Former England international goalkeeper, Ian Walker played for Tottenham Hotspur, Leicester City and Bolton Wanderers. In 2012 he moved to China to become goalkeeper coach of Shanghai Shenhua, before crossing the city divide to join Shanghai SIPG in 2014. In Walks the Walk he talks football and China. Follow him on Twitter: @IanWalks1
The World Cup. As a professional footballer, it’s the pinnacle. The reason you play in the first place. To miss out on one is probably the most devastating thing you can feel. I know because I’ve experienced it.
It was World Cup France ’98 and Glenn Hoddle was the England coach. He decided to take a squad of 28 to a pre-tournament training camp at the La Manga resort in Spain, to be cut down to 22 for the finals. Of course, everyone goes in thinking they’re going to be the ones in the final squad.
We took four goalkeepers. David Seaman was obviously going. And then it was Nigel Martyn, Tim Flowers and me. I was up against some good keepers, so it was going to be tough, but I thought I might have a chance of sneaking in…
We trained for about 10 days, played a couple of friendlies, and then they said to us, “Right, we’re going to call everybody individually into Hoddle’s hotel suite, and he is going to tell you personally whether you are in or out.”
If you were kicked out you had one hour to pack your stuff, after which a minibus would take you to a private jet that would fly you straight back to England (like a bizarre footballing form of a Big Brother eviction night, only with a place at the World Cup at stake. Pretty strange.)
So we just had to sit there and wait to be called. Eventually, I got mine. On my way down – and it was a fair walk (and all the longer for what lay at the end of it) – I passed Phil Neville, who was in tears. “He isn’t in,” I thought – it wasn’t tears of joy, anyway! I tried to console him, but you couldn’t really get through.
“Oh god, that’s not good,” I thought, and walked into Hoddle’s hotel suite. And then he delivered the news. He just said to me: “You know, you’ve obviously worked hard, but I am not going to take you on this occasion.” All that…
I didn’t even ask him why – at that stage, you just go home. There’s not much you can say, because you can’t change his mind. The decision has been made and you’ve just got to deal with the disappointment. All I could do was go back to my room, dwell on it for a bit, and pack – I had to be out within the hour!
I was sitting there when all of a sudden I heard a huge commotion. I came out and there were a couple of lads outside and I asked what was going on? “Oh Gazza’s gone mad. He’s not in the squad. He’s gone mental and trashed Glenn Hoddle’s room! He’s going absolutely off his rocker!”
"I'm not kidding Gazza, cut out on the kebabs."
Oh my god. Nightmare. We went down to Hoddle’s suite and Gazza had turned over the table, thrown everything. Smashed glass. Flowers and vases strewn all over the corridor. In one corner he was being comforted by Paul Ince and David Seaman. “I thought he was going to hit me,” Hoddle told David Davies, Executive Director of the English Football Association.
By that time it was about 10 minutes before we had to leave, so everyone was trying to calm Gazza down. I went back to my room, grabbed my stuff, and they kind of ushered the six of us who didn’t make the cut out of the back of the hotel (which I thought was a bit of a joke) onto the minibus and directly to the airport.
When we got on the plane, Gazza was still in bits. He was crying. Really blubbing. We were trying to calm him down – “Don’t worry about it, it’s just one of those things” – but he was devastated. It was quite interesting, all of us who were equally as shattered kind of had to forget about ourselves and make sure he was alright, because he was the most inconsolable of us all.
I was good friends with him and we lived nearby, so once we arrived back in England they asked me if I would look after him, get in a taxi with him and make sure he got into his house okay. Because by this point the press were already all over him.
Looking back I don’t think it was the right way to go about it. By that point the coach probably knew his final squad, so to bring six extra players to the camp, giving them hope that they might make it, only to let them down in that manner… especially with a character like Gazza. It lit the fuse, and that was it!
As for me, unfortunately that’s the closest I got to a World Cup. Other times I missed out due to loss of form or injury. Although I did make it to two European Championships, in 1996 and 2004, more of which to come.
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