Donal81
04/05/2005, 11:40 AM
The Sunday Times
The Big Interview: Aiden McGeady
The Bhoy wonder has the world at his feet, and the drive to be a true great, writes Douglas Alexander
When does a boy become a man? Women might argue that most males never cross this imaginary line of development and instead spend their entire lives hopping back and forth across the border to their childhood. Aiden McGeady made one such trip recently, although it was not a lapse into the sort of puerility that should concern Martin O’Neill. After Celtic’s 2-0 defeat by Hearts a month ago, he returned to the cocoon of his family home on Glasgow’s southside. As his dad left the house, McGeady asked him to buy a ball. When John McGeady returned and received the six quid it cost, his son went out into the quiet cul-de-sac and started to kick it around, as if just playing in front of 60,000 supporters at Celtic Park was a dream rather than a reality. A couple of kids blinked in disbelief. Was that really Aiden McGeady of Celtic out in their street, just mucking about with a ball?
Yet as a child of five or six, McGeady would hardly have been as awestruck. He admits that, initially, football seemed less appealing than his Sega Mega Drive, the sort of story that makes youth coaches groan and pine for the good old days when kids ... kicked a ball about in the street. “I wasn’t actually interested in football, I wasn’t at all. Then, when I was eight or nine, my friend was going to train with a football team and asked me if I wanted to go. I went along and as soon as I started kicking the ball I liked it, but it was definitely a late start.”
His father John, a former professional with Sheffield United whose career was curtailed by a cracked kneecap, was ambivalent to his son’s ambivalence to football. “I didn’t put any pressure on him,” he says. “I wanted Aiden to have a profession because of what happened to my career. It was really bizarre the way it first happened. My two brothers have both got sons that are football mad, Aiden’s younger than both of them and we used to go down to Cathkin for a kickaround. I said to my brother, Pat, that I’d take Aiden along to see if he was going to be interested in even kicking the thing. I bought him a wee pair of Maradona football boots and he went up to my brother with the ball at his feet. My brother is six foot and Aiden started moving about in front of him. I said, ‘What’s he trying to do, Pat?’ and Pat said, ‘He’s trying to beat me’. I don’t think he even knew what he had to do, it was just instinct.”
Soon the late starter was making up for lost time. It quickly became apparent in games for Our Lady of the Missions primary school on Saturdays and Busby boys club on Sundays that a latent talent had been tapped. No ball was safe. Having mastered a football, McGeady was soon keeping up a tennis ball 500 times and a golf ball 200 times, after watching a video of his hero, Diego Maradona, doing so. At his father’s insistence, each juggling exercise involved both feet.
“Maybe because I had played the game myself, I realised that Aiden had a gift and that the only way it was going to come to fruition was through proper guidance. I sat down one night with Elaine, my wife, and said, ‘Apart from anything else, I have got a major responsibility here’. There was never any danger of me living my life through him because he had far more natural ability than me.”
John decided to raise the bar: it was time to move Aiden from the nice grass pitches that Busby played on where nice boys applauded each other off at the end. “My friend ran a team in the Gorbals and I thought it would be a good idea for Aiden to start playing with guys who could toughen him up, guys who were a bit streetwise.” Mick Gillespie, who ran Govanhill cubs, had been a schoolboy friend of John’s and played for Queen’s Park. He took responsibility for the next stage of Aiden’s development. “He used to make deals with Aiden before the game. He would say for the first five minutes play two-touch football, the second five minutes do what you like then two-touch again for five minutes. It made him more of a team player, more aware.”
By the time Aiden started at St Ninian’s secondary school, others wanted to make deals with him. Arsenal, Celtic, Manchester United, Liverpool, Chelsea and Manchester City all made overtures. At United, McGeady stood out from the crop of boys brought from England, Scotland and Ireland and Wales to one trial. At Arsenal, John recalls that Aiden, who wore glasses then, looked like “Harry Potter” when handed a top with sleeves that swallowed his tiny arms. However, he didn’t look out of place in the ensuing match against a side from Auxerre in front of Liam Brady and Don Howe. “At the end, Brady came over and said, ‘He’s got all the ability in the world but he wants it too, he’s got that mental toughness’,” adds John. “‘He got kicked a few times but he got the guys back’.”
Aiden was as impressed by Arsenal as they were by him. Of all the English clubs, they were the one who seriously threatened Celtic for his signature as a schoolboy. “I didn’t want to leave home because my dad told me he did it when he was 16 and was homesick, and I didn’t want to go down that path.” There was another factor. George Adams, now head of Rangers’ youth development, but then in charge of Celtic’s schoolboy scouting.
“He was a genuine guy who said what he thought. He would come and watch me play and then phone afterwards to say he was still interested.”
COURTED by clubs but also by countries. There was an interested spectator when McGeady played in that trial at Manchester United. Darren Fletcher had been attracted by the hype that had accompanied McGeady south. “He completely ran the show and stood out a mile against all the best young players in the country,” says Fletcher. “Andy Perry, the chief scout at United, told me he was special and he wasn’t wrong. Afterwards, I met him and told him all about United and what it was like to live down there. I was about 15 or 16 at the time and ready to sign, but he was 12 or 13 and going round a few clubs.”
Fletcher and McGeady shared another dilemma. Whether to play for Scotland, the country of their birth, or Ireland, the country of their heritage. Fletcher had to contend with Sir Alex Ferguson and Roy Keane as aggressive ambassadors for each cause but was always going to choose Scotland despite the fact that his mother, Bridget, is from County Mayo. McGeady slipped through Scotland’s system because Celtic, at that time, forbade their signings from playing schools football of any form for Scotland but had no problem with Ireland, whose sides of the same age were run by the FAI.
“I come from an Irish background, I go over there for holidays [to Gweedore in Donegal where his grandmother, Kitty, lives] but it’s not really anything to do with that, that’s just the way I was brought up,” explains McGeady. “When I was 15 I wanted to play for my country and because I didn’t play for my school, Scotland schoolboys wouldn’t let me. I thought, ‘Fair enough, I’ll just go back to playing normal football with Celtic’, but then Packie Bonner [the former Celtic and Ireland goalkeeper] phoned and asked me to go over for training and I thought, ‘What’s the harm in that?’.
“It was a sort of get-together of the teams. I did quite well and got asked back and was involved with all the teams — 15s, 16s, 17s. After that, I knew the set-up really well and all the boys. When I broke into the first team at Celtic there was all the drama about why I had picked Ireland rather than Scotland, but the thing was I already knew the set-up and wasn’t going to change my mind.”
Despite this assertion, officials at the Scottish Schools FA insist they were innocent and that other players from club sides, who didn’t play for their schools, were selected for the international team at that time. Berti Vogts later made a personal plea for a switch of allegiance in his office at Hampden but it was too late and Brian Kerr has since fast-tracked McGeady into Ireland’s senior squad, giving him his full debut against Jamaica last June. Ireland have a deeper pool of talent than Scotland right now and are therefore more likely to be at the big tournaments that McGeady craves, but the downside is that holding down a place in their squad will be more difficult than if he had opted for the country of his birth. “I have had a few games here and there but I would really like to break through and become a regular. First, you have to do that at your own club. The thing everybody wants to do is play at a World Cup against the best players in the world. I have still got loads of time left to do that but eventually I would like to. 1994 was the first one I watched and I remember Maradona running to the cameras to celebrate his goal against Greece before he was banned.”
One of his uncles went to see an 18-year-old Maradona destroy Scotland at Hampden in 1979. Alan Hansen, who played against him that day, jokes that he is still untying the knots from his legs, but a reminder of this match brings a smile from McGeady for a different reason as he sits talking at a table in the Room restaurant in the salubrious surrounds of One Devonshire Gardens in Glasgow’s west end. “My uncle was at the game with his friend and said, ‘What do you think of that boy Maradona?’ and he said, ‘Nah, I don’t rate him’.”
McGeady lacks the stocky explosiveness of his hero or Wayne Rooney but he is a box of tricks, perhaps the closest thing Celtic have unearthed to Jimmy Johnstone since ‘Jinky’ tormented defenders in the late 1960s and early 1970s. He has been used largely wide on the left this season by O’Neill, a position which allows him to cut inside onto his slightly stronger right foot, as he recently did to score a memorable goal against Dunfermline, his fifth of the season.
The Big Interview: Aiden McGeady
The Bhoy wonder has the world at his feet, and the drive to be a true great, writes Douglas Alexander
When does a boy become a man? Women might argue that most males never cross this imaginary line of development and instead spend their entire lives hopping back and forth across the border to their childhood. Aiden McGeady made one such trip recently, although it was not a lapse into the sort of puerility that should concern Martin O’Neill. After Celtic’s 2-0 defeat by Hearts a month ago, he returned to the cocoon of his family home on Glasgow’s southside. As his dad left the house, McGeady asked him to buy a ball. When John McGeady returned and received the six quid it cost, his son went out into the quiet cul-de-sac and started to kick it around, as if just playing in front of 60,000 supporters at Celtic Park was a dream rather than a reality. A couple of kids blinked in disbelief. Was that really Aiden McGeady of Celtic out in their street, just mucking about with a ball?
Yet as a child of five or six, McGeady would hardly have been as awestruck. He admits that, initially, football seemed less appealing than his Sega Mega Drive, the sort of story that makes youth coaches groan and pine for the good old days when kids ... kicked a ball about in the street. “I wasn’t actually interested in football, I wasn’t at all. Then, when I was eight or nine, my friend was going to train with a football team and asked me if I wanted to go. I went along and as soon as I started kicking the ball I liked it, but it was definitely a late start.”
His father John, a former professional with Sheffield United whose career was curtailed by a cracked kneecap, was ambivalent to his son’s ambivalence to football. “I didn’t put any pressure on him,” he says. “I wanted Aiden to have a profession because of what happened to my career. It was really bizarre the way it first happened. My two brothers have both got sons that are football mad, Aiden’s younger than both of them and we used to go down to Cathkin for a kickaround. I said to my brother, Pat, that I’d take Aiden along to see if he was going to be interested in even kicking the thing. I bought him a wee pair of Maradona football boots and he went up to my brother with the ball at his feet. My brother is six foot and Aiden started moving about in front of him. I said, ‘What’s he trying to do, Pat?’ and Pat said, ‘He’s trying to beat me’. I don’t think he even knew what he had to do, it was just instinct.”
Soon the late starter was making up for lost time. It quickly became apparent in games for Our Lady of the Missions primary school on Saturdays and Busby boys club on Sundays that a latent talent had been tapped. No ball was safe. Having mastered a football, McGeady was soon keeping up a tennis ball 500 times and a golf ball 200 times, after watching a video of his hero, Diego Maradona, doing so. At his father’s insistence, each juggling exercise involved both feet.
“Maybe because I had played the game myself, I realised that Aiden had a gift and that the only way it was going to come to fruition was through proper guidance. I sat down one night with Elaine, my wife, and said, ‘Apart from anything else, I have got a major responsibility here’. There was never any danger of me living my life through him because he had far more natural ability than me.”
John decided to raise the bar: it was time to move Aiden from the nice grass pitches that Busby played on where nice boys applauded each other off at the end. “My friend ran a team in the Gorbals and I thought it would be a good idea for Aiden to start playing with guys who could toughen him up, guys who were a bit streetwise.” Mick Gillespie, who ran Govanhill cubs, had been a schoolboy friend of John’s and played for Queen’s Park. He took responsibility for the next stage of Aiden’s development. “He used to make deals with Aiden before the game. He would say for the first five minutes play two-touch football, the second five minutes do what you like then two-touch again for five minutes. It made him more of a team player, more aware.”
By the time Aiden started at St Ninian’s secondary school, others wanted to make deals with him. Arsenal, Celtic, Manchester United, Liverpool, Chelsea and Manchester City all made overtures. At United, McGeady stood out from the crop of boys brought from England, Scotland and Ireland and Wales to one trial. At Arsenal, John recalls that Aiden, who wore glasses then, looked like “Harry Potter” when handed a top with sleeves that swallowed his tiny arms. However, he didn’t look out of place in the ensuing match against a side from Auxerre in front of Liam Brady and Don Howe. “At the end, Brady came over and said, ‘He’s got all the ability in the world but he wants it too, he’s got that mental toughness’,” adds John. “‘He got kicked a few times but he got the guys back’.”
Aiden was as impressed by Arsenal as they were by him. Of all the English clubs, they were the one who seriously threatened Celtic for his signature as a schoolboy. “I didn’t want to leave home because my dad told me he did it when he was 16 and was homesick, and I didn’t want to go down that path.” There was another factor. George Adams, now head of Rangers’ youth development, but then in charge of Celtic’s schoolboy scouting.
“He was a genuine guy who said what he thought. He would come and watch me play and then phone afterwards to say he was still interested.”
COURTED by clubs but also by countries. There was an interested spectator when McGeady played in that trial at Manchester United. Darren Fletcher had been attracted by the hype that had accompanied McGeady south. “He completely ran the show and stood out a mile against all the best young players in the country,” says Fletcher. “Andy Perry, the chief scout at United, told me he was special and he wasn’t wrong. Afterwards, I met him and told him all about United and what it was like to live down there. I was about 15 or 16 at the time and ready to sign, but he was 12 or 13 and going round a few clubs.”
Fletcher and McGeady shared another dilemma. Whether to play for Scotland, the country of their birth, or Ireland, the country of their heritage. Fletcher had to contend with Sir Alex Ferguson and Roy Keane as aggressive ambassadors for each cause but was always going to choose Scotland despite the fact that his mother, Bridget, is from County Mayo. McGeady slipped through Scotland’s system because Celtic, at that time, forbade their signings from playing schools football of any form for Scotland but had no problem with Ireland, whose sides of the same age were run by the FAI.
“I come from an Irish background, I go over there for holidays [to Gweedore in Donegal where his grandmother, Kitty, lives] but it’s not really anything to do with that, that’s just the way I was brought up,” explains McGeady. “When I was 15 I wanted to play for my country and because I didn’t play for my school, Scotland schoolboys wouldn’t let me. I thought, ‘Fair enough, I’ll just go back to playing normal football with Celtic’, but then Packie Bonner [the former Celtic and Ireland goalkeeper] phoned and asked me to go over for training and I thought, ‘What’s the harm in that?’.
“It was a sort of get-together of the teams. I did quite well and got asked back and was involved with all the teams — 15s, 16s, 17s. After that, I knew the set-up really well and all the boys. When I broke into the first team at Celtic there was all the drama about why I had picked Ireland rather than Scotland, but the thing was I already knew the set-up and wasn’t going to change my mind.”
Despite this assertion, officials at the Scottish Schools FA insist they were innocent and that other players from club sides, who didn’t play for their schools, were selected for the international team at that time. Berti Vogts later made a personal plea for a switch of allegiance in his office at Hampden but it was too late and Brian Kerr has since fast-tracked McGeady into Ireland’s senior squad, giving him his full debut against Jamaica last June. Ireland have a deeper pool of talent than Scotland right now and are therefore more likely to be at the big tournaments that McGeady craves, but the downside is that holding down a place in their squad will be more difficult than if he had opted for the country of his birth. “I have had a few games here and there but I would really like to break through and become a regular. First, you have to do that at your own club. The thing everybody wants to do is play at a World Cup against the best players in the world. I have still got loads of time left to do that but eventually I would like to. 1994 was the first one I watched and I remember Maradona running to the cameras to celebrate his goal against Greece before he was banned.”
One of his uncles went to see an 18-year-old Maradona destroy Scotland at Hampden in 1979. Alan Hansen, who played against him that day, jokes that he is still untying the knots from his legs, but a reminder of this match brings a smile from McGeady for a different reason as he sits talking at a table in the Room restaurant in the salubrious surrounds of One Devonshire Gardens in Glasgow’s west end. “My uncle was at the game with his friend and said, ‘What do you think of that boy Maradona?’ and he said, ‘Nah, I don’t rate him’.”
McGeady lacks the stocky explosiveness of his hero or Wayne Rooney but he is a box of tricks, perhaps the closest thing Celtic have unearthed to Jimmy Johnstone since ‘Jinky’ tormented defenders in the late 1960s and early 1970s. He has been used largely wide on the left this season by O’Neill, a position which allows him to cut inside onto his slightly stronger right foot, as he recently did to score a memorable goal against Dunfermline, his fifth of the season.