Gazza’s Sad Demise

The news of Paul Gascoigne being sectioned under the Mental Health Act shouldn’t really have come as a great surprise to anyone who has paid attention to this
once great footballer’s life over the last 5-10 years.

‘Gazza’ always seemed to be a fairly simple sort of guy. He was someone who clearly loved his football, probably much more than your average fan of the sport in fact, but like many young men also liked going out on the sauce and having a laugh, although the excesses to which he did this were part of the reason that he never went on to fully fulfil his potential as a professional footballer.

But beneath that seemingly simple exterior, one that was laced with extreme bampotry (probably not a real word but I like it and feel that it fits the bill here!), is a much more complex character than you’d
actually think. I’ve read Gazza’s book and I have to say that it was a much more interesting read than I ever thought it would be. It’s a far cry from your average footballer’s autobiography, which tends to be pretty bland in that they steer clear from any real controversy – although it doesn’t help that most of these books come out when the player concerned is still under 30 years of age!

But Gazza came across as someone who, if anything, thinks far too much about things for his own good to the point of having a ridiculously obsessive personality. He’s allowed his mind to completely consume himself and when you hear things like him having to shut every door in his house five times before he feels alright to leave it you realise the extent to which it has gone. If ever a guy has been in clear need of help it’s been him for quite some time now, but it would seem after this latest development that even if there have been people looking out for him, it’s not been enough.

It’s a very sad story really, regardless of the glaring mistakes he’s made in his personal life. And from a footballing perspective alone, it’s yet another of those ‘wasted talent’ stories, even though he did actually have a pretty successful career in comparison to most.

But Gazza was not like ‘most’ footballers. This was a guy who really did have the ability to be just about the best midfield player in the world. Just think back to his performances at the World Cup in 1990. Regardless of the usual overhyping that goes with England footballers, Gazza was an absolute star at that tournament, easily one of the best performers out there, and his subsequent big-money move to Lazio, who were pretty big players in the Italian game back then, was testament to his mercurial ability.

Many people compare Gazza to George Best in that both were fantastic talents who were able to achieve the sort of things that most players only dream about in their careers, but who ultimately failed to truly deliver what they could have. The reasons for these failing are also quite similar in that they would appear to be in the main, self-inflicted. Both men had problems with alcohol as we all know, but even before this was in the public domain as far as Gazza was concerned, he had already been responsible for inflicting the biggest single blow to his career with that ridiculous lunging tackle in the FA Cup Final of 1991 when playing for Spurs against Nottingham Forest. Gazza did make a full recovery from that injury and, as we’ve mentioned, went onto have a successful career thereafter, but there are many who believe that he never was truly the same player after that, and indeed he went onto have more injuries as a result of the one that he picked up initially. There’s every possibility that he may have picked up an injury like this anyway at some point, but you can’t help but wondering just how good he could have gone onto become had he not had that rush of blood to the head at Wembley back in ’91.

Mind you, there’s every chance that had Gazza not had his injury problems, then we probably would never have had the privilege of seeing him live as often as we did when he signed for Rangers in the mid ’90s. When he rolled into Ibrox he was still a huge signing of course and was great box-office for Rangers, but would Gazza have ended up playing in the SPL if he hadn’t had his injury problems? I’d have very much doubted it – he would surely have had his pick of the world’s most successful clubs, so with the greatest of respect to Rangers, I think they’d have been considerably well down the list in order of preference.

But as it was he did come to Scotland and generally did very well here. I can’t help but thinking that he would have absolutely destroyed everyone had he been the player he was at Italia ’90, but even if he wasn’t there were still times when he did single-handedly win matches for Rangers, with the League Cup Final of 1996 being a performance that will be forever etched in the minds of any Jambo who was in attendance. That was one of the most exciting games of football I’ve ever attended and despite the fact that Hearts have subsequently won two cups since then, it remains the best I’ve ever seen them playing in a final. Only the genius of Gascoigne, a player who probably cost more money to sign than the entire Hearts team that played at Parkhead that day did, came between Hearts and victory. Having drawn level at 2-2 after being two goals down, Hearts and the truly inspired Neil McCann looked very likely to go on and take the trophy until Gazza scored two fantastic individual goals to effectively kill off the challenge. Regardless of how good a player that Brian Laudrup was back then, I believe that Gazza was the only player on the park capable of scoring the two goals that he did that day, and the fact that he did it having had a couple of drams of whisky at half-time (as was revealed in the press the week after) didn’t exactly help to ease the pain!

But while his football career was, in the main, still pretty successful, I always got the impression that Gazza could easily go off the rails once the boots were hung up. Just what could possibly keep that guy’s attention for long enough if it wasn’t strutting his stuff on the football field? Well – nothing it would seem, which is another thing that gets mentioned several times in his book. I think he’s found the reality that he’s no longer a professional football player almost impossible to deal with, which has probably been a big reason why he is where he is now.

As I said earlier, Gazza has made mistakes in his life and hasn’t always done the right thing, but I do hope that he manages to recover from this. In the main he’s always come across as a pretty decent guy whose mental problems have gotten the better of him at times, and he’s just really in desperate need of some guidance. And as football fans, regardless of which team you support, he must have at some point given you something to appreciate during his career – he was just too talented a player not to have done that.