England football legend Paul Gascoigne entertained fans with stories of his brilliant career. (Melbourne Capital Group pic)
KUALA LUMPUR: It may have been manic Monday in the World Cup, but there was also a bit of mayhem in a corner of Kuala Lumpur when a World Cup legend walked in.
Paul Gascoigne, universally known as Gazza, provided a rip-roarious evening for his still-adoring faithful in a one-night stand at the Bar Roca in Medan Damansara.
Driven by Rangers Supporters Club in Malaysia and sponsored by Melbourne Capital Group and TEG Media, it proved a nostalgic treat for fans away from the tournament.
Few locals recognised the unassuming elderly Mat Salleh as he arrived. Now 55, he’s older, balder, greyer of tint – although you never know with Gazza. It was the calm before the storm.
He’s also a sadder, shrunken figure now but he’s had an awful lot to be sad about and shrink from: once a larger than life, cheeky chappie superstar who came within a stud’s length of a World Cup final and a heartbeat of oblivion.
With Gazza, the two are inexorably linked. Thanks to his genius with a football, he had the world at his feet, only to kick himself harder than any opponent had. He’s been in more scrapes than a second-hand razor.
Here in Malaysia, he was in top form, and still a master of self-deprecation. And little did anyone know what a punch he still packs.
Privileged to “interview” him, it was an easy, if impossible, job. It was a relief to find there was no dead fish under the seat – a favourite trick in teammates’ cars.
But a simple question was akin to turning on a talking toy with a long-life battery: his answers were joke-filled, profanity-laced monologues that could have lasted all night. I struggled to get a word in.
In his prime, Gazza was the best player of his era, combining outrageous skills with formidable strength and boundless enthusiasm. (Facebook pic)
Asked where he thought he played his best football; he ran through his entire career.
A natural comedian as well as born prankster, he had the audience in stitches in his lilting and at times barely decipherable Geordie (Newcastle area) accent.
Highlights include signing an ostrich to play for Spurs, crashing the new team bus at Middlesbrough and demanding a BMW as a signing on fee for his sister.
Oh, and that “tackle” by hardman Vinnie Jones. “I was so s*** scared of him, when he told me to stay where I was as he took a corner, I did just that – never moved. Then he came over and grabbed my family allowance!”
More seriously, he refuted the notion that his career – and life – might have been different had he signed for Alex Ferguson. “No way,” he insisted, “I didn’t want to end up in Manchester…”
Nor did he accept he was never quite the same after his first serious injury. “Look at what I did in my career after that,” he said. But that’s a change from what he said previously.
It’s an impressive body of work, but there’s always the tantalising feeling that it could have been even better: the turbo acceleration that took him away from tackles was not quite there anymore.
Perhaps it was the japes and the binges rather than the self-inflicted ruptured cruciate from his own kung-fu tackle (on Nottingham Forest’s Gary Charles) in the 1991 FA Cup final.
Those who sought succinct answers would have been disappointed: most responses reflecting his disillusionment with the modern game and the joy that’s gone out of it.
Asked by the media about current issues such as the World Cup, England’s chances and the video assistant referee (VAR), he managed to turn it into a rant about “the idiots running the game” and how VAR was “ruining it.”
His visit came out of the blue. He’d been quiet for a while and no news is good news as far as Gazza is concerned.
Gazza news tends to break on the front page of the UK Sun newspaper and has often involved alcohol or worse: an all-too-frequent splash was of a night out gone wrong.
It usually told of emptied bars, mangled cars or even buses and paralytic companions. And amid all this would be the dishevelled national treasure cutting a destitute figure with a 1,000-yard stare.
Pals like Gary Lineker and Piers Morgan would rally to send him into pricey detox centres and it would go quiet – until the next time.
He’s been to more clinics than clubs, including the celebrity rehab centre in Tucson, Arizona, that finally put him straight. Touch wood.
Hyper-active as a child, he was already a practical joker when he emerged as a teenage wonder boy at hometown club, Newcastle United.
Then came a big money move to London with Spurs outbidding Manchester United. His England heroics in the 1990 World Cup came while at Tottenham who then sold him to Lazio.
The Italians had to wait a year for his knee to heal, but one Maradona-esque goal in the Rome derby won the fans over.
And he was still doing pranks: a snake in Roberto di Matteo’s jacket pocket being one. “You’ve never seen anyone jump so high,” Gazza recalled.
But it was at Rangers, who brought him home from Italy, where he felt the most loved, although he almost didn’t go.
Fans enjoying a rip-roarious evening with Gazza in Kuala Lumpur on Monday. (Melbourne Capital Group pic)
“When I was told Rangers wanted me, I said ‘nah, I’m not going there’ – thinking it was Queen’s Park Rangers. When I found it was the real Rangers, I jumped at it.”
And the feeling was reciprocated by the Malaysian branch of the Rangers Supporters Club on Monday.
He played some of his best football for the Glasgow club, perhaps most memorably scoring a hat-trick against Aberdeen to clinch the ninth Scottish League title in a row and equal Celtic’s record.
He feared he’d make a different sort of history though as one joke played on him took a sinister turn.
It seemed harmless enough when a teammate at Rangers egged him on to imitate a flute player in front of the crowd.
He said: “I thought it was just a bit of fun. But all hell broke loose and I thought the IRA were gonna kill me.”
Unbeknown to the Englishman, it was a provocative act in sectarian Glasgow and, at the height of the troubles in Northern Ireland, there were fears that Gazza would be a target of the Irish Republican Army (IRA).
It all seemed a long way from the innocent days when he’d “borrowed” an ostrich from London Zoo and took it to training. He unleashed the creature and mayhem inevitably ensued.
He had to stay till darkness fell before he got hold of it. He asked: “Have you ever tried to catch an ostrich?”
After the laughter died, there was a poignant departure.
He walked out briskly with nary a glance at the big screens showing the World Cup – a thriller between Ghana and South Korea.
You felt that he is still walking something of a tightrope – putting the past behind him except for release among friends on such occasions.
He’s been given yet another chance to be on the straight and narrow and nothing is going to make him deviate.
Watching football in a pub might just be a temptation too far.
Well done, Gazza and thanks for the memories.
