by usedtothespin » Sat Dec 24, 2011 1:51 pm
Article comes from the biggest Dutch football magazine (Voetbal Internationaal), the Christmas edition from last Wednesday. I hope you enjoy it. Obviously I'm no professional at translating, so sorry in advance for my mistakes. I hope you enjoy it anyway and thanks to dazby who made this tread because i'm not yet able to make my own :)
Manchester City, the team that wants to become the best in the world in the next few years, had to climb up from the lower regions of English football not too long ago to get into the Premier league. Gerard Wiekens from Oude Pekela experienced it as a player from 1997. A story about his seven years in England. ‘George Weah was practically my neighbor’.
In the taxi that brought Gerard Wiekens to the place of his contract negotiations he had some doubt. Was an English adventure something he should do? From Veendam to Manchester City was quite a big leap when he thought about it. But when the car went around the corner, heading towards the hotel in Mottram St Andrew, all doubt disappeared. ‘I’ll never forget Mottram Hall. A beautiful estate with a driveway of at least 400 yards, a golf course next to it and lots of land surrounding it. Well, I was sold, it couldn’t go wrong anymore. Gerard Wiekens had a new dream that was just getting started. ‘I signed my contract in February of 1997 but had until June to go to Manchester. That was handy because that gave me some time to deepen my knowledge of English football, cos in all fairness I did not know that much about it. When I arrived at the club I was introduced to Nigel Clough. He played for Nottingham Forrest and Liverpool as a forward, but I had no idea who he was. I thought he was a goalkeeper… And I also never heard of his father, Brian Clough. Luckily I had a few months to get ready. From then on my wife Angelique and I watched Match Of The Day every Saturday. Manchester City relegated from the Premier League in 1996 paid about half a million pounds for Wiekens. I was playing for Veendam for seven years and was in the Dutch youth team. I was actually thinking FC Groningen would be my next step up. It would have made sense too, but for some reason they never got serious. And then Manchester City showed up. Lee Payne, with whom I played at Veendam, made the initial contact. I remember they saw me play in the Dutch Youth squad. Henk Niehuis, manager at Veendam, did try to convince me to stay at the club. I could sign a 10-year contract for 40 thousand pound a year. It was a lot of money, but my feeling drew me towards England. But there was still a lot to arrange. ‘We had to find a kennel for our dog who had to stay in quarantine for half a year. That wasn’t easy and we didn’t pick just any kennel. Joey (the dog) was like a child to us. Eventually we found a good kennel in Crewe. We knew quite fast that living in the City was nothing for us. Angelique and I are both from a small village; and we thought it wasn't wise to move into a metropolis like Manchester. At the Southside of Manchester is a real nice area, with nice villages. We found a place in Woodford. Beautiful, but in the middle of nowhere. The neighbors lived quite far away and were in their seventies. Naturally I was away from home a lot and Angelique stayed at home a lot. That was difficult especially for her. At the beginning she lost faith a few times. On top of that she had to find her way among the WAG’s. Blond hair, fake nails; you know what I’m talking about. Angelique wanted to fit in and did what she could to do so. We bought her a car in England, a Nissan Micra. A perfect fun car. When she told the other WAG’s they did not know what they heard. “A Nissan Micra? No, that’s just wrong. Unacceptable.” They were angry with me that I bought such a car for my wife. Cars are really important in England. In some rougher neighborhoods, you still see the most beautiful cars. I had a Volkwagen Golf Cabrio myself. I thought it was a fine car. But my teammates asked me: ‘Nice car, is it your wifes?’
Beer.
It took some getting used to the first few weeks. ‘It was different from the Netherlands. Everyone was going all the way at training; you had no time to think when you had the ball. It was intense, but the English never complain. They gamble, they smoke and they drink like crazy; but the next day they are leading at the training and going all out. Paul Dickov was a great example of that mentality. And you just go with the flow yourself. I actually never really drank beer, but when I was in England it went natural. It very common over there to go to the pub in the afternoon to talk thing through with a beer. It just is a sociable fun country. The other side was that I had some experience with players who had a drinking problem, like Richard Dunne (who is currently playing for Aston Villa) who was in rehab while at City. Ian Bishop emptied his minibar every night if stayed in a hotel. And Kevin Horlock was also quite a drinker. There was the millennium party. Because we had to train the next day I left at about 2 o’clock. I went to pick up Kevin the next day to go to the club. But when I came to pick him up he was holding a cup of vodka and smoking a cigar, I took him with me anyway but he was hammered. He spend 5 minutes on the training pitch and went to the stand after that, where he sat down and started to yell and scream at us like a angry supporter. Kevin was mental, but an exceptionally nice guy. We got along great. Just like most British teams out team was mainly made up of Scots, Irish and English. We only had three foreigners: Uwe Rossler (German), Geori Kinkladze (Georgian) and myself. Georgi was the hero, a great player. When Ajax took an interest in him he asked me for advice. I told him to go for it. I imagined he would do great, but he failed. I never expected that. I believe Ajax used him in a wrong way. At us he played behind our strikers, Ajax misused him as a winger.
Oasis
He vividly remembers his Manchester City debut under manager Frank Clark. It was august 9, 1997, home against Portsmouth. ‘In preparation for the new season we played a lot of friendlies, but never at home. So I never never stood at Main Road. After the warming up there were very little people in the stands. I walked out of the dresser and thought: Is this it?. But when we came out of the tunnel I couldn’t believe what I saw! There was one really high stand at Main Road, the Kippax Stand. When you stood in a skybox there you could look over the whole city of Manchester. Even that huge stand was completely full. At Veendam I played for 2 or 3 thousand people and now here for 34 thousand. Yes, goose bumps.’ It was one all at half time. ‘In the second half the ball came in front of the goal after a free kick, I made a sliding and it went in. That was such a fantastic feeling, to score in my first official game. Both my parents were in the stands to. Later I heard that my mom started crying. Nicky Weaver (then a youth squad keeper) gave her a Kleenex… Unfortunately it ended 2-2, but for me personally it was a great debut. They chose me as man of the match and after the game it took me an hour to talk to the press. The Gallagher brothers gave me the bottle of champagne that came with it. You couldn’t ask me if it was Noel or Liam at the time, but I did know the Oasis brothers were City supporters, I found that out when I took the time to get to know the club when I signed the contract. And then you meet them… eye to eye. Later I went to a concert. The club arranged tickets for a skybox. When they heard I was at the concert, they came to see me. Very special. Strange experience, totally different world.
The atmosphere at home games on Maine Road was such a contrast with the area surrounding the stadium. ‘The stadium was located in the Moss side. That really was a poor place. Drugs, crime… They warned me beforehand: if I were to leave the stadium at night I should leave my doors locked and don’t stop for anything. But the stadium itself was beautiful. Narrow entrances, authentic gate, pretty stands, great pitch; genuinely beautiful. The locker rooms were very old, the shoe polish was on the walls and our players home was very small. But it breathed football all over. That’s what I love. ‘
The results in Wiekens first year were dramatic. At least for the club; Wiekens played rather well and soon got promoted to captain. ‘Everything went totally different that we expected. We had to beat Stoke City in the last game to avoid relegation to the third level. And we did; we won 5 - 2. But we were dependant on three other results, and those all turned out wrong for us. We relegated anyway, and all of a sudden we played in Division Two (League one now). It was rock bottom for the club. Uwe Rossler (to 1. FC Kaiserslautern) and Georgi Kinkladze (to Ajax) left and the new manager Joe Royle had to start over. ´In hindsight is it´s nice that I played all those different stadiums in English football´, tells Wiekens. ´There are these ground hoppers who played all professional English teams. Well I certainly saw them all, especially when you count in the cup games. ´Just like the season before Manchester City was the big favorite for promotion. ´But eventually we needed playoffs. Fulham and Walsall promoted direct and in all fairness we had a bad season. I was doing well myself, Sky Sports picked me as the best player in the second division and the supporters chose me to player of the year. On top of that our manager Joe Royle told that I was ready for the Dutch national team. Even Manchester United took an interest in me, after the game against Stoke City was on live TV. I made the only goal of the game. But I felt fine at Manchester City. The club even made special orange t-shirts with Walking in a Wiekens Wonderland. That was something the fans in the stands sung sometimes. The first 500 shirts sold fast and they even had to print some new ones.´
´We had some problems that season but eventually we made it to the final of the playoffs. In the first round we just barely beat Wigan Athletic and and we met Gillingham in the final. Unforgettable. Eighty thousand people at Wembley, from which fifty five thousand were City. The whole stadium was sky blue. It was nil nil for a long time, but it went wrong in the second half. We were behind two nil. Thousands of City supporters already left the stadium and I was very disappointed too: Another year in division Two. But at the moment that the forth official held up the board that there were an additional 5 minutes, Kevin Horlock scored the 2 1. That gave us new hope. I remember it vividly: in the final minute of added time I play the ball forward, Gareth Taylor headed it to Shaun Goater, who gets the ball to Paul Dickov and Paul shoots it straight and beautifully to the back of the net. What a euphoria. When the people outside realized that there was going to be extra time after all they wanted to get back in the stadium. There even were people in the subway who pulled the emergency stop. They were not allowed back in. Gillingham was off track that extra time but in the end it came down to a penalty shootout. I was assigned the sixth penalty but fortunately it did not come to that. Gillingham only scored one, we did three. Then I was allowed to take the stairs to get the cup. People crying, fantastic. I will never forget.´
Statue
Things can change. Gillingham promoted the next year, but stayed stuck in the lower levels. Manchester City went all the way to the premier league. As fast as the next season that is. Wiekens: We got runner up behind Charlton Athletic and got promoted directly. I have to be honest and say I remember more from our playoff final at Wembley than from our promotion to the Premier League. We won the decisive game at Blackburn Rovers, that I do remember.´
Wiekens played almost every game in the following season. ´The most beautiful competition in the world. I sometimes see some old footage and think: Oh, yeah, I played him too. David Beckham, Gianfranco Zola, Tony Adams, Dennis Bergkamp, Ian Wright, Ray Parlour. In hindsight I can say I enjoyed it too little. But well, you work to the next game every week and have little time to think about it in any other way.´
Manchester City was struggling in the Premier League. Relegation proved inevitable; despite the fact they signed a real worldwide star. ´One time we were on the training pitch when a big Rolls Royce pulled up. The backdoor opened and George Weah got out. They managed to sign him. He was former AC Milan and Chelsea and then he standing in front of you. I remember standing at the window of our gym looking over to the training pitch. Incredibly good. Only: he did not show it in our games. He just played six months for us. George lived nearby, three houses away in Cheadle Hume where we moved to. He was practically my neighbor, his son came to our door every now and then. George was a regular guy, but really was World Player of the Year. I can remember a conversation between him and Shaun Goater, a good mate of mine. It’s important to know that Shaun is a legend from where he is from. He scored more than 100 goals for Manchester City and became so popular in Bermuda that the called for a special Shaun Goater day. So he proudly told George Weah that there was such a day in Bermuda once a year. To which George Weah replies: ``Well Shaun, they put up an enormous statue of me in Liberia.`` Imagine I was in one team with such players.´
The relegation from the Premier League costs Joe Royle his job as manager and he got replaced by Kevin Keegan. ´That was the time things turned around for Manchester City. From a regular club it became a wealthy club. Suddenly there was money and we got players like: Robbie Fowler, Steve McManaman, Marc Vivien Foe, Sylvain Distin, Nicolas Anelka, Peter Schmeichel and after that David Seaman. Not all in the first season of Keegan, but mainly after we got promoted to the Premier League again. I made good money, but with Keegan the amount the top players got was enormous. Even then players got twenty or thirty thousand pounds. A week. We were in a bus to an away game and we heard Steve McManaman on the phone:``Put ten thousand on that horse and ten thousand on the other one``. Remember, Steve got transferred from Real Madrid and he did not have to worry about money, and well he enjoyed gambling. Robbie Fowler owns more than one hundred houses. Yes, more than one hundred, whole blocks´.
Ovation
Wiekens started playing less. ´But besides that: the atmosphere became harsher. We had a lot of French players in our squad. They picked up their stuff after practice and left right away. The great atmosphere we had with the English, Scots and Irish was gone. And even though Kevin Keegan was a huge icon in English football, I believed he found himself more important than the team. In the first season with Keegan I still played almost 30 games, after that just a few. But I did start against the derby against Manchester United on Main Road. They could have sold out that game more than five times. I had to play Ruud van Nistelrooij who I remembered from our the Dutch lower leagues where I played him twice before. Manchester United played much better, but we won, it was 3 against 1. And well, that´s when the City supporters go crazy. You´ll be a hero forever´.
In 2003 Manchester City moved from Main Road to the new City of Manchester Stadium. ´On Main Road I knew every attendant by name, in that big stadium that changed. Apart from the openings game against Barcelona I did not play there. My last game was against The New Saints from Wales in the UEFA Cup league, in season 2003 2004. My contract ended at the end of the season and we had to make a choice: stay in England or go back to the Netherlands. We did bond with England; our sons Tim and Lars were both born there. Tim went to school there and spoke better English than Dutch. But in the end we chose to go back to the Netherlands. The club gave me a beautiful goodbye, at the Everton game I got presents and a standing ovation from the crowd. Yes, beautiful. But I don`t get emotional fast. You wave some and go back into the stadium´.
And that was it. The adventure ended. Back in the Netherlands Wiekens settled in Winschoten together with Angelique and the kids Tim (12 now) and Lars (9) and started playing for Veendam again. Right now he is an assistant coach at Veendam. But he will always be connected to Manchester City. ´A few times a year I try to see a home game. And every Saturday I see the City games with my sons. Manchester City became our club. And Veendam of course.´
Last edited by
usedtothespin on Sat Dec 24, 2011 6:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.
