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Craig Bellamy: GoodFella.

Wed May 29, 2013 6:08 am

CRAIG BELLAMY is one of those footballers you can't ignore.

If he plays for your team, you love him. If he doesn't . . . Everyone knows Bellamy. Pace and passion. A handful for defenders. Scoring goals and winding up opponents. Winning friends and making enemies.

Blessed with a natural talent, he has enjoyed a colourful career at a host of top clubs. The proud Welshman is one of the top ten appearance makers for his country. But his rise to the top of the game wasn't easy.

It could have all been so different. He came from a loving family but there were temptations in his way. Follow the crowd or follow a dream? Join your mates in a gang on the streets or try to make it as a pro? It was a choice between the two.

Bellamy chose football and became a rebel with a cause. He quickly climbed the ladder and shared dressing rooms with some of the biggest stars in football from Ryan Giggs to Steven Gerrard. His burning desire to succeed made him a winner on the pitch, but that same passion also got him into trouble.

He earned hero status at Newcastle for his Player of the Season performances, but controversy soon followed after a chair throwing incident involving the first team coach, a public bust-up with Graeme Souness and a telephone text scandal with Alan Shearer.

Later, he joined his boyhood heroes Liverpool where he would score a famous goal against Barcelona in the Nou Camp, days after striking his team-mate John Arne Riise with a golf club after a karaoke night. He enjoyed further success at high-flying Manchester City where he was caught on TV slapping the face of a pitch invader.

A second term at Liverpool and other spells at West Ham, Celtic, Blackburn Rovers, Coventry, Norwich and his hometown team Cardiff have been equally eventful.

Away from the spotlight, however, there is a very different side to Craig Bellamy. His earnings from this book will be going to the Craig Bellamy Foundation, a charity that he is passionate about which offers children in Sierra Leone the chance to fulfill their sporting potential. He is a devoted Dad and was heartbroken at the tragic and shocking death of his close friend Gary Speed.

Craig Bellamy: GoodFella, is a no-holds barred, often surprising whistlestop ride through a football career in the fast lane. Like the man himself, it won't hold back.
CCFC :ayatollah: :ayatollah: :ayatollah:

Re: Craig Bellamy: GoodFella.

Wed May 29, 2013 6:20 am

Craig is one of life's characters and I'm looking forward to reading it :ayatollah:

Has anyone asked Annis if advertising someone else's book on this forum is allowed?? :lol: :lol: :laughing6: :ayatollah:

Re: Craig Bellamy: GoodFella.

Wed May 29, 2013 6:23 am

I'm preordering this now online. Will get it signed then by the man himself.

:malky:

Re: Craig Bellamy: GoodFella.

Wed May 29, 2013 7:46 am

When's the book coming on sale?

Re: Craig Bellamy: GoodFella.

Wed May 29, 2013 9:41 am

Id love this for my holidays but im gonna wait for it on paperback.

Re: Craig Bellamy: GoodFella.

Fri May 31, 2013 12:20 pm

The Rise Of The Red Dragon. wrote:I'm preordering this now online. Will get it signed then by the man himself.

:malky:


How are you getting this!?. I've been looking for a signed version of it on Ebay.

Re: Craig Bellamy: GoodFella.

Fri May 31, 2013 12:22 pm

Released june 3rd

Re: Craig Bellamy: GoodFella.

Fri May 31, 2013 12:29 pm

Monsieur Mê wrote:
The Rise Of The Red Dragon. wrote:I'm preordering this now online. Will get it signed then by the man himself.

:malky:


How are you getting this!?. I've been looking for a signed version of it on Ebay.


My nephew trains with Bellamy's son Ellis. Will see him at training. :thumbright:

Re: Craig Bellamy: GoodFella.

Fri May 31, 2013 12:32 pm

A taste of what in his book



Craig Bellamy’s autobiography, GoodFella, lays bare one of the most notorious incidents in recent English football history.

In February 2007, Liverpool travelled to Portugal for a five-day training camp to prepare for their Champions League second round tie against Barcelona.

On the last night on the Algarve, Liverpool boss Rafa Benitez allowed the players out for a meal but it was disrupted by an argument between Craig Bellamy and John Arne Riise, whose nickname was Ginge...

Ginge was a nice enough lad.

He was a bit of a child. He was insanely ­competitive. If there was a competition to see who could ping a shot against the crossbar, he was always mad keen to win it.

People used to make a joke of it and say: ‘I bet Ginge could do that’.

That night at Vale do Lobo, I was sitting with Steve Finnan, who was my ­room-mate, Sami Hyypia and Ginge.

I told Ginge he had to sing a song. I might have said it a couple of times. He said he didn’t want to do it.

I mentioned it again and he snapped. He got s****y about it. He got up and started shouting. “Listen,” he yelled, “I’m not singing and I’ve had enough of you banging on about it.”

Sami told me to ignore him and Ginge left fairly soon afterwards. But as the evening wore on and I had more to drink, it started eating away at me.

At that time, the way I was, I didn’t know how to control my emotions if someone disrespected me in front of the rest of the players.

I am one of the worst people on drink. It doesn’t agree with me.

After a while, I told Finnan we were going.

I told him I wanted to sort it out with Ginge.

“I’m not having that,” I said to Finny.

“What are you on about?” he said.

“That ginger f****** p****, he ain’t speaking to me like that,” I said.

Finny told me to ignore him. He told me to forget it and go to bed.

“I’m not ignoring him,” I said. “I’m going to go to his room.”

Finny told me to calm down.

“No, let’s go to our room,” he said.

He was trying to humour me, like a warder with a madman.

We did go back to our room but I still couldn’t let it go.

We had a shared lounge with bedrooms that were upstairs.

Our golf clubs were in the lounge. I’d got one out as I was stewing over what Ginge had done.

It was an eight iron.

I started taking a few practice swings with it.

“Let’s go and see him now,” I said.

John Arne Riise "I just whacked him across the backside ... if I’d taken a proper swing, I would have hit the ceiling with my backlift"
Action


I just wanted to wind Ginge up a bit.

He had tried it on with me once or twice in training. He had given me a little nudge in the back.

I’d just look at him and think ‘F*** off, Ginge.’

So we got round to his room and I knocked on the door. There was no answer.

So I tried the door and it was open. I let myself in and turned the light on.

Ginge was in bed.

He was facing away from me and covering his eyes with his hands because the lights had been switched on.

I just whacked him across the ­backside with the club.

You couldn’t really call it a swing. It was just a thwack, really.

If I’d taken a proper swing, I would have hit the ceiling with my backlift.

Finny, by the way, was hiding behind the door at that point.

Ginge panicked.

He curled up in a ball with a blanket.

“You ever speak to me like that in front of people again,” I told him, “I will wrap this round your head.”

“Listen, I didn’t mean it like that,” he said.

“Yes you f****** did,” I barked at him.

“No, no, I didn’t,” he insisted.

“Yes, you did,” I told him again. “That’s a couple of times you’ve pulled that f****** stunt on me and it won’t be happening any more.”

I was warming to my theme now, like people who have had too much to drink usually do.

I threatened him a few times.

“And if you’ve got a problem with any of this, come and see me in my room tomorrow,” I told him. “Don’t go moaning about it.”

I look back at what I did now and I cringe.

It was pathetic. It was stupidity of the highest level. It was drunken, bullying behaviour.

Eventually, I left.

As Finny and I were going back to our room, the coach pulled up outside and all the players poured off it.

They bumped into us in the corridor and, not knowing anything of what had just gone on, piled into our lounge.

It had been a big night. Nobody even noticed the golf club in my hand. Or if they did, they didn’t mention it.

So the night out continued.

The lounge got wrecked basically.

Sofas were turned upside down, lampshades got knocked off lamps, somebody even chucked a plate at one stage and it split someone’s head open.

By the time I went to bed, that room was not a pretty sight.

The next thing I knew, Finnan was knocking on my door.

“The Gaffer and Pako are downstairs,” he said. ‘Oh, s**t’, I thought. ‘There are a whole number of reasons why they might be here’.

I went downstairs. It was not a pretty picture.

Rafa and his assistant, Pako Ayesteran, were sitting on a sofa that they must have had to pull upright themselves.

Rafa - the most ordered, controlling man I knew - surrounded by utter chaos, by a scene that screamed out loss of control.

There were plates and lampshades everywhere.

Rafa looked at me and told me to put some shoes on before I cut my feet on some debris.

“John Arne Riise has just come to my room to say you attacked him with a golf club,” Rafa said.

“I wouldn’t say I attacked him, exactly,” I said.

I gave him my version. I was already full of remorse.

Rafa looked bemused. It turned out he had had quite a night himself.

A little while later, Dudek appeared with grazes down the side of his face.

“What the f*** happened to Jerzy?” I asked.

AC Milan 3-3 Liverpool, Champions League Final, May 25, 2005 - Jerzy Dudek celebrates his heroics in the shoot-out Save me: Dudek was bailed out (literally) by boss Benitez

After I had left the previous night, things had got out of hand.

Jerzy had refused to leave the bar and the police were called and he had ended up in the cells. Rafa had to go and bail him out.

I actually felt relieved.

‘That’s miles worse than my one,’ I thought as I stared over at Jerzy. ‘That might save me.’

That delusion didn’t last long...


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Re: Craig Bellamy: GoodFella.

Fri May 31, 2013 12:33 pm

I met David Moyes at the Celtic Manor hotel just outside Newport after my loan spell at Celtic from Newcastle had finished in the summer of 2005.

I really enjoyed talking to him.

I always liked the way Everton played under him. I love their work ethic and their attitude.

Moyes was very persuasive.

I felt a bid odd about the prospect of joining them because I had been a committed Liverpool fan since I was a kid, but he sold me on Everton.

I agreed terms and went up to meet Moyes again, this time at his house near Preston.

I took my suitcase with me, so I could move into a hotel that night after I had signed and start pre-season training the next day.

But when I got there, I could tell straight away that something had changed.

It was like talking to a different bloke. He seemed tense and hostile.

He presented me with a list of rules.

They were very detailed and exact.

They tried to imagine certain scenarios and dictate how I would react.

“If I ask you to move to the right in the 60th minute, I don’t want you shaking your head” or “If you have got something to say, do not speak to anyone else about it, come and see me.”

They went on and on.

I thought ‘Where are we going with this?’

It was a completely different individual to the guy I was speaking to a month ago.

It was as if he had spoken to someone who had changed his mind about me. It felt like he was looking for a way out.

It was bizarre.

If we hadn’t had that second meeting, I would have signed.

Now I couldn’t.

It was awkward.

Everton chairman Bill Kenwright was on the phone saying all the arrangements were in place for the medical once the formalities had been completed.

My representative didn’t go into details, he just told Mr Kenwright I'd had a change of heart.

A few weeks later, Moyes rang my representative and apologised.

I don’t hold a grudge about it. I’ve got a lot of time for him and he tried to sign me a couple of times subsequently.

My guess is that someone told him I’d be trouble and he panicked a bit.


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Re: Craig Bellamy: GoodFella.

Fri May 31, 2013 12:35 pm

People posting spoilers should be banned. Well done for ruining the book.

Re: Craig Bellamy: GoodFella.

Fri May 31, 2013 12:35 pm

I felt bad for Newcastle when they lost their 2005 FA Cup semi-final to Manchester United.

They had loaned me out to Celtic by then, but I still had a lot of affection for them.

They lost 4-1 and were never in it.

Afterwards, Alan Shearer did a television interview.

He mentioned shortcomings in defence, which made me laugh.

Alan needed to look at himself a bit more. He wasn’t the player he had been and now he was trying to pass the buck.

It was sad, because I had so much admiration for Alan as a player and I learned so much from him. But time had caught up with him.

I had seen the semi-final.

I had seen how poorly he performed personally.

I thought it was wrong for him to do an ­interview afterwards in those circumstances.

So I got my phone out and texted him.

“F****** typical of you,” I texted. “Looking at everyone else yet again. You need to look at yourself instead. Your legs are f****** shot. Concentrate on yourself and let the team take care of itself.”

I got one back from him straight away.

“If I ever see you in Newcastle again,” he wrote, “I’ll knock you out.”

“I’m back in Newcastle next week,” I texted back. “Pop round and say hello.”

I certainly wasn’t scared of him.

I’ve seen his bite.

His 'Big, hard Al' act wasn’t for me.

I have seen younger boys than me put him in his place on the team coach.

I watched him digging out Lomana LuaLua once, and when LuaLua told him to go to the back of the coach and say it to his face, Al didn’t fancy that much.

He didn’t move an inch.


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Re: Craig Bellamy: GoodFella.

Fri May 31, 2013 12:36 pm

I thought it would make you want to buy it even more!!!

Miserable B****** :ayatollah: :ayatollah:

Re: Craig Bellamy: GoodFella.

Fri May 31, 2013 1:46 pm

Signed copies on Monday. Details on the official site if you haven't already seen.

Re: Craig Bellamy: GoodFella.

Sun Jun 02, 2013 10:33 pm

By Oliver Holt 1 Comment
Craig Bellamy on troubled times at Newcastle and the man-management genius of Sir Bobby Robson
2 Jun 2013 22:30
"Alan Shearer had to say how much he rated me, too. I could tell Alan was saying that through gritted teeth. It was killing him."



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Re: Craig Bellamy: GoodFella.

Mon Jun 03, 2013 12:53 am

Gutted that it's not going to be available as a digital title on launch.

Can't be reading paper books these days.

Hopefully it appears on Kindle or iBooks soon!

Re: Craig Bellamy: GoodFella.

Mon Jun 03, 2013 7:18 am

The Rise Of The Red Dragon. wrote:
Monsieur Mê wrote:
The Rise Of The Red Dragon. wrote:I'm preordering this now online. Will get it signed then by the man himself.

:malky:


How are you getting this!?. I've been looking for a signed version of it on Ebay.


My nephew trains with Bellamy's son Ellis. Will see him at training. :thumbright:

Bullshit, you'll be going to the book-signing at the CCS today like everyone else!