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John Barnes's love affair with football is as passionate as ever
John Barnes appreciates that Jamaica expects.
By Ian Chadband, Chief Sports Correspondent
Last Updated: 7:42AM GMT 10 Feb 2009
Leading question: John Barnes is looking forward to the time a black coach takes charge of the England team Photo: PAUL GROVER
The Reggae Boyz' new manager is reminded of the fact each time he conducts a training session at Kingston's National Stadium and glances over to the perimeter track where a lanky streak of lightning can usually be found chatting with a peanut seller in between sprint reps.
"Yeah, Usain Bolt is a wonderful specimen. I wish he could play football," smiles Barnes. "The only thing is, unfortunately, that since he became the world's fastest, everyone on the island now says 'if he can do it in the Olympics, why can't you boys do it in the World Cup?' Jamaicans are very ambitious and proud, so while our position, ranked 66 in the world, and history says we're outsiders, a nation still believes."
Barnes believes too. In his team and, absolutely, in himself. Here's the third coming of one of British football's most important figures. After the first barrier-breaking incarnation at Liverpool as England's most brilliant black player and the brief second as a supposed coaching calamity, he is back in his element after nine years on the outside looking in, convinced the land of his birth is now the stage to begin repackaging his footballing greatness.
With the same old shining confidence, he will tell you: "Without a shadow of a doubt, I can be a great coach." The game should hope he is right. For even without seeking to become a black sporting pioneer again, he could be making a breakthrough every bit as significant as when his nonchalant back-heeling of a banana skin off the Goodison turf cut through the racist bile so perfectly.
For almost a decade since a short managerial spell at Celtic ended in one humiliating word, "SuperCaleyGoBallisticCeltic-AreAtrocious", he has had to wonder why he had to wait so long for another opportunity and why, he could not land a single interview. Anywhere. "I won't embarrass the clubs by naming them but some didn't even give the courtesy of a response," he recalls.
It was a form of racism, he concludes. The sort of ingrained footballing prejudice which "once perpetrated the myth that black players couldn't play in positions of responsibility but had to be wingers or strikers, supposedly where you didn't have to think too much." He's convinced the same ignorance forces black coaches like Paul Ince to have to do "more to prove themselves and over a longer period" than their white counterparts.
"I'm sure in the Seventies there were a lot of black centre-backs and goalkeepers lost to the game because they didn't get the opportunities. Now maybe it'll take this generation of black coaches to be lost to the game before hopefully, maybe 20 years down the line, a 40-year-old like Theo Walcott will get his opportunity and say 'I can't believe back then there were no black coaches'. All we can do is keep trying."
Barnes has never stopped trying. While football ignored him, he determined it could not forget him. So he went on telly, tangoed for Len Goodman and co, hosted his own Channel 5 show, visited the troops in Iraq and worked for Save the Children in Africa. His latest project is fronting a nationwide competition 'Get Chanting', backed by the government's 'Get On' adult literacy campaign, to unearth the writers of the best new football songs.
He reckons he's savoured all the extra-curricular stuff. When you have the chance to visit Gaza with the United Nations, as Barnes did five months ago with his 23-year-old son Jamie, a doctor who's the eldest of his six children, it also puts the importance of football into the same sort of sane perspective that the experience of watching true horror unfold in front of him on a Sheffield pitch 20 years ago once did. Hillsborough altered him indelibly.
Being handed the Jamaica job last September may have looked a hospital pass to others, what with World Cup qualification already a forlorn hope, but it was manna to him.
So far, he's not put a foot wrong with his assortment of largely European-based journeymen. They're unbeaten in his first six matches, rocketing up some 30 Fifa ranking places, yet even winning the recent Caribbean Cup could not stop the grumbling over the inevitable World Cup elimination so Barnes, on a one-year contract, could still find his position under threat if Jamaica disappoint in the summer CONCACAF Gold Cup. After the heroics of their Olympic sprinters and English cricket's new nemesis, Jerome Taylor, the island currently has no time for losers.
Tomorrow, as Barnes takes his Boyz for a friendly against Nigeria at the New Den, he deserves to reflect with pride on his major 25-year part in a domestic cultural revolution which now enables a game between two teams of black players to be feted at the home of Millwall FC. On the same night in Seville, it's equally satisfying to him that a new generation of black Englishmen can represent their country without being abused, as he once was, by a racist element among England's own support.
If Spanish supporters now start the monkey chants, let's not get too holier-than-thou about it, he says. "We're very quick once we've moved on to criticise somebody else. I've no tolerance for racism but have more understanding of a country where different cultures don't mix together. I don't jump on the bandwagon and say 'let's ban Macedonia', a country which has no black-and-white dynamic, because some fans racially abused Emile Heskey.
"Remember, Turkish players got racial abuse when England played them at Sunderland. So, should the FA be held accountable for 100 people in their stadium over whom they have no control or jurisdiction? No. It has to be about education.
"Look at kids in London now, the way they dress, the way they speak. If you didn't see their faces, you wouldn't know whether they're black, white, Chinese. Ali G was tongue-in-cheek about it but it's true; there's a new British culture which has come about through integration and education. The next generation of Spanish kids? Maybe they'll be better too."
So, what chance the next generation of English kids being able to see the first black manager in charge of the national team? "Well, Obama is President of the United States because he is worthy, not because of his colour. So you have to find a manager who is good first," says Barnes. "I'm in that category, Paul Ince is too.
"If the opportunity is there, I have full confidence that I could join that managerial elite. I don't believe there are any extraordinary people; just ordinary people doing extraordinary things. I believe the essence of football repays you for hard work, spirit, dedication, discipline, desire. I still have all that."
It will take rather longer than Bolt's 9.69 seconds but don't bet against this hero of Jamaica and England one day reaping that reward.
John Barnes is supporting Get Chanting, a national football chant competition from Get On to encourage adults to brush up on their English skills. www.direct.gov.uk/geton
John Barnes appreciates that Jamaica expects.
By Ian Chadband, Chief Sports Correspondent
Last Updated: 7:42AM GMT 10 Feb 2009
Leading question: John Barnes is looking forward to the time a black coach takes charge of the England team Photo: PAUL GROVER
The Reggae Boyz' new manager is reminded of the fact each time he conducts a training session at Kingston's National Stadium and glances over to the perimeter track where a lanky streak of lightning can usually be found chatting with a peanut seller in between sprint reps.
"Yeah, Usain Bolt is a wonderful specimen. I wish he could play football," smiles Barnes. "The only thing is, unfortunately, that since he became the world's fastest, everyone on the island now says 'if he can do it in the Olympics, why can't you boys do it in the World Cup?' Jamaicans are very ambitious and proud, so while our position, ranked 66 in the world, and history says we're outsiders, a nation still believes."
Barnes believes too. In his team and, absolutely, in himself. Here's the third coming of one of British football's most important figures. After the first barrier-breaking incarnation at Liverpool as England's most brilliant black player and the brief second as a supposed coaching calamity, he is back in his element after nine years on the outside looking in, convinced the land of his birth is now the stage to begin repackaging his footballing greatness.
With the same old shining confidence, he will tell you: "Without a shadow of a doubt, I can be a great coach." The game should hope he is right. For even without seeking to become a black sporting pioneer again, he could be making a breakthrough every bit as significant as when his nonchalant back-heeling of a banana skin off the Goodison turf cut through the racist bile so perfectly.
For almost a decade since a short managerial spell at Celtic ended in one humiliating word, "SuperCaleyGoBallisticCeltic-AreAtrocious", he has had to wonder why he had to wait so long for another opportunity and why, he could not land a single interview. Anywhere. "I won't embarrass the clubs by naming them but some didn't even give the courtesy of a response," he recalls.
It was a form of racism, he concludes. The sort of ingrained footballing prejudice which "once perpetrated the myth that black players couldn't play in positions of responsibility but had to be wingers or strikers, supposedly where you didn't have to think too much." He's convinced the same ignorance forces black coaches like Paul Ince to have to do "more to prove themselves and over a longer period" than their white counterparts.
"I'm sure in the Seventies there were a lot of black centre-backs and goalkeepers lost to the game because they didn't get the opportunities. Now maybe it'll take this generation of black coaches to be lost to the game before hopefully, maybe 20 years down the line, a 40-year-old like Theo Walcott will get his opportunity and say 'I can't believe back then there were no black coaches'. All we can do is keep trying."
Barnes has never stopped trying. While football ignored him, he determined it could not forget him. So he went on telly, tangoed for Len Goodman and co, hosted his own Channel 5 show, visited the troops in Iraq and worked for Save the Children in Africa. His latest project is fronting a nationwide competition 'Get Chanting', backed by the government's 'Get On' adult literacy campaign, to unearth the writers of the best new football songs.
He reckons he's savoured all the extra-curricular stuff. When you have the chance to visit Gaza with the United Nations, as Barnes did five months ago with his 23-year-old son Jamie, a doctor who's the eldest of his six children, it also puts the importance of football into the same sort of sane perspective that the experience of watching true horror unfold in front of him on a Sheffield pitch 20 years ago once did. Hillsborough altered him indelibly.
Being handed the Jamaica job last September may have looked a hospital pass to others, what with World Cup qualification already a forlorn hope, but it was manna to him.
So far, he's not put a foot wrong with his assortment of largely European-based journeymen. They're unbeaten in his first six matches, rocketing up some 30 Fifa ranking places, yet even winning the recent Caribbean Cup could not stop the grumbling over the inevitable World Cup elimination so Barnes, on a one-year contract, could still find his position under threat if Jamaica disappoint in the summer CONCACAF Gold Cup. After the heroics of their Olympic sprinters and English cricket's new nemesis, Jerome Taylor, the island currently has no time for losers.
Tomorrow, as Barnes takes his Boyz for a friendly against Nigeria at the New Den, he deserves to reflect with pride on his major 25-year part in a domestic cultural revolution which now enables a game between two teams of black players to be feted at the home of Millwall FC. On the same night in Seville, it's equally satisfying to him that a new generation of black Englishmen can represent their country without being abused, as he once was, by a racist element among England's own support.
If Spanish supporters now start the monkey chants, let's not get too holier-than-thou about it, he says. "We're very quick once we've moved on to criticise somebody else. I've no tolerance for racism but have more understanding of a country where different cultures don't mix together. I don't jump on the bandwagon and say 'let's ban Macedonia', a country which has no black-and-white dynamic, because some fans racially abused Emile Heskey.
"Remember, Turkish players got racial abuse when England played them at Sunderland. So, should the FA be held accountable for 100 people in their stadium over whom they have no control or jurisdiction? No. It has to be about education.
"Look at kids in London now, the way they dress, the way they speak. If you didn't see their faces, you wouldn't know whether they're black, white, Chinese. Ali G was tongue-in-cheek about it but it's true; there's a new British culture which has come about through integration and education. The next generation of Spanish kids? Maybe they'll be better too."
So, what chance the next generation of English kids being able to see the first black manager in charge of the national team? "Well, Obama is President of the United States because he is worthy, not because of his colour. So you have to find a manager who is good first," says Barnes. "I'm in that category, Paul Ince is too.
"If the opportunity is there, I have full confidence that I could join that managerial elite. I don't believe there are any extraordinary people; just ordinary people doing extraordinary things. I believe the essence of football repays you for hard work, spirit, dedication, discipline, desire. I still have all that."
It will take rather longer than Bolt's 9.69 seconds but don't bet against this hero of Jamaica and England one day reaping that reward.
John Barnes is supporting Get Chanting, a national football chant competition from Get On to encourage adults to brush up on their English skills. www.direct.gov.uk/geton
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