Sunday Times article on Duff:-
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article...764099,00.html
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Sunday Times article on Duff:-
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article...764099,00.html
You may as well post the article as the Times is a subscription service.Quote:
Originally Posted by tricky_colour
the times UK is free. the irish times isnt. i read the article today myself
Well here it is anyway saves a click I guess, hope they don't mind
me coopying it, but I sure they appreciate the free link/publicity.
The Sunday Times - Football
September 04, 2005
Private Duff revelling in the big time
Chelsea’s influential Irish winger has added greater maturity and hard work to his obvious talent, with club and country reaping the benefits, writes Paul Rowan
DUBLIN five days before the big match and the place is buzzing. An early morning DJ is giving away pairs of match tickets to callers doing Brian Kerr impressions.
“You know they’re fetching €1,000 on eBay,” he tells one winner. “But don’t you dare.”
The word goes round that the team are already in town — all except for the main man. Roy Keane has already boarded the team bus and gone off to training happy as Larry, so we must be talking about the other main man. Damien Duff. One thing the two have in common is how jealously they guard their privacy. Duff has missed a promotional shoot for adidas that morning and not even his advisers in Dublin seem to know where he is. Then he strides across the lobby of the team hotel. “I got a knock in training at Chelsea yesterday and I’ve been getting some treatment, but I should be okay.”
He looks great, tanned and relaxed after a break in France with his girlfriend; he insists on her anonymity, but is happy to talk about his own life in London, the incredible unfolding story of Chelsea and back here in the goldfish bowl of Dublin football.
“Dublin is mad, really,” he says. “Everybody knows who you are, everybody follows football. It’s a bit more crazy here. But that’s what goes with the job.”
Everywhere he goes he obliges fans with pictures and autographs and absorbs the attention, happy to tolerate it as long as it involves him alone; attempts to involve his girlfriend, as a photographer found out recently when he tried to snap them in a Dublin department store, bring out the fighter in him.
“I’ve come home for a couple of days to do a bit of shopping,” Duff says. “It’s not her scene either to get photographed walking down the street or eating her dinner or what have you. So I wasn’t pleased.”
It seems incredible now that people questioned whether Duff would settle in London after his move from Blackburn Rovers. His life in Lancashire was portrayed as that of a semi-recluse, living in a small house in the Ribble, where he slept or watched television until club duties called. London, not to put too fine a point on it, might either turn his head or make him impossibly homesick. Instead it has given him just what he wanted.
“You can get lost in London,” he says. “A lot of people wouldn’t know who you are. I love it. I live about 45 minutes from the city. I love going in, going to the shows, having a night out with the lads, doing whatever you want. It’s a great city.”
Preconceptions still seem to follow him, however. Several of the Chelsea stars — Duff and Frank Lampard included — have moved into mansions in a village near Chelsea’s new training ground in Cobham, Surrey. In Surrey stockbroker belt, they were regarded by some as lowering the tone. A few residents decided it just wouldn’t do and complained to the newspapers, who lapped it up.
“One man was speaking crap in my point of view, making out that we were driving round the place like lunatics, holding parties and building these horrible new houses, which is just a load of . . . ,” Duff says. “Chelsea moving there has brought up the value of people’s homes, but they don’t look at it like that. I’ve got a nice house and a nice car. I get paid an awful lot of money to play football and if I wasn’t being paid an awful lot of money I’d still be playing football. It’s the only thing I love and the only thing that I’m good at.”
Duff has landed himself in the centre of the greatest revolution in the history of club football and, two years on, he still can’t quite believe it. “Even some days now when I go in I pinch myself. I’ve come a long way. No disrespect to Blackburn, Chelsea is just a different world, it’s just getting bigger and bigger. So even now I pinch myself.”
He has managed to hold down a regular place in the face of the arrival of the likes of Arjen Robben and Shaun Wright-Phillips. Robben has already complained this season that the pressure of losing your place because of making a mistake was too great. Did Duff feel a similar pressure? “Maybe a wee bit, but I don’t think you go into games thinking about making mistakes, you just have to be positive and get on with it,” he says. “Even in training you have to be on your toes, you can’t be slackening off with the squad we have.”
Duff’s staying power at Chelsea is not just due to his attacking flair; the contribution he makes defensively is enormous and the rarity with which he gives the ball away is uncanny. Here he acknowledges that his game has changed over the years.
“At Blackburn I used to just get the ball and run at people, head down. Maybe I was a bit gung-ho. Now I think about it a bit more and often I’ll give a simple pass. Who knows if it’s for the worse or better? It’s what I’ve learnt to do and I do without thinking.”
Now he feels his relationship with Jose Mourinho, the self-styled “special one”, is one of mutual respect. “He can have a great laugh and a joke with players. At the same time he’s the boss and we look up to him. He’s amazing to work with, you learn so much from him.”
Did it concern Duff that Mourinho had warned his players about the consequences of concentrating on World Cup qualification rather than their club commitments? “No. He’s been brilliant with the lads going away for international matches. Nothing was said when we played a friendly international at the beginning of the season, two days after the game against Wigan. He’s the best manager in the world.”
Duff realises he has a big role to play in Brian Kerr’s success or otherwise in the Ireland job. “Ireland do rely on me a bit more than Chelsea do and rightly so. Chelsea have in my opinion the best squad in the world.”
The France game, he believes, is “massive”. He adds: “The city is buzzing. We’ve turned over big teams at Lansdowne but obviously we had to put in a big performance so that’s what we have to do on Wednesday. Anything less won’t do.”
If anybody will lead by example it will be Duff, Ireland’s new main man.
Chelsea fans are certainly impressed with that article:
http://www.cfcnet.co.uk/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=10804