Stephen Mc Phail article from times.co.uk
Renaissance man yearns for big time
Rick Broadbent
Grasp of reality: McPhail tangles with Michael Kightly, of Wolves, at Molineux on Saturday (Peter Ford / Action Images)
It has been a long and winding road, with detours via Barcelona, Barnsley and the Bronx, but the man once compared to Liam Brady believes he is finally approaching the end-game. Remember Stephen McPhail? He had it all. Hailed as the most naturally gifted of a Leeds United team that made the Uefa Cup semi-finals, the future seemed bright, but then the chairman starting renting goldfish, the dream imploded and the new poet of the left foot was sent off on his loan debut for Millwall.
It has taken five years for the Irishman to rediscover the lustrous talent and spearhead Cardiff City’s staccato assault on the Barclays Premiership. In the interim, Leeds have entered a seemingly inexorable decline, while Peter Ridsdale, the former chairman, has fronted a takeover at Ninian Park.
“I look back and it’s all a bit of a daze,” McPhail said. “It knocks your confidence when you drop down a level, but you have to learn quick. It’s made me stronger to see how the other half live. At Barnsley, there were a lot of young lads who were on a pittance scrapping to get into the team, and it made me realise that there’s a lot more to football than just playing for a big club.”
McPhail spent two years at Barnsley after brief loan spells at Nottingham Forest and Millwall. Barely a year after playing a Champions League match in the Nou Camp, he was taking on Gillingham. It was a decline that might have crushed lesser men, but McPhail always had a sharper perspective than many of his peers.
“When I was a kid, we went to live in the Bronx for three years,” he said. “My dad was a carpenter and there was a big job out there. It was strange going from a nice seaside town in Dublin to a place where you weren’t allowed outside the school doors. We were right beside the hospital and it was mayhem, noise going on through the night. It was a different world and it opened my eyes. You couldn’t play football in the streets there, but my mam would take us to the park and I never let go of that.”
When the family returned home, McPhail became close friends with Robbie Keane. Even now he seems baffled that Leeds could allow Keane to leave as a youth and then spend £12 million on him, but McPhail’s own progress was swift. George Graham mentioned him in the same breath as Brady and Paul Hart, the then youth team coach, said he treated the ball like gold-dust. Even as recently as May 2004, he was still playing for Leeds, but by then both player and club were on the way down.
“I’ve tried to erase it,” he said of the Leeds years. “I didn’t play for a year and a half through injury and there was a new manager every three months. It was one in, one out and it wasn’t working for me. I could easily have stayed because I had two years left, but I wanted out. It was hard because I’d been there for a decade, but I’d recommend dropping down a level to anyone. It’s good for your character to see people who are really dedicated because they need to make a living.”
McPhail, 27 and celebrating the birth of his first child, is content even though Cardiff’s early-season promise has faded and the 4-0 FA Cup drubbing by Keane and Tottenham Hotspur marked 13 games without a win.
McPhail insists the future is bright and is happy to defend Ridsdale. “Peter is a top man,” McPhail said. “He’s a really nice bloke who loves his football. People criticise him for what happened at Leeds, but he was one bloke answering for a lot of others. Look at what that team achieved. People are fickle.”
Cardiff’s recent poor run, brought to an end with victory at Molineux on Saturday, has not dimmed McPhail’s optimism and the Premiership remains an obsession. “Once you’ve tasted it you want more,” he said. “I want to get up and show I can still do it at that level.”
