Читать книгу Taking le Tiss - Matt Tissier Le - Страница 7

If you are hoping for smut and scandal from this book then look away now. A lot of ‘celebrities’ rely on revelations about their personal lives in order to sell books, but I have always been a very private person so there’s no sleaze here. It’s Tiss and Dell not Kiss and Tell.

So if I guard my privacy so carefully, why write an autobiography? Mainly because my Sky colleagues Jeff Stelling and Phil Thompson have recently published books, and I thought if they could get in the bestseller list with such a pile of tosh, I might as well have a go. Thommo said he found it so therapeutic that the idea suddenly became very tempting.

Southampton supporters have been asking me to tell my story ever since I finished playing, but I wanted to wait until I had achieved something else. Now, with the popularity of Sky’s Soccer Saturday and the controversial double relegation of the Saints, it seems the perfect time to talk about my career at The Dell and why I stayed with one supposedly unfashionable club for my whole career when I could have got far more money, and maybe medals, by moving.

There have been a lot of misconceptions about me over the years and a lot of wildly inaccurate stories in the press, so this is the perfect chance to put a few things straight. A lot of people think they know what went on—but they don’t. Now I can say exactly what happened.

I am acutely aware of my own failings, so I’m not going to gloss over the fact I didn’t have the best diet and was never the greatest runner. I was once carried off in training after a fainting fit caused by eating too many sausage and egg McMuffins before we even started. Tim Flowers was asked to write a few lines for this book to describe me and he sent in: ‘Matt Le Tissier signed for Southampton, ate a lot, scored some bloody good goals, should have left.’ That pretty much sums it up so there’s no point reading the book now—apart from the football, the fun and my forthright views about the likes of Alan Ball, Graeme Souness, Ian Branfoot, Rupert Lowe—and a certain Glenn Hoddle.

Unfortunately I never won the Footballer of the Year award; in fact the only vote I got each year came from the reporter on the Southampton Echo, so that hardly counted. But for a decade I did have my acceptance speech ready, just in case, and here it is…

‘I really want to thank all the people who have been so important to me, starting with my mum and dad. I couldn’t have wished for better parents. They were the most supportive people possible—but without interfering. They got the balance brilliantly right and I have them to thank for everything I have achieved in life. They had three kids by the time they were 20 but have remained married for 48 years, which is a fantastic achievement—although I think the reason they stayed together is because neither of them wanted custody of me. My grandparents have been superb and my brothers have been fantastic. All three of them could have been professional players but they have never shown any jealousy or resentment towards me, only pride and support.

My own children, Mitchell and Keeleigh, are growing up to be fantastic kids and have given me a lot of pleasure. I now have a new baby girl, Ava, with my wife Angela. We were together many years ago and there was a lot of love left over so she recently made the decision to come back to this country to see if we could make a go of it. It is wonderful to be married to her finally. We didn’t think she could have children so she needed to have fertility treatment. There was only a 20 per cent chance of success but we were lucky it worked first time, and we are now blessed with Ava who is an absolute joy.

Family and friends are important to me and there are some people who really do need a special mention. Pete and Pat Ford, and their children Martin and Stuart, and the Phillips family all really helped me to settle when I first came to Southampton and homesickness might have been a problem. My “mum” in England, Celia Mills, has looked after me for the last 12 years and seen me through a lot. She is one of the loveliest people you could wish to meet.’

I also need to thank Jerome Anderson who was my agent during my playing days and never put me under any pressure to move, even though he would have made more money from a transfer. (If any young players ever want a good agent then go straight to him at the S.E.M. group.) And I must thank Richard Thompson who representedme during this book deal with HarperCollins, for whom Jonathan Taylor has been a big help. Thanks too to Jordan Sibley at Southampton Football Club for sourcing some of the photos, to the club photographer Paul Watts for taking them and to the Southern Daily Echo for supplying some of the older pictures. They say the camera never lies but do some of them seem to make me look overweight?

I also need to single out my golf buddies Laurie Parsonage, Ben Johnson and Paul Mico, one of the best DJs in Southampton. I’m absolutely obsessed with golf and I will always be grateful to pro Richard Bland who allowed me to caddy for him on the European Tour, giving me the best time of my life outside football. He and his brother Heath are really good friends, along with taxi driver Mark Harris who has ferried Saints players around the city for years and knows all their secrets. If he ever wrote a book he’d make millions. In contrast, I must thank Mike Osman for costing me a fortune by persuading me to invest in a nightclub. Despite the huge loss, we have remained friends throughout, which must say something. I must also thank Big Dave and his wife Teresa who have been a big help in recent years.

Francis Benali and Claus Lundekvam are close mates but I have to thank all my former teammates, too numerous to mention individually, for doing my running and allowing me the licence to play the way I did. I couldn’t have done it without them, and it was nice to know they were prepared to graft on my behalf.

I want to thank all my former managers but especially Alan Ball—and it is so sad he isn’t here to read this. My time playing under him really defined me as a player and I must thank both him and Lawrie McMenemy for their joint efforts in finding the perfect position in the team for me. Thanks, too, to all the Saints staff I have worked with over the years, from the backroom team to the stadium personnel and, of course, I will always be grateful to all the Saints fans for their constant support and belief in me.

More recently I need to thank everyone at Sky for giving me the chance on Soccer Saturday and making me so welcome. They have ensured I can stay involved in football in a casual way, with no pressure or fear of getting the sack if results don’t go well. And finally I must thank the man who has put all these words to paper, Graham Hiley, who was lucky enough to follow my entire career as the Saints correspondent with the Southern Daily Echo. Obviously when I was playing I needed people around me to do all the hard work, so I thought I’d carry on in the same vein and get Graham to do the writing while I just sat and talked. It is a tactic which has worked well for me over the years and you wouldn’t want to change a winning formula—unless you are Ian Branfoot.