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Complex superiority
Scotland on Sunday 17/10/1999
John Barnes believes in reincarnation and compares coaching Celtic to being a chess grand master – no wonder some of his team think he's aloof.
Margaret Morrison meets the Dalai Lama of the beautiful game
JOHN Barnes is in the penthouse suite at Groucho St Jude's, positioning himself on a cream-coloured designer sofa. He's wearing a Prada jacket, Issey Miyake trousers, Gucci belt, Armani shirt and tasselled Italian loafers. Perfect kit for the self-consciously chic surroundings of Glasgow's newest media haunt, but not for his earlier engagement at Celtic's annual general meeting. With the club's directors soberly attired in suit and tie, shareholders were surprised to see their new head coach taking his place on the platform in open-necked shirt, jacket and trousers. It was already the talk of Celtic Park that he had turned up at an under-21s game in jeans and T-shirt; his predecessors having always worn suits. Hardly red card offences, but enough to cause consternation in Paradise. Especially since this is his first coaching job and even chief executive Allan MacDonald has admitted it was a 'high risk' appointment.
His 14-stone frame planted solidly on the couch, his talk flowing faster than a table tennis tournament, Barnes is not a man to be moved by doubting Thomases in hooped shirts. Installed at Celtic four months ago with the blessing of no lesser being than Kenny Dalglish, his self-confidence is further underpinned by his spiritual belief. In John Barnes – The Autobiography, published this week, the 35-year-old describes his fascination with Buddhism. Although wary of the 'Glenn Hoddle syndrome', he also declares his belief in karma and re-incarnation. Given that he's just joined the Old Firm, I'm tempted to ask whether he's a Catholic Buddhist or a Protestant Buddhist. (He was born a Catholic but his children were christened in the Church of England; he's not a churchgoer). Instead we order coffees and get down to serious questions. He is "fairly spiritual", he says. Meditation isn't for him: "I'm too self-conscious. I always feel that Jeremy Beadle would be watching me." But he wouldn't dream of killing an insect: "My children laugh at me because I'll go to great pains not to squash mosquitoes. I tell them: 'How would you like a big giant to come and squash you?' Generally speaking I respect life.
"Does he eat meat? "Yes.
" Is he a Buddhist? "No. I'm me. I take a lot of things from different religions, from the Buddhists, the Hindus, the Christians. I pick up things that make sense to me but I'm not putting it into a particular package and saying this is it."
What would he like to come back as in his next life? "A human being," he says. "Because we're the ultimate form of life.
" What kind of human being: man, woman, black, white? "I would like to come back as a better person."
His speech is so swift you have to listen hard to keep up. He relishes talking about subjects other than football and the book seems to be part of a game plan to profile himself as smarter than the average kicker. Which he is. Instead of listening to funk and soul CDs in his car, he now reflects on the merits of different religions. He's currently reading a book on world religions, he volunteers.
What else is he reading? "A book about Rwanda.
" What about fiction? "I don't read fiction."
In football, he strives for humility in victory, as well as humility in defeat. "Humility is the most important quality in a human being," he says, then expounds at length on this theme.
Is this what he's telling Celtic's first team? "Oh no, of course not!" he shrieks. "Run around and get it up your Rangers and all those terminologies," he says, flashing the million-dollar smile which transforms him from clean-cut handsome to devilishly attractive. It almost, but not quite, distracts from the note of superiority in his super confident tones.
Behind the scenes at Celtic Park, players are already grumbling that Barnes talks down to them, that he's "high-handed" and "arrogant". He talks about the "DNA" of football, its "structures" and "systems". On the inside cover of his autobiography, he allows his publishers to describe him as a "very intelligent man". He devotes an entire chapter to his theory of "footballing DNAs" and compares the job of team manager to that of a chess grand master.
"Imagine Anatoly Karpov and Gary Kasparov playing chess against each other and the crowd shouting 'go on, go on' in exhortation. Neither Karpov nor Kasparov is going to play any quicker. Each works to a plan. Those chess players who don't have plans might respond to the fans' urgings and move a piece rashly. Football is the same."
In his opinion: "Footballers are easily bored when being taught, but if being bored means you win the championship, how hard is that?"
The view at Celtic Park is: "He needs to be surgically removed from his own backside." When talking about football, Scotland, or Old Firm bigotry, Barnes floats so successfully above the issues I can see why one football pundit jokingly refers to him as "the Dalai Lama of the beautiful game".
This is less of an exaggeration than it seems. Barnes talks about his admiration for the spiritual leader and in his book writes of his eldest son: "No one could wish for a better child than Jamie. He was like the Dalai Lama, so placid, loving everyone, always smiling, never crying, never any trouble, just kissing and cuddling everyone."
Barnes's own early upbringing was in the sheltered surroundings of an officer's villa on Up Park army camp in Kingston, Jamaica. His father Ken, a prominent figure in Jamaican society, is a Sandhurst-trained army colonel who played football for his country. His mother Jean, a statuesque beauty, was "the Sue Lawley of Jamaican television". Christened John Charles Bryan Barnes, after the famous Welsh footballer John Charles, as a baby, John's mother placed a football in his crib. At nine years old, he formed a team with his pals; since he was "captain and best player" he deemed it only fitting it should be named Bartex, using the first three letters of his surname.
He and his two sisters had a strict upbringing "Whenever my mother caught me doing something wrong, she screamed at me to get a switch from the nearest tree and struck me with it. If we were in the house, she took off her belt and hit me with that." Later, when his family moved to London, his mother drove across the city in her dressing gown to haul him out of Giovanni's night club when he failed to come home by his curfew time. Emerging from the club at 15 minutes past midnight, Barnes was just in time to intercept his mother in the car park before she came inside and embarrassed him in front of his friends.
Today, Barnes is struggling with an over-full cup of coffee. In his man-size hands the china cup looks like it belongs to a doll's tea set. When froth spills on to the floor, he catches some on his fingers and licks it off with relish. Away from work, he says, he's "slapdash and scatty"; at home he hangs his clothes on the floor. On the football pitch his fluid style led some fans to complain he looked too laid-back. Especially after he failed to reproduce the wonder goal he scored for England against Brazil in 1984. But despite the vestiges of a Caribbean lilt, and his refusal to wear a watch, the impression he gives is of a man still trying to keep in step with his military father's standards.
As a 13-year-old, captaining a boys' team in London, he decided he should "show responsibility and play centre-half because I was the only one with the necessary discipline". Later, playing for Watford, his first league club, he thrived under the strict regime of manager Graham Taylor. To this day, Barnes still addresses Taylor as 'Boss', and credits him as being "by far the most important figure in my career, providing the discipline and momentum I needed to reach the top". Without Taylor, reckons Barnes, he wouldn't have been capped 79 times for England: "There were times when I moaned inwardly about the cross-country running and Graham's fixation with discipline but, like the other players, I acquiesced because it was for my own good. I am similarly strict with my children, who probably wish hurtful things on me. I felt the same resentment when my parents or Graham Taylor disciplined me. But however much it hurt, I appreciated it in the long run."
The childhood beatings from his parents and teachers have left him a firm believer in corporal punishment: "If my children are naughty I will give them a smack, I always have done. Even if their teachers whacked them, I wouldn't mind although I know they don't … I would never hit my child hard but a little smack here and there is good for them."
He maintains an indulgent tone when writing about the antics of hard-drinking players like Maurice Johnston, Duncan Ferguson and Paul Gascoigne. Describing the latter as "a little boy in many ways", Barnes recalls how Gazza once spent a happy afternoon throwing soap at farmyard chickens through a hotel window. But given that Barnes doesn't drink beer or have any time for "pub culture", you can read the disapproval between the lines. Not to mention that hint of superiority. Explaining why he's not much of a pub-goer, Barnes writes: "I never tried to impress girls by standing at the bar and drinking beer. I never needed to buy girls drinks to persuade them to dance with me." Later, analysing his playing skills, he attributes his "rhythm" and "innate balance and agility" to his Caribbean background. The English are "notoriously stiff", he writes. "The only British player who matches the agility of the Caribbeans and Latin Americans is Ryan Giggs. His suppleness stems from the fact that he is half-black. There is nothing wrong with Peter Beardsley physically but he can't touch his toes. Peter's hamstrings are the world's worst. Alan Hansen could not stretch at all. Their muscles are too rigid." No wonder there are mutterings at Celtic Park that he suffers from a superiority complex.
Ironically, as he himself acknowledges, his attitude is largely in response to the vile racism he has encountered since coming to Britain as a 12-year-old. Compared to the "thick, foul-mouthed yobs" who hurled insults at him, it's no wonder he developed "a sense of superiority". In his book, he writes powerfully about racism. Now, face to face, he is matter of fact and thoughtful, with no trace of bitterness in his voice.
His father came to London as a diplomat; his family lived in an exceedingly smart mews, round the corner from Harley Street. On countless occasions he was followed home by police, convinced that the young black boy in his training track suit must be a burglar. Walking home from school, other children shouted "black bastard" at him. But it was on the football pitch he was subjected to the cruellest treatment.
At Watford, opposing fans showered him with spit and abuse. There are pictures of him standing on a pitch strewn with bananas. At Liverpool he received hate mail: "Liverpool are all-white"; "You are crap, go back to Africa and swing from the trees". On one particular occasion, Everton fans chanted "Niggerpool, Niggerpool, Niggerpool" and "Everton are white". Watching the game at Anfield with his mother, Barnes's son Jamie, then only four, shouted desperately "Stop it, stop it" at the Everton fans. On the pitch, Barnes was called a "black bastard' so often by white players, he "developed an immunity to it". Away from the ground he had to become inured to Merseyside Police flagging him down on the road, assuming the expensive car he was driving was stolen. Even when journalists were being positive about him, the terminology they used was racist: they hailed him as the "Black Pearl" and described how "Sambo samba'd down the wing."
His worst experience of racism was with the England squad, on a tour of South America. On a scheduled flight to Santiago, four National Front sympathisers baited the black players in the team, saying that England had only won the last match 1-0 because "a ******'s goal doesn't count". They also approached England's white players, asking: "How can you mix with blacks?"
"My philosophy is to treat racists with the contempt they deserve, to ignore them or laugh about the situation," writes Barnes. "Neither of these approaches endear me to the black community, who still call me an Uncle Tom. 'John, you hide behind a joke too easily,' they chide me. But pandering to the black community by lashing out or labelling opponents racist is simply not me."
What does he tell his children about racism? He looks pensive for a moment, then says: "The same as my parents told me, and what I'm telling you now." Stating his position in print, he writes: "Revenge does not feature in my psyche. The black community loves how Ian Wright reacts, the way he flings out a fist or mouths off. That's fine for Ian Wright but not for me. I'm different."
Inspired by the non-violent teachings of Martin Luther King and Gandhi, he has consistently chosen to respond to racism with dignity and humour. In his book he recounts how during his Liverpool days, if the team was playing keep-ball in training and no one passed to him he would shout jokingly: "What? Am I black or something?" When people asked what his nickname was he'd reply: "Digger. That's digger with a D." In his first season at Anfield, he attended the team's fancy dress party dressed as a Ku Klux Klansman. He would have gone as a banana, except that he couldn't track down a banana suit on Merseyside.
Former team-mate Mark Lawrenson, now a BBC football pundit, recalls: "When Barnesie first joined Liverpool, a few season ticket holders handed their tickets back because they didn't want a black man on the team. But among the players he was accepted from the first day. There were two baths in the dressing room and when he made to get into the one with all the others they made a joke about how he should get in the other one. At that level of football, the higher the degree of mickey-taking, the more accepted you are.
"He's black, upper-middle-class and he is intelligent, which means that in football he's in the minority, but he was always one of the gang. He's a bright lad and because of that he's at ease in any company."
Although Barnes appeared in an anti-racist video for youth groups – Show Racism the Red Card – he dismisses most anti-racism campaigns as exercises in political correctness. When you ban racist chanting at football matches, he argues, all you've achieved is that racists stay silent for 90 minutes. "What's the point in that when they go back out and are racist for the rest of the week?" he says.
The best way to eradicate racism, he reckons, is through integration. "Teenage British culture has many black influences. Boyzone, the Spice Girls, that's black music they're singing. You listen to kids in London now – you can't tell if they're black or white because of the way they speak. Instead of black culture or white culture, one day it will just be British culture," he says.
In the meantime he is concerned that black role models here are predominantly sporting heroes such as Linford Christie and Ian Wright. "It's more important for blacks to get to the top in law or medicine than it is in sport, where we are accepted," he said recently. "We have to be seen as intellectual equals."
His own education came to a halt after five O-levels because he wanted to be a footballer, but his sister Tracy became a lawyer, while his other sister Gillian went on to do a Master's and a PhD. He is well aware that, in the football world, his upper middle-class background makes him an oddity. "Cynics often question whether footballers from comfortable backgrounds like myself, Ashley Ward and Graeme Le Saux possess a deep, burning hunger," he writes. "A crazy perception persists that a footballer must have suffered a deprived childhood, not knowing where his next meal or pair of boots was coming from, to acquire the desire to turn football into a career.
"That is nonsense. My passion to succeed matches anybody's. My commitment to football may even be stronger because alternative career paths would have opened up for me. The players who come from impoverished homes may have thought of football as their only avenue to a good living. Players like myself, Ward and Le Saux had other options but we chose football because we loved it so much."
One of his closest mates in the football world is Beardsley, a man he adjudges to be "a model professional and a model person. He always tries to do the right thing. He doesn't drink but when the lads went out drinking, Peter drove us around. He tried to fit in but when all the banter and mud-slinging started, Peter shrank from it."
Although well liked in the England squad, 'Barnesie' and Beardsley, who often roomed together, won a reputation as "football anoraks" because of their encyclopaedic knowledge of the game and their love of talking about it. Referring to his team-mates' fondness for practical jokes, Barnes observes: "Sometimes the lads went too far." Not that his own behaviour has always been saintly. Three years ago the News of the World ran a story alleging that he had had an affair with a 23-year-old time share rep he met on holiday in Spain. Shortly afterwards a second woman, a 24-year-old secretary, claimed he had also had a fling with her. The story broke when Barnes' wife Suzy was eight months pregnant with their fourth child. Recently he said:
"I can't really tell you why I got into it. It happened on one of those drunken, debauched men's holidays that people do for bravado and stuff. It was a ridiculous thing for me to do, and the impact it had was awful.
"I don't think it nearly destroyed the marriage. Our relationship was too good for that to happen. But I suppose it could have. Suzy acted in the way I expected. She went off her head, and rightly so. She went mad, of course, and screamed and argued and wept. Looking back, I can hardly remember exactly how she reacted – only how terrible it was and how guilty I felt for doing that to her."
Consigning it firmly to the past, he added:
"All of us have done things that are wrong and bad, and the importance is to learn from them."
In his autobiography he writes at length about his love for his wife and his close involvement with his children:
"After living through such testing times as a couple, I don't think there is any way Suzy and I would ever split up. We both understand that. Suzy means the world to me." He doesn't wear a wedding ring because he hates jewellery, he says. But in the course of conversation he refers more than once to how his life outside football revolves around Suzy and the children.
Suzy Bicknell was the pretty brunette next door when Barnes was a teenager living in digs in Watford. "I found it refreshing that Suzy was not interested in football, that she was keen to be with me, not the Watford Star," he writes. "Suzy was always very go-ahead, always busy. She worked in a wine-bar, as a secretary, driving a delivery van, anything. We found a flat together when I was 21 and Suzy was 23." Seven years, and two children later, they married. Today, their children Jamie, Jordan, Jemma and Jasmin are aged between three and 14, and Barnes has already been talking about adopting a child with problems in a few years' time. In the meantime, he's living in a rented flat in Milngavie and existing on Indian and Chinese takeaways. (He's gained a stone since he stopped playing, he says, tapping his belly.) His family remain in their five-bedroomed home on the Wirral until Suzy completes her house hunting in Scotland, "Our house keeps getting further and further north. We'll end up in the Highlands at this rate," he told The Celtic View.
Although he assured the fanzine that he knew about "the desires which drive the fans of Celtic", he has yet to be taken to their hearts. At the annual general meeting one shareholder openly criticised the directors for employing a "novice" as head coach. To the dedicated following Barnes's philosophical approach appears worryingly close to lack of passion.
Lawrenson says: "Kenny very much trusts John. He knows he's not a fly-by-night and he knows he thinks very deeply about the game. At Liverpool, John would go and watch other teams, analyse how they played, analyse his own play. That's unusual for footballers."There aren't too many people Kenny would have gone into the situation he has at Celtic with John. I would think Kenny's short-list would be the shortest list in the world."
Yes, but is Celtic's first-time head coach going to give the fans what they want?
"I hope so," says Barnes. "I'm going to try my utmost. That's all I can do. I can't promise anything. I can't say what we're going to achieve because we don't know. I could go on and make everyone happy by saying we're going to win the League and the Cup and we're going to win everything and beat Rangers."
Sounds good. Everybody will jump behind me and say isn't he great because he's saying all that. But if you don't deliver – and even if you do deliver – when you actually said it you didn't know you were actually going to do it. So I think it's pointless making promises like that."
The call for him to join Celtic came directly from Kenny Dalglish, the club's director of football operations. At the time, Barnes had finished a disappointing season playing at Charlton and was hunting for his first job as a coach or manager. He'd played for Dalglish at Liverpool and Newcastle and had great respect for him. When Barnes was running the gauntlet of racist abuse, Dalglish made a point of speaking out: "At Liverpool, we are not concerned with race, creed or the colour of a person's skin." When he telephoned the younger man and said, "We need a head coach. Do you fancy it?", Barnes knew he was serious. Within days, he had signed a three-year contract, becoming the first black British manager of a top football club.
Re-united at Paradise, Barnes addresses him as 'wee mon' and complains that of all the Scottish accents he has heard Dalglish's is still the hardest to understand. He writes: "He was an intriguing manager to work for. I had to be very careful around him and I still am now we are together at Celtic because he's the biggest mickey-taker imaginable. Kenny is completely different from his public image, loving a laugh in private. He is very guarded with those he doesn't know so I understand why people label him as dour."
Barnes acknowledges his job is thanks to Dalglish's "faith" in him, but does not want to dodge responsibility: "If the first team struggle, Celtic's fans should turn on me, not Kenny."
Given that Rangers has beaten Celtic to the championship for 10 of the past 11 seasons, Barnes has a tough job on his hands. But whatever the result at Celtic Park, he's already thinking ahead of the game. He's enjoyed his stints as a TV pundit and is so keen on a small screen future that at one point his autobiography reads like a job application. He's certainly got the wardrobe for TV and looks more than at home on that perfect cream sofa. But was it appropriate to wear a blue shirt to the Celtic AGM?
"It's not Rangers blue," says Barnes, looking down at his powder-blue Armani shirt. But I don't think it matters anyway. I wore a blue T-shirt to work the other day and I got comments about it. But if Celtic wins the championship, nobody will care if I'm dressed from head to foot in blue." He smiles the beatific smile of a man who knows he's right. The Dalai Lama of the Beautiful Game has no intention of descending to the level of Old Firm superstition.
* John Barnes – The Autobiography, written with Henry Winter, is published this week by Headline, 16.99