dwinkler
18 Jan 2004, 06:13 PM
This is an excellent story from the Times about our captain. The link was working for me then it wasn't, so I've pasted the story here. I'm honestly not sure if this is a violation of the BS TOS, because I've seen it both ways on various boards here. I apologize in advance if this is a violation, but this story was too good to not share with everyone.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2093-967631,00.html
January 18, 2004
THE BIG INTERVIEW: PATRICK VIEIRA: RETURN OF THE KING
By Paul Kimmage
The Arsenal captain’s return to his roots in Senegal showed a new side to the man
Patrick Vieira is sitting in the back of a black V8 Cadillac, lost in thought as it speeds through the streets of Dakar on a swelteringly hot Tuesday in the summer of 2003. He hasn’t said much since leaving the radio station. The interview went badly. He is wondering what came over him when they tried to twist his arm to speak Wolof, his native tongue. Come on, Patrick, they cajoled, just give us a couple of words.
He couldn’t do it. And it is gnawing away at him. What’s wrong with you? Can’t the King of Arsenal step down from his throne? This is who you are! These are your people! Snap out of it, man! His mobile phone rings. The voice is familiar. It is the world’s greatest footballer, Zinedine Zidane, calling from Madrid.
How are things in Senegal, he wants to know. Ca va, Vieira tells him: I’m fine. But the man is bluffing. He is racked with apprehension. Ca va pas du tout.
He glances through the window and feels the knot begin to tighten. Eighteen years have passed since he last walked these streets; 18 years of pretending that Paris was the beginning; of forging a new identity and moving on; of going ahead without a glance in the rear-view mirror.
How will he respond to the questions that have been haunting him of late?
Why didn’t you play for Senegal, Patrick? Why did you wait so long to come back? Have you forgotten where you came from, Patrick? Do those first eight years count for nothing in your life?
He remembers one evening spent with Marcel Desailly during the Confederations Cup in June 2001. His relationship with the Chelsea captain got off to a cool start during their time together at Milan in the spring of 1996. Vieira was 19 and struggling to make the team, and at a time when he could have done with a shoulder to lean on, Desailly’s only interest was in looking after No 1.
He wasn’t the big brother I needed when we were together at Milan, Vieira explains, and was quite a selfish man then. But I started to get to know him better with the French national team and learnt a lot from talking to him. He has had a fantastic life and he opened my eyes about a few things.
That night, during the Confederations Cup, there were six players Vieira, Desailly, Robert Pires, Laurent Robert, Nicolas Anelka and Sylvain Wiltord gathered in a room when the conversation turned to their roots. Pires spoke eloquently of his ties to Portugal and the values passed on by his parents. Then Wiltord picked up the baton with his attachment to the West Indies. But when the time came for Vieira to speak, he felt strangely inhibited.
When I was a kid, he explains, I knew I was born in Senegal and that Senegal was my country. But growing up in France, I never asked where I had come from. I didn’t ask questions about Senegal because I didn’t want the response. But the older I got, the more I wanted to know about the house where I was born and the streets where I was playing. I needed to talk to Marcel and to Lilian Thuram to make me understand that my background was really important.
He thought about going back every summer, but there was always a convenient excuse World Cup, Confederations Cup, friends holidaying in the south of France to put it off. And then a friend, goalkeeper Bernard Lama, mentioned plans to create a football academy in Dakar. The Diambars Institute would offer children from all over Africa a full education and develop their football skills.
Vieira came on board and began raising funds for the project. By May 2003, they had acquired a suitable site, and plans were made for the laying of a foundation stone. The opportunity Vieira had been waiting for had presented itself at last. Eighteen years after leaving Dakar, he would not be returning empty-handed. So why is he so nervous?
The car has stopped in Rue Dara, a small, well-kept street with about 30 houses, not far from the suburb of Grand Dakar. He steps from the air- conditioned Cadillac into the scorching midday sun and glances nervously at the crowd gathered to meet him.
A 12-year-old boy bursts through the security cordon and shouts a greeting in Wolof: Khamga Pape Bouba Diop? Vieira nods and smiles; he has been waiting for that since he arrived. He does indeed know Bouba Diop, the scorer of the Senegal goal that inflicted an amazing defeat on France at the last World Cup.
Ibrahim a giant of a man not unlike the actor Michael Clarke Duncan, who played John Coffey in the movie The Green Mile steps forward and introduces himself as a friend from childhood. Another man, Mactar, presents Vieira with a traditional shirt and some photographs of when they were boys.
Four women, Sophie, Matel, Diara and Lovett, are also waiting patiently in line. You used to terrorise us, they tell him.
No, I can’t believe that, he smiles, slightly embarrassed.
After he has visited every house and spent two hours with relatives and friends, they lead him back on to the street and decide to put him to the test. Does he remember exactly where he used to live? Will he be able to point it out?
His brow furrowed in concentration, he edges forward and is drawn to a tiny residence with a rusty brown façade. I’m not sure, he thinks. Then he swivels round and notices an old garage opposite with the number 7 painted on its door. Suddenly, the haze that has enveloped him since his arrival is starting to clear.
This is it, he announces, his voice cracking with emotion. The garage opposite . . . that used to be the goal!
When asked to describe a moment that captures the essence of Patrick Vieira and his eight years as a Gunner, the discerning Arsenal fan often returns to a goal he scored against Charlton Athletic in August 2000. The season had begun badly. After a man-of-the-match performance at Sunderland, he was felled in the closing minutes by defender Darren Williams and sent off for retaliation.
Two days later against Liverpool at Highbury, he walked again after successive yellow cards the first for reacting to an elbow from Jamie Carragher and the second after making a ball-winning tackle that almost everybody (except referee Graham Poll) agreed was fair. Incandescent with rage, Vieira cleared his locker and had left the stadium before his team returned to the dressing room.
He was facing a five-match suspension and rumoured to be quitting English football for good, but when Charlton came to visit Highbury five days later, Vieira responded with a performance that was truly awesome, scoring in a 5-3 win. But that was not the main talking point.
Ignoring the outstretched arms and howls of delight from the Clock End that greeted his goal, Vieira ran to a small boy in the crowd whom he had seen jumping for joy and embraced him with a tenderness that was deeply moving.
It is this innate decency, an extraordinary, almost feminine gentility that knocks you back when you first meet him. Pull up a chair with Roy Keane for an afternoon and you had better be prepared for combat. Vieira could not be more different.
You wonder, just who is this guy in the Arsenal shirt? When does his fire ignite? Everyone says that there are two Patricks, he explains, one on the pitch and one outside the pitch. In life I’m really calm, but when I’m on the pitch . . . I don’t know . . . nothing is calculated . . . I just have this passion for the game . . . this fighting spirit, and that is my strength.
I’m not someone who shouts in the dressing room. Tony Adams could shout a lot and motivate people that way, but I’m different. I’ll give a good tackle, make a good challenge, and that’s the way I’ll lift the team.
It is a Friday morning at the Arsenal training ground in London Colney, Hertfordshire, and Vieira is lying back on a sofa mulling over a question about the players he admires most in the game. Do you mean in England? he asks.
Give me three in England and three in general, I reply.
Okay, in general I would say Zidane. For me Zidane is the best of the best, as a human being and as a football player. As a human being he has a really big heart, you can always count on him. And you never hear anything about him (in the media). That’s the respect he has for his privacy and the life he wants to lead. He is fantastic. I like Raul as well. He’s terrific. He deserves to be footballer of the year and he ’s so quiet with his private life as well. I like him a lot. Now, who can I put in third . . . ?
He thinks about it for a moment.
I like Roberto Carlos, but I will put [Paolo] Maldini before him, because when I was at Milan he was good to me. I was a nobody and he was such a big name and so friendly to me. For 20 years he has been at the top level of football, and that’s fantastic.
It’s interesting to see that Vieira has chosen the three players as much for their personal qualities as their abilities.
Yeah, it’s both. It’s important for me that the players who are stars behave outside of the pitch.
And what about Patrick Vieira? I ask. We don’t see him in any of the Renault commercials. Is it because he doesn’t want the exposure, or because they haven’t asked? They haven’t asked, he replies with a smile. But I understand (why some players would enjoy that kind of exposure). I understand the life of David Beckham. It suits him really well and it doesn’t damage the way he performs on the pitch. He can do both. But I am more on the other side.
The Zidane school?
Yes.
Okay. And the three you admire most in England?
Paul Scholes, Steven Gerrard and Roy Keane.
Have you ever spoken to Keane?
Never.
It was interesting the way he supported you after your spat with Ruud van Nistelrooy (Vieira was sent off at Old Trafford last September after aiming a kick at the Dutchman, and a war of words followed).
Yeah, I didn’t realise it straightaway. It was only when I saw it after, but, yeah, I think he is quite honest as a human being. I think he knows I didn’t deserve to be sent off, and that’s why he reacted.
Vieira has been quoted a couple of times as saying he admires Scholes more than Keane as a player.
I have the same respect for both of them, but in a different way. With Keane, it’s his influence on the team, the charisma he has over them. And Scholes . . . I love to watch him play. I think he is a terrific player. And I admire him because he is so quiet outside the football life; you never hear anything about him, like Zidane. I like that. That’s what I call a big player.
SOMETIMES, when Vieira peers into the fog, he sees a group of shoeless boys on a warm afternoon in Dakar, peeking into the entrance of a dark, sordid cave. He can even see their faces, Mactar and Papis and Modl and Ibrahim.
They’ve spent the day rolling tyres, playing football and stealing mangoes from les vieux in the square, but the name of the latest game is fear.
Who’s going into the cave? Who’s not afraid?
My father says there’s a monster down there, Mactar announces.
Chicken! Ibrahim counters, striding boldly into the darkness.
I’m with Mactar, Papis announces.
Me too, Modl says.
Ibrahim marches on with the fifth boy in the group and the boy’s dog, Bisquet. The boy and his dog go everywhere together. When the boy encounters trouble, his dog settles the score. Was that really me? Vieira wonders.
Was he truly as fearless as everybody says? The memories are still vague.
Vieira takes his surname from his mother, Emilienne. Better known as Mama Rose, she was born and raised in the Cape Verde islands.
Patrick never knew his father, a student from Gabon, but remembers the day that Emilienne left Dakar to build a new life in France. Her father had served in the French army, so there was no problem with a passport or paperwork, and she promised to send for them all her father and uncles included as soon as she had saved enough money from work.
Vieira was eight years old in 1984 when he caught his first glimpse of Paris. He had made the journey with his only brother, Nico, who is a year older, and an uncle. Their home for the first three years was an apartment in the suburb of Trappes, then they moved further west to the satellite town of Dreux.
My mother was working twice a day to support us, he remembers. It was a difficult time, really, but we never missed anything. We got a present at Christmas and had a party for our birthday like normal kids. We started going to school and meeting friends.
It was in Dreux that he began to show promise as a footballer. Frank Rijkaard and Luis Fernandez were his favourite players. He loved the game and dreamt of a professional career. In my head it was always football — that was the dream since I was a kid. I wanted it so badly. I knew I would do it, but if you want to be successful in football and in life, you have to fight for it.
If you want to win the ball, you have to fight for it. I wanted to win. When people pushed me around or kicked me, I wanted to kick them back. Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, that’s the way I grew up. You have to fight for respect.
At the age of 16, Vieira signed his first professional contract for the French second division side FC Tours, where the coach, Philippe Leroux, was struck by his determination to win and his ability to dig deep and hurt himself. At the age of 15-16 he was already 1.9m (6ft 3in), Leroux recalls. He was a right beanpole. A year later, when Tours went into administration, Vieira signed for Cannes, where the manager was Fernandez, his boyhood hero.
I really liked Cannes, he says. The city is really beautiful and I learnt a lot there. When you look at all of the players who have come from that club (including Zidane), it’s unbelievable. It was the best education you could have had in France.
In October 1995, after two years in the French first division, Vieira signed for Milan at the age of 19. He loved the city and had no problem adapting to the culture, but the frustration of being left on the bench soon began to grate.
It was a really big move for me, a strange move. ‘Bosman’ didn’t exist. We were six foreign players Desailly, George Weah, Paulo Futre, Dejan Savicevic, Zvonimir Boban and myself and that’s a lot (the rule at the time was a maximum of three foreigners per team). And Demetrio Albertini, Desailly and Boban were playing in my position, so it was a difficult time for me.
Vieira played just two games in Serie A and was soon ripe for the picking.
Arsène Wenger was watching from Japan. He came to see me a couple of times, Vieira says, and asked if I was interested in going somewhere else. I told him I was. It was 1996, and in 1998 the World Cup was in France. I knew I had a big chance of making the French squad, but I needed to be playing football week in, week out.
In July, Vieira travelled to Atlanta for the Olympics, but was forced home with a knee injury a few days before the Games began. The injury required a small surgical procedure, and after completing his rehabilitation, he caught a flight to London to join his new club. It was the first time he had set foot in England. A remarkable chapter was about to begin.
VIEIRA is not an easy man to interview, but after a reserved and somewhat tentative start he is warming slowly to the idea. They call him Le Long in these parts. He is also Pat, Paddy and The Octopus. Clad from head to toe in the fashionable threads of his personal sponsor, he removes an adidas tracksuit top and I catch a glimpse of a curious inscription tattooed on his left shoulder.
He seems embarrassed when I mention it. It’s just something personal, he says. And though I try to draw him out with a story about Keane’s left arm inscribed with the names of his children he is unmoved. I don’t have any kids, he grins. It’s just something between myself and the girl I’m living with.
That’s Cheryl, isn’t it?
Yes, Cheryl, he relents.
Cheryl is Cheryl Campbell. They met six years ago at a Destiny’s Child concert in London, and she is obviously a big chunk of his life. What I love about her is that she’s an independent woman, he explains. She likes to do her own things. He shuffles awkwardly and casts me a glance that
says: Be careful, my friend! You are straying offside!
Quickly we reroute to the business in hand: Heathrow airport, August 1996, and his first steps in a strange new world. I didn’t know where I was going, he says. I knew that people loved football here, but I didn’t know what to expect in general life.
The first few weeks proved difficult as he was switched every day between training with the first team and training with the reserves. Vieira began to fret. He wanted to play. He wanted to be involved. But Wenger was still under contract in Japan and wouldn’t start at Highbury for another month.
I was getting very frustrated, Vieira says. I didn’t want a repeat of what had happened in Milan, so I spoke to the boss (Wenger) on the phone. He told me, ‘Don’t worry, keep fighting. It won’t be a problem. Just be strong and hang on’.
Communication was another problem. He remembers Adams rounding the team up one afternoon shortly after Vieira had joined, and announcing emotionally that he was an alcoholic. Vieira felt as if he had just landed on Mars. He hadn’t understood a word. He couldn’t grasp why everybody was clapping.
It was a big step to announce you are an alcoholic, but I didn’t understand what was going on. I had a friend, Remi Garde, who was here at the time, and he had a little English, but Tony was talking very quickly and Remi couldn’t understand this word (alcoholic), so he had to ask around.
Three days later, on September 16, Vieira made his debut at Highbury against Sheffield Wednesday. Starting on the bench, he watched his team go a goal behind before the order came from Stewart Houston to warm up. His nickname at the time was What? the only word of English he had mastered since joining. But to the Arsenal faithful watching as he ran on to the pitch he was most definitely Who?
Not for long. Vieira was the star of the 4-1 win and he sent the crowd home grappling with his name. What appetite for combat the Frenchman had shown! What flair! A new chant was born: V-I-E-I-R-A/Wo-oh-oh-oh-oh!
Ray Parlour was injured and came off, he recalls. It was quite tough, but I was ready for it. The training sessions were as competitive as a game, so I was able to get involved quickly. I loved the commitment, winning the ball, making a good tackle. This was my game.
Five weeks later, during an away game at Wimbledon, Wenger was forced to switch him to centre-back after Adams and Steve Bould went off at half-time with head injuries
I don’t like playing there, Vieira says, because you don’t see enough
of the ball, but I quite enjoyed that game. Wimbledon were playing the
long ball and you really had to fight.
If fight is the quality he is most admired for, it is also the double-edged sword that has cut him down. Ask him for his personal highlight from eight years in London and he is torn between Doubles before opting for the first. But ask him for the lowlight, and his response is immediate: a £45, 000 fine imposed on him in 1999 for spitting at Neil Ruddock.
That’s one of the things I am really ashamed about. I let myself down in the incident with Neil Ruddock. It hurt me and it hurt the people around me, and I’m not proud of that at all. It’s a hard game, and you have to stand up for yourself, but sometimes I went over the top.
How difficult was it to control? It’s quite simple, really simple in the sense that every time I have been sent off, it’s because of the way I’ve reacted after a bad tackle. It’s never because I attacked or tried to hurt someone. It’s something I have to work on, but I’m quite lucky because I have a boss here who talks to me properly and who makes me take responsibility for my mistakes.
He does?
Yes.
That’s interesting, because he has never criticised you in the press.
No, but privately we have a discussion about everything the things I did well or did wrong or should do another way.
How has your relationship developed over the years?
He has made me believe more in myself. I think he understands that giving me responsibility improves me as a player and also as a human being. Sometimes I go into his office, knowing I am right about what has happened in a game and I come out thinking, ‘He’s right’. He has this way of changing your opinion. He’s good at that.
And is it strictly business, or are you close on a personal level?
No, it’s mostly football, but that doesn’t mean you can’t talk about something else. I think when you respect someone, you can talk to them about everything.
HE GLANCES at his watch. He is meeting Cheryl in Hampstead for lunch and is running late. Our conversation turns to the battle for the championship. A year ago he opined that the balance of power between Arsenal and Manchester United would only shift if Arsenal won the title again. But they didn’t
No, he sighs, it was a very frustrating year.
How do you read it now? It’s going to be close. United are always going to be there. They know how to win the League. They know which period is important. They have expensive players and the quality is there.
Arsenal?
We’ve learnt a lot from the past few years. The difference between last year and this is that we believe a lot more in ourselves. I think we are getting stronger.
What about Chelsea?
With all of the players they’ve got, it’s going to be difficult to satisfy everyone, and that’s a big problem.
So a young Patrick Vieira would be quite frustrated there?
Very frustrated, he smiles.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2093-967631,00.html
January 18, 2004
THE BIG INTERVIEW: PATRICK VIEIRA: RETURN OF THE KING
By Paul Kimmage
The Arsenal captain’s return to his roots in Senegal showed a new side to the man
Patrick Vieira is sitting in the back of a black V8 Cadillac, lost in thought as it speeds through the streets of Dakar on a swelteringly hot Tuesday in the summer of 2003. He hasn’t said much since leaving the radio station. The interview went badly. He is wondering what came over him when they tried to twist his arm to speak Wolof, his native tongue. Come on, Patrick, they cajoled, just give us a couple of words.
He couldn’t do it. And it is gnawing away at him. What’s wrong with you? Can’t the King of Arsenal step down from his throne? This is who you are! These are your people! Snap out of it, man! His mobile phone rings. The voice is familiar. It is the world’s greatest footballer, Zinedine Zidane, calling from Madrid.
How are things in Senegal, he wants to know. Ca va, Vieira tells him: I’m fine. But the man is bluffing. He is racked with apprehension. Ca va pas du tout.
He glances through the window and feels the knot begin to tighten. Eighteen years have passed since he last walked these streets; 18 years of pretending that Paris was the beginning; of forging a new identity and moving on; of going ahead without a glance in the rear-view mirror.
How will he respond to the questions that have been haunting him of late?
Why didn’t you play for Senegal, Patrick? Why did you wait so long to come back? Have you forgotten where you came from, Patrick? Do those first eight years count for nothing in your life?
He remembers one evening spent with Marcel Desailly during the Confederations Cup in June 2001. His relationship with the Chelsea captain got off to a cool start during their time together at Milan in the spring of 1996. Vieira was 19 and struggling to make the team, and at a time when he could have done with a shoulder to lean on, Desailly’s only interest was in looking after No 1.
He wasn’t the big brother I needed when we were together at Milan, Vieira explains, and was quite a selfish man then. But I started to get to know him better with the French national team and learnt a lot from talking to him. He has had a fantastic life and he opened my eyes about a few things.
That night, during the Confederations Cup, there were six players Vieira, Desailly, Robert Pires, Laurent Robert, Nicolas Anelka and Sylvain Wiltord gathered in a room when the conversation turned to their roots. Pires spoke eloquently of his ties to Portugal and the values passed on by his parents. Then Wiltord picked up the baton with his attachment to the West Indies. But when the time came for Vieira to speak, he felt strangely inhibited.
When I was a kid, he explains, I knew I was born in Senegal and that Senegal was my country. But growing up in France, I never asked where I had come from. I didn’t ask questions about Senegal because I didn’t want the response. But the older I got, the more I wanted to know about the house where I was born and the streets where I was playing. I needed to talk to Marcel and to Lilian Thuram to make me understand that my background was really important.
He thought about going back every summer, but there was always a convenient excuse World Cup, Confederations Cup, friends holidaying in the south of France to put it off. And then a friend, goalkeeper Bernard Lama, mentioned plans to create a football academy in Dakar. The Diambars Institute would offer children from all over Africa a full education and develop their football skills.
Vieira came on board and began raising funds for the project. By May 2003, they had acquired a suitable site, and plans were made for the laying of a foundation stone. The opportunity Vieira had been waiting for had presented itself at last. Eighteen years after leaving Dakar, he would not be returning empty-handed. So why is he so nervous?
The car has stopped in Rue Dara, a small, well-kept street with about 30 houses, not far from the suburb of Grand Dakar. He steps from the air- conditioned Cadillac into the scorching midday sun and glances nervously at the crowd gathered to meet him.
A 12-year-old boy bursts through the security cordon and shouts a greeting in Wolof: Khamga Pape Bouba Diop? Vieira nods and smiles; he has been waiting for that since he arrived. He does indeed know Bouba Diop, the scorer of the Senegal goal that inflicted an amazing defeat on France at the last World Cup.
Ibrahim a giant of a man not unlike the actor Michael Clarke Duncan, who played John Coffey in the movie The Green Mile steps forward and introduces himself as a friend from childhood. Another man, Mactar, presents Vieira with a traditional shirt and some photographs of when they were boys.
Four women, Sophie, Matel, Diara and Lovett, are also waiting patiently in line. You used to terrorise us, they tell him.
No, I can’t believe that, he smiles, slightly embarrassed.
After he has visited every house and spent two hours with relatives and friends, they lead him back on to the street and decide to put him to the test. Does he remember exactly where he used to live? Will he be able to point it out?
His brow furrowed in concentration, he edges forward and is drawn to a tiny residence with a rusty brown façade. I’m not sure, he thinks. Then he swivels round and notices an old garage opposite with the number 7 painted on its door. Suddenly, the haze that has enveloped him since his arrival is starting to clear.
This is it, he announces, his voice cracking with emotion. The garage opposite . . . that used to be the goal!
When asked to describe a moment that captures the essence of Patrick Vieira and his eight years as a Gunner, the discerning Arsenal fan often returns to a goal he scored against Charlton Athletic in August 2000. The season had begun badly. After a man-of-the-match performance at Sunderland, he was felled in the closing minutes by defender Darren Williams and sent off for retaliation.
Two days later against Liverpool at Highbury, he walked again after successive yellow cards the first for reacting to an elbow from Jamie Carragher and the second after making a ball-winning tackle that almost everybody (except referee Graham Poll) agreed was fair. Incandescent with rage, Vieira cleared his locker and had left the stadium before his team returned to the dressing room.
He was facing a five-match suspension and rumoured to be quitting English football for good, but when Charlton came to visit Highbury five days later, Vieira responded with a performance that was truly awesome, scoring in a 5-3 win. But that was not the main talking point.
Ignoring the outstretched arms and howls of delight from the Clock End that greeted his goal, Vieira ran to a small boy in the crowd whom he had seen jumping for joy and embraced him with a tenderness that was deeply moving.
It is this innate decency, an extraordinary, almost feminine gentility that knocks you back when you first meet him. Pull up a chair with Roy Keane for an afternoon and you had better be prepared for combat. Vieira could not be more different.
You wonder, just who is this guy in the Arsenal shirt? When does his fire ignite? Everyone says that there are two Patricks, he explains, one on the pitch and one outside the pitch. In life I’m really calm, but when I’m on the pitch . . . I don’t know . . . nothing is calculated . . . I just have this passion for the game . . . this fighting spirit, and that is my strength.
I’m not someone who shouts in the dressing room. Tony Adams could shout a lot and motivate people that way, but I’m different. I’ll give a good tackle, make a good challenge, and that’s the way I’ll lift the team.
It is a Friday morning at the Arsenal training ground in London Colney, Hertfordshire, and Vieira is lying back on a sofa mulling over a question about the players he admires most in the game. Do you mean in England? he asks.
Give me three in England and three in general, I reply.
Okay, in general I would say Zidane. For me Zidane is the best of the best, as a human being and as a football player. As a human being he has a really big heart, you can always count on him. And you never hear anything about him (in the media). That’s the respect he has for his privacy and the life he wants to lead. He is fantastic. I like Raul as well. He’s terrific. He deserves to be footballer of the year and he ’s so quiet with his private life as well. I like him a lot. Now, who can I put in third . . . ?
He thinks about it for a moment.
I like Roberto Carlos, but I will put [Paolo] Maldini before him, because when I was at Milan he was good to me. I was a nobody and he was such a big name and so friendly to me. For 20 years he has been at the top level of football, and that’s fantastic.
It’s interesting to see that Vieira has chosen the three players as much for their personal qualities as their abilities.
Yeah, it’s both. It’s important for me that the players who are stars behave outside of the pitch.
And what about Patrick Vieira? I ask. We don’t see him in any of the Renault commercials. Is it because he doesn’t want the exposure, or because they haven’t asked? They haven’t asked, he replies with a smile. But I understand (why some players would enjoy that kind of exposure). I understand the life of David Beckham. It suits him really well and it doesn’t damage the way he performs on the pitch. He can do both. But I am more on the other side.
The Zidane school?
Yes.
Okay. And the three you admire most in England?
Paul Scholes, Steven Gerrard and Roy Keane.
Have you ever spoken to Keane?
Never.
It was interesting the way he supported you after your spat with Ruud van Nistelrooy (Vieira was sent off at Old Trafford last September after aiming a kick at the Dutchman, and a war of words followed).
Yeah, I didn’t realise it straightaway. It was only when I saw it after, but, yeah, I think he is quite honest as a human being. I think he knows I didn’t deserve to be sent off, and that’s why he reacted.
Vieira has been quoted a couple of times as saying he admires Scholes more than Keane as a player.
I have the same respect for both of them, but in a different way. With Keane, it’s his influence on the team, the charisma he has over them. And Scholes . . . I love to watch him play. I think he is a terrific player. And I admire him because he is so quiet outside the football life; you never hear anything about him, like Zidane. I like that. That’s what I call a big player.
SOMETIMES, when Vieira peers into the fog, he sees a group of shoeless boys on a warm afternoon in Dakar, peeking into the entrance of a dark, sordid cave. He can even see their faces, Mactar and Papis and Modl and Ibrahim.
They’ve spent the day rolling tyres, playing football and stealing mangoes from les vieux in the square, but the name of the latest game is fear.
Who’s going into the cave? Who’s not afraid?
My father says there’s a monster down there, Mactar announces.
Chicken! Ibrahim counters, striding boldly into the darkness.
I’m with Mactar, Papis announces.
Me too, Modl says.
Ibrahim marches on with the fifth boy in the group and the boy’s dog, Bisquet. The boy and his dog go everywhere together. When the boy encounters trouble, his dog settles the score. Was that really me? Vieira wonders.
Was he truly as fearless as everybody says? The memories are still vague.
Vieira takes his surname from his mother, Emilienne. Better known as Mama Rose, she was born and raised in the Cape Verde islands.
Patrick never knew his father, a student from Gabon, but remembers the day that Emilienne left Dakar to build a new life in France. Her father had served in the French army, so there was no problem with a passport or paperwork, and she promised to send for them all her father and uncles included as soon as she had saved enough money from work.
Vieira was eight years old in 1984 when he caught his first glimpse of Paris. He had made the journey with his only brother, Nico, who is a year older, and an uncle. Their home for the first three years was an apartment in the suburb of Trappes, then they moved further west to the satellite town of Dreux.
My mother was working twice a day to support us, he remembers. It was a difficult time, really, but we never missed anything. We got a present at Christmas and had a party for our birthday like normal kids. We started going to school and meeting friends.
It was in Dreux that he began to show promise as a footballer. Frank Rijkaard and Luis Fernandez were his favourite players. He loved the game and dreamt of a professional career. In my head it was always football — that was the dream since I was a kid. I wanted it so badly. I knew I would do it, but if you want to be successful in football and in life, you have to fight for it.
If you want to win the ball, you have to fight for it. I wanted to win. When people pushed me around or kicked me, I wanted to kick them back. Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, that’s the way I grew up. You have to fight for respect.
At the age of 16, Vieira signed his first professional contract for the French second division side FC Tours, where the coach, Philippe Leroux, was struck by his determination to win and his ability to dig deep and hurt himself. At the age of 15-16 he was already 1.9m (6ft 3in), Leroux recalls. He was a right beanpole. A year later, when Tours went into administration, Vieira signed for Cannes, where the manager was Fernandez, his boyhood hero.
I really liked Cannes, he says. The city is really beautiful and I learnt a lot there. When you look at all of the players who have come from that club (including Zidane), it’s unbelievable. It was the best education you could have had in France.
In October 1995, after two years in the French first division, Vieira signed for Milan at the age of 19. He loved the city and had no problem adapting to the culture, but the frustration of being left on the bench soon began to grate.
It was a really big move for me, a strange move. ‘Bosman’ didn’t exist. We were six foreign players Desailly, George Weah, Paulo Futre, Dejan Savicevic, Zvonimir Boban and myself and that’s a lot (the rule at the time was a maximum of three foreigners per team). And Demetrio Albertini, Desailly and Boban were playing in my position, so it was a difficult time for me.
Vieira played just two games in Serie A and was soon ripe for the picking.
Arsène Wenger was watching from Japan. He came to see me a couple of times, Vieira says, and asked if I was interested in going somewhere else. I told him I was. It was 1996, and in 1998 the World Cup was in France. I knew I had a big chance of making the French squad, but I needed to be playing football week in, week out.
In July, Vieira travelled to Atlanta for the Olympics, but was forced home with a knee injury a few days before the Games began. The injury required a small surgical procedure, and after completing his rehabilitation, he caught a flight to London to join his new club. It was the first time he had set foot in England. A remarkable chapter was about to begin.
VIEIRA is not an easy man to interview, but after a reserved and somewhat tentative start he is warming slowly to the idea. They call him Le Long in these parts. He is also Pat, Paddy and The Octopus. Clad from head to toe in the fashionable threads of his personal sponsor, he removes an adidas tracksuit top and I catch a glimpse of a curious inscription tattooed on his left shoulder.
He seems embarrassed when I mention it. It’s just something personal, he says. And though I try to draw him out with a story about Keane’s left arm inscribed with the names of his children he is unmoved. I don’t have any kids, he grins. It’s just something between myself and the girl I’m living with.
That’s Cheryl, isn’t it?
Yes, Cheryl, he relents.
Cheryl is Cheryl Campbell. They met six years ago at a Destiny’s Child concert in London, and she is obviously a big chunk of his life. What I love about her is that she’s an independent woman, he explains. She likes to do her own things. He shuffles awkwardly and casts me a glance that
says: Be careful, my friend! You are straying offside!
Quickly we reroute to the business in hand: Heathrow airport, August 1996, and his first steps in a strange new world. I didn’t know where I was going, he says. I knew that people loved football here, but I didn’t know what to expect in general life.
The first few weeks proved difficult as he was switched every day between training with the first team and training with the reserves. Vieira began to fret. He wanted to play. He wanted to be involved. But Wenger was still under contract in Japan and wouldn’t start at Highbury for another month.
I was getting very frustrated, Vieira says. I didn’t want a repeat of what had happened in Milan, so I spoke to the boss (Wenger) on the phone. He told me, ‘Don’t worry, keep fighting. It won’t be a problem. Just be strong and hang on’.
Communication was another problem. He remembers Adams rounding the team up one afternoon shortly after Vieira had joined, and announcing emotionally that he was an alcoholic. Vieira felt as if he had just landed on Mars. He hadn’t understood a word. He couldn’t grasp why everybody was clapping.
It was a big step to announce you are an alcoholic, but I didn’t understand what was going on. I had a friend, Remi Garde, who was here at the time, and he had a little English, but Tony was talking very quickly and Remi couldn’t understand this word (alcoholic), so he had to ask around.
Three days later, on September 16, Vieira made his debut at Highbury against Sheffield Wednesday. Starting on the bench, he watched his team go a goal behind before the order came from Stewart Houston to warm up. His nickname at the time was What? the only word of English he had mastered since joining. But to the Arsenal faithful watching as he ran on to the pitch he was most definitely Who?
Not for long. Vieira was the star of the 4-1 win and he sent the crowd home grappling with his name. What appetite for combat the Frenchman had shown! What flair! A new chant was born: V-I-E-I-R-A/Wo-oh-oh-oh-oh!
Ray Parlour was injured and came off, he recalls. It was quite tough, but I was ready for it. The training sessions were as competitive as a game, so I was able to get involved quickly. I loved the commitment, winning the ball, making a good tackle. This was my game.
Five weeks later, during an away game at Wimbledon, Wenger was forced to switch him to centre-back after Adams and Steve Bould went off at half-time with head injuries
I don’t like playing there, Vieira says, because you don’t see enough
of the ball, but I quite enjoyed that game. Wimbledon were playing the
long ball and you really had to fight.
If fight is the quality he is most admired for, it is also the double-edged sword that has cut him down. Ask him for his personal highlight from eight years in London and he is torn between Doubles before opting for the first. But ask him for the lowlight, and his response is immediate: a £45, 000 fine imposed on him in 1999 for spitting at Neil Ruddock.
That’s one of the things I am really ashamed about. I let myself down in the incident with Neil Ruddock. It hurt me and it hurt the people around me, and I’m not proud of that at all. It’s a hard game, and you have to stand up for yourself, but sometimes I went over the top.
How difficult was it to control? It’s quite simple, really simple in the sense that every time I have been sent off, it’s because of the way I’ve reacted after a bad tackle. It’s never because I attacked or tried to hurt someone. It’s something I have to work on, but I’m quite lucky because I have a boss here who talks to me properly and who makes me take responsibility for my mistakes.
He does?
Yes.
That’s interesting, because he has never criticised you in the press.
No, but privately we have a discussion about everything the things I did well or did wrong or should do another way.
How has your relationship developed over the years?
He has made me believe more in myself. I think he understands that giving me responsibility improves me as a player and also as a human being. Sometimes I go into his office, knowing I am right about what has happened in a game and I come out thinking, ‘He’s right’. He has this way of changing your opinion. He’s good at that.
And is it strictly business, or are you close on a personal level?
No, it’s mostly football, but that doesn’t mean you can’t talk about something else. I think when you respect someone, you can talk to them about everything.
HE GLANCES at his watch. He is meeting Cheryl in Hampstead for lunch and is running late. Our conversation turns to the battle for the championship. A year ago he opined that the balance of power between Arsenal and Manchester United would only shift if Arsenal won the title again. But they didn’t
No, he sighs, it was a very frustrating year.
How do you read it now? It’s going to be close. United are always going to be there. They know how to win the League. They know which period is important. They have expensive players and the quality is there.
Arsenal?
We’ve learnt a lot from the past few years. The difference between last year and this is that we believe a lot more in ourselves. I think we are getting stronger.
What about Chelsea?
With all of the players they’ve got, it’s going to be difficult to satisfy everyone, and that’s a big problem.
So a young Patrick Vieira would be quite frustrated there?
Very frustrated, he smiles.