quite negative, but then I'm not too concerned about that. I would sooner see the ball passed to one of my team-mates than to someone else. I've never ever worried about what anybody thinks about the way I play."
Fine, Ray mate, I didn't want to do this. but the editor insisted I come back with pictures of you weeping or I was out of a job. So, what happened at the 1986 World Cup, then? Eh?
"It was one of those crazy things that footballers do. I'd been booked before for a fall on the half-way
line and I was in an advanced position on the left-hand side of the field, I'll never forget it, and the guy gave me offside.
Well, I was looking across the line and I couldn't see it personally, so I threw the ball on the floor, but
unfortunately on the first bounce, it skidded up and walloped the ref. He got slightly irate with me and I was off.
"The rest of the World Cup was just an absolute disaster. The worst feeling I had was when Bobby Robson had used his second substitute against Argentina in the Aztec. I knew then that if we didn't win that game I would take no further part, because I'd been suspended up until that game. When the final whistle went I just thought: 'Well Jesus Christ, what a nightmare to have missed that one.' it was the worst moment of my career, but even though it might sound silly, I wouldn't change it.
"I don't think any footballer can go through his career without a blemish. Football's a game of extreme emotions and you're going to get tied up in it, you've got to. If you love and care for it as much as that, every player must get involved at some stage."
Football might be a game of extreme emotions, but if he didn't start showing some of those off the pitch, it was the Job Centre for me. It was time to get personal and find out where the Butch nickname came from.
"My father called me Butch when I was a baby. Apparently I was big, fat and hairy. Where all that's gone I've no idea, but the name has stuck. I didn't like it at all. It's not very nice being called Butch. All my brothers and sisters called me it, and they still do. I accept it from them, but thankfully, from everybody else, it's disappeared."
If only he had grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and threatened to put me in hospital if I ever mentioned it again, but, as he calmly signed more autographs - a group of kids had interrupted us on average about every five minutes and he couldn't have been more courteous to them - desperation turned to rudeness: "You're bald!" I blurted out.
"l suppose I do have a receding hairline. Ivor, but my philosophy on it is easy come, easy go. I get some stick for it, but at the end of the day I'm in pretty good shape for a 40-year-old, wouldn't you say?"
Yes, I would have agreed if I hadn't been crawling out of the restaurant, a broken wreck left to ponder the advantages of a stress free life. Ray, meanwhile, was happily signing more autographs for the youngsters.
— from Ivor Baddiel in "Total Football" issue 17, January 1997.
Ray Wilkins, MBE.
14 September 1956 - 4 April 2018
R.I.P.
No comments:
Post a Comment