On 26 November 2011, Gary Speed’s family lost a husband, a father, a brother and a son. Football lost one of its kindest people. Speed was a terrific midfielder and a highly promising manager, but in the aftermath of his passing the focus barely wavered from paying tribute to Gary as a person. “One of the good guys”; the cliché had never felt more appropriate.
This year marks a decade since Speed’s death. This weekend, Leeds United host Everton: Gary’s first club, where he won the First Division title as a precocious and inspirational 23-year-old, against his second, the club he had supported as a boy. It will be an occasion of sadness as both clubs dwell on the hidden monster of mental and emotional distress and the absence of Speed in the stands, but also of gratitude for the happiness he provided to so many.
‘‘I still find it hard to believe that Gary is gone,” former Everton and Wales goalkeeper Neville Southall told me during work on his book Mind Games. “I still forget now, thinking that at some point he will walk into the room at a Wales game and I’ll be able to have a chat with him again. I think that reflects that he is still there in some form, in my memories of him. Gary was a person whose impact upon people will last forever, and so many of the people he played with or managed would say exactly the same.”
The recognition of legacy is a vital tool in the grieving process. It allows those devastated by a person’s passing to maintain a flame of their life. In those who were influenced by, knew or worked with them, flickers of fond memory appear. They may last only a second, but in that moment you experience a warming familiarity that helps to console the soul.
And Speed did leave a legacy. If we do not truly pass until everyone who knew us has passed too and when everything we worked towards has lost all impact, there is reason to be thankful and even upbeat. The rise of the Wales national team over the last decade is a statue to the communal spirit of their group and an association finally able to have all parts moving in the same direction, but nobody is under any illusions of who helped to make it possible.
“In the best possible way, Gary is untouchable amongst Welsh supporters,” says comedian, broadcaster and Wales supporter Elis James. “It was a crushing loss, punishingly sad. I think the stereotype of footballers over the last few years has changed; the self-obsessed, vain, arrogant footballer doesn’t really exist anymore. And Gary helped change that perception. I remember thinking, when he died, that if every footballer was like Gary Speed, the world would be a better place. He was just an absolute credit to his country and his family.”
A large part of Speed’s influence was the togetherness that now comes as standard in the Wales setup. In March 2011, before a game against England, he issued each player with the words to the national anthem – in Welsh – and told them to learn it, phonetically if they had to. When players arrive into the squad for the first time, they are provided with education on the cultural and societal history of the country.
Never again would the national team be comprised of disparate individuals who viewed international football as a distraction from their club responsibilities. It needed to mean something more. Former winger David Cotterill insisted that the mood around the camp changed during his tenure: “Every time we’ve come away the last few camps everyone seems together and it definitely changed when Gary Speed took over.”
James adds: “That national pride had existed before; the teams in the 1970s were evidently patriotic. But there was a focused patriotism that I think that came out of a culmination of Gary’s time and Chris Coleman’s time. For a small country, things like learning the anthems when just over 20 percent of the country speaks the national language is incredibly powerful. It’s great for the supporters to see the players belt it out. It’s about having pride in where you’re from and representing that place.”
Speed was only manager of Wales for 11 months before that tragic November morning when the Football Association of Wales confirmed what had already become widespread news. But his influence had already engineered something special.
With only four months of managerial experience at Sheffield United, he was a risky appointment and found a national team that was ranked 112th in the world. Repeated agonising failure to qualify for major tournaments – 1981, 1985, 1993 – had given way to malaise and mismanagement. During their qualification campaign for the 2010 World Cup, Wales had only taken points against Azerbaijan and Liechtenstein. In December 2011, a month after Speed’s death, Wales were awarded the title of “Best Movers” of the year by Fifa; Wales had risen 64 places.
“When he took over, he was a fledgling manager,” James says. “But that’s the reality of the job because of the finances of the FAW. We couldn’t afford to go out and get a Carlo Ancelotti or a Fabio Capello; the money just wasn’t there. So we’re always going to be tempted by a legendary ex-player. Welsh football was at a really low ebb and he helped to change that in the space of a calendar year. After the 4-1 win against Norway in particular, I remember thinking ‘Hang on, we’re onto something here; this feels really different’.”
You might uncharitably assume that Speed – and Chris Coleman, who replaced him as manager – were simply the beneficiaries of a golden generation of Welsh players: Gareth Bale, Aaron Ramsey, Ashley Williams, Joe Allen, Chris Gunter. But Speed maximised those advantages by affording added responsibility to young players in the belief that forming a core group who could stay together for a decade was as important as their individual ability. Ramsey was made Wales’ youngest ever captain (aged 20 years and 90 days) for Speed’s first competitive match in charge.
Away from the pitch, Speed made demands that the Wales team should have the same facilities as any other nation with ambitions of sustainable success. Dragon Park, a £5m training centre in Newport, was announced four months after his appointment as manager; a new head of performance and fitness coach were appointed. Again, the tragedy is that Speed was not alive to see Dragon Park open in 2013 nor to witness how it catapulted Wales to the status of contenders in 2016.
“The way players talk about him, about his professionalism, that was something that excited us so much when Gary was made manager,” James says. “The training sessions were completely different, he introduced sports science. He was used to the best because he played at top clubs and he’d only recently finished his playing career, so he was bringing in Premier League sensibilities to the Wales setup.
“If you don’t have that at international level and you do at your club, I think it can be very demoralising. I think it affects everyone’s mentality if you turn up to your international side, which should be the culmination of your career, its high point, and the facilities or the professionalism just isn’t there, that has to affect your mood. That carried on through Coleman, Ryan Giggs and Robert Page, and it has changed. The mantra now is that they will prepare the players in the best way possible, so there can be no excuses. It’s down to you to perform. As supporters, that’s all we ever wanted.”
Identifying to what extent Wales’ Euro 2016 success was fuelled by an emotional urge to make good on Speed’s work and tragic loss is a complicated matter. There is a tendency, even a desire, to romanticise. By that stage, Wales had built something that felt genuinely self-fulfilling. The squad shared a camaraderie unmatched by other nations and contained no little exceptional talent.
But how could they not have Gary in their thoughts? When Wales played Costa Rica in February 2012 in his memorial match, Speed’s father gave a pre-match speech and his two sons led Wales onto the pitch in Cardiff. Over a third of Wales’ squad at Euro 2016 were also in the matchday squad that night. Each of them speaks with great emotion about the impact Speed had on them as people and players. The love, respect and admiration is painfully obvious.
“I wasn’t one of the players so I can’t put words in their mouths,” says James. “But that group suffered terrible personal adversity, whether they worked with Gary or not, because of how much he meant. I think for everyone involved in Welsh football, there was an outpouring of gratitude for what he had done and a crushing sadness that he wasn’t there to see it.”
from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/314CP0z
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