If you thought trainspotters were weird ... try footballers

[Andy Mac]

Good article this. Backed up by reading Steven Gerrard's book

 

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Trainspotters, stalkers, autograph hunters and elite sports stars. They're all linked by the same single-minded, obsessive drive. What separates us? Not much. In sport we use the term 'dedication', rather than obsession, but it's a fine line. Trainspotters and stalkers might be seen as socially inept and a bit sweaty, but how normal is kicking a ball 1,000 times a day? Elitism, by its very definition, is not normal.

 

David Beckham is the perfect example. When he first came to train with England, some of the other players used to think he was showing off hitting all those balls after training. I had a hunch that he was an obsessive then, and that was before hearing him come out about his Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and the Pepsi cans needing to face the same way in his fridge door. Often it's the biggest stars who are the most reluctant to come off the training field - Beckham, Steven Gerrard, Frank Lampard, Wayne Rooney - those who live the game 24/7. And it's not just football. Look at Jonny Wilkinson. His obsessive kicking practice won England the Rugby World Cup. When it comes to training, he doesn't even take Christmas Day off.

 

The root philosophy of sport attracts obsessives. 'You're only as good as your last performance,' they say, which can only mess with your head. There were times when I told myself I was only as good as my last kick.

 

But then people do seem to think goalkeepers in particular have a screw loose. When I told other kids I wanted to be a goalie, they said: 'You're mad.' Goalkeepers are seen as eccentric, solitary and insular. Like the trainspotter at the end of the platform, marking down numbers: there are other people around you, but you're in your own world, concerned only with your own activity.

 

For me, it was always about statistics. At school I would look at the records on the athletics board and see which ones I could beat, see if I had more records than anyone else. Football was all about clean sheets, appearances, goals conceded. From the age of 14 I would be poring over Watford's records and vowing to do better. At Liverpool I obsessed over Phil Neal's appearances record - he missed one game in eight years. With Peter Schmeichel, or so the story goes, he insisted on parrying 100 shots before each game. Any player who failed to place the ball in the right place would get an earful.

 

With goalkeepers the game stops when the ball is in their hands. With dead-ball specialists such as Beckham or Lampard, the game stops when they put the ball on the floor. It's all about control. You strike the ball as you have done thousands of times in training - and it ends up in the same place. You expect it to, there is satisfaction in achieving it, but it's no surprise.

 

A team like Bolton use this game plan to their advantage. Their play is based around set pieces. It's about reducing the opportunity for chance occurrence by paring the game down to free-kicks, throw-ins and corners. That's Sam Allardyce exerting control.

 

Psychology in football is still poo-pooed, but it is interesting. The best teams have a combination of psychological make-ups - your obsessives in the back line, and one or two in midfield, who increase your chances of winning through their hard work and repeated practice. Then you have the flair players who display flashes of genius, of brilliance and unpredictability, who could almost be dubbed 'bipolar'. The 'bipolar' sets the game alight, unsettles the opposition, but you can't rely on him to win games. Perhaps some of the most gifted players of all suffered a medical condition similar to bipolar disorder - their on- and off-the-field activities marked by soaring highs and crushing lows.

 

Most Premiership teams don't employ a psychologist and Portsmouth are no exception. It was only under Steve McClaren that the England camp got one, despite all Sven's talk of respect for the practice. Managers still like to think they know what's best for their team and there's a stigma attached to psychology. In football you're not supposed to put your hand up and ask for help with your mental health.

 

The symptoms show themselves in various ways. Everyone is happy to talk about superstition in football, but superstition is easy to confuse with obsession. Magpies are one thing, but many footballers have an obsessive routine that goes way beyond normal. Mine used to begin the Friday night before a game and continue right through to the full-time whistle the following day. It was a ritual so complex it could fill a page. It was made up of things like going into the urinals, waiting until they were empty and spitting on the wall, or not speaking to anyone. I saw it as preparation - mental machinery. Every ritual represented a cog in the machine and at the end of it came the performance. And the performance had to justify the process. That was the pressure. I was in this mad little world where as long as I did everything in the right order then anything could be achieved. Dangerous thinking, that is.

 

I look for it now in other players and I don't see it as bad as it was for me, but it's around. Many top players have pre-match rituals as long as my arm which begin well before the game.

 

It's all about that disproportionate focus on a singular goal. It's just like collecting autographs. I can always tell the real collectors from the eBay sellers a mile off. They have the look of a man who has spent many hours out in all weathers. They carry a battered folder containing pages of photographs to be signed. You'll get someone that has pictures of you in every kit of your career - all those horrendous haircuts - and they need you to sign every picture.

 

Maybe there's a bit of autograph hunter in all of us. I collect toys. Matchbox 75s. It was fine when I just thought there were 75 of them, but then I discovered there could be up to 15 variations on each one. Suddenly you can't concentrate unless you have the number-one Dodge with the blue hood and the white base. You get this twitchy feeling, I call it 'collecty'.

 

In and around football you see people who have taken 'collecty' to a dangerous level. Stalkers, for example. When you hear some of the stories you start thinking 'maybe the trainspotters are the healthiest obsessives out there'. Take Simon Jordan's stalker, Tara Stout. It came out in court that she would read to him on his voicemails - lengthy great tracts from legal textbooks - in between threatening his family. And many players, myself included, have also had people take too keen an interest: sending in masses of newspaper cuttings, annotated with their views on what was written in the articles, and phone calls to team hotels on match days.

 

At least with trains, or Eddie Stobart's truckspotters, there's an order to things. It's all very linear, controlled by timetable. With other obsessions, you're trying to achieve control over the uncontrollable, whether it's someone else's life, as with stalkers, or waiting for a star to sign your picture only for them to walk past, or as a footballer in a game involving 21 other people.

 

And if being the best means being obsessive, how healthy is it to be a top sportsperson? Because once you retire from the game, satisfying that obsession elsewhere is hard. I'm OK - I've got my Matchbox 75s. For the rest - who knows?

[DazzlaJ]

I thought that was quite an insightful read.

[RP]

He really is a f***ing nutter.

[jimmylibel]

Was dropping crosses part of his ritual?

[meepins]

When you say 'backed up by Steven Gerrards book' what do you mean? I haven't read it nor have any intention.

[RP]

When you say 'backed up by Steven Gerrards book' what do you mean? I haven't read it nor have any intention.

 

Good move - I wish I hadn't.

[cymrococh]

When you say 'backed up by Steven Gerrards book' what do you mean? I haven't read it nor have any intention.

Footballers are d*cks?

[Andy Mac]

When you say 'backed up by Steven Gerrards book' what do you mean? I haven't read it nor have any intention.

 

I meant that SG comes across as a bit of a control freak and not your normal bloke alot of the book is ME, ME , ME !!!

 

Actually, some women may argue that is your normal bloke

[Guest Anders Honoré]

good read. I never figured him to have a brain after that playstation story.

[Spike]

there's a funny bit in Collymore's book about when he stayed with David James.

 

If James couldn't sleep he'd get up in the middle of the night and start cutting down trees

[Des]

there's a funny bit in Collymore's book about when he stayed with David James.

 

If James couldn't sleep he'd get up in the middle of the night and start cutting down trees

 

David James and his missus yesterday.

[Scally the Wag]

According to Fowler in his book, James tried to cut down Collymore on an England trip. Stan work up to find James wringing his neck.

 

Can't fault him there though...

[Cam]

His refusal to discuss Robinson's England feck up last week and instead write a column on fat kids was more mental.

[L19red]

ten words or less?

[Guest Anders Honoré]

'dem wacky footballers, eh? And us goalies are even crazier!'

[L19red]

'dem wacky footballers, eh? And us goalies are even crazier!'

cheers that helps

[Jarg Armani]

i stopped reading when he said poo poo.

these footballers are terrible terrible role models

[Sion]

Example of wacky football behavaviour