' BELLAMY - THE TIMES, FULL ARTICLE '

From today's times chaps.

"Craig Bellamy could guess some of the reaction when allegations including bullying in Cardiff City’s youth system, where he was in charge of the under-18s, were first aired at the start of the year.

“I can hear them, ‘Yeah he would do that, he would be like that,’ ” Bellamy, 40, says. He knows the rush to judgment is a legacy of his years as a snarling forward with clubs such as Liverpool and Manchester City, and Wales, and understands it — to an extent.

Bellamy can be tough, uncompromising and, as he sits down to talk at length for the first time since accusations appeared ten months ago, he explains why an apology is necessary for some mistakes, including swearing as a frustrated coach at teenage players.

“Swearing, I apologise for that,” he says. “‘For f***’s sake, close him down.’ That’s inappropriate. Players swearing at each other, I should have stopped it. I thought, ‘18, they can vote, legally do all sorts,’ so it is part of being young men but I accept it’s not right.”

He has wrestled internally with how he handled difficult conversations, mostly around releasing boys from Cardiff’s academy, and whether he was sympathetic enough. “I think that’s one thing that can be thrown at me,” he says. “I found that very difficult to know what to say when they didn’t make it.


“If some thought I was too demanding — and this is where the apology comes in — maybe I didn’t talk as much as I could have done to those I had to leave out or release. I had to release my own son, break it to him that he wasn’t good enough. It’s horrible. Maybe I didn’t show enough empathy.”

But having been forced to stay quiet for so long, he is also keen to provide a fuller picture; to insist that he “deplores bullying” and point out that he faces no action from the game’s authorities after Cardiff’s lengthy investigation.

To point out too that, even with the Cardiff inquiry hanging over him, Vincent Kompany offered him a key job at Anderlecht in charge of the under-21s; evidence, he suggests, that those who have a fixed impression of him might want to reconsider.

“People believe what they want to believe but in football they actually know me,” he says. “Vincent Kompany knows me. To have one of the greatest Premier League players taking you as one of his first appointments into the club he loves, if that doesn’t tell you something then I don’t know what does. I don’t think people think Vincent is a bad judge of character.”

Bellamy is four months into his role in Belgium and with confirmation that the FA will not be taking any action, was happy to sit down in Brussels where he is revelling in his work at a club that takes youth development very seriously.

“There have been six boys from my team here making their first-team debut already this season,” he says. “Not one in two years at Cardiff. I tried and I tried but I couldn’t even get them into first-team training.”

A change of culture has been welcome in many ways, including anonymity. Bellamy has enjoyed blending into Brussels life and, like a true local, even turns up on an electric scooter.

Such a significant move has brought a few reminders of how it was for Bellamy heading to Norwich City from Cardiff when he was a teenager, plunged into a new environment.

“But it was much tougher as a kid,” he says. He suffered from severe homesickness and bullying. The memories are still raw.

“When people say, ‘You can’t do how it was in your day’ I agree,” he says. “I don’t want it like in my time. It was horrible. It was seen as character building but it could be horrendous, mental and physical abuse.

Bellamy said that he wanted to give something back to Cardiff, one of his clubs as a playerBellamy said that he wanted to give something back to Cardiff, one of his clubs as a player
PA
“The good stuff, making friendships, great. But even among the kids, it could be like Lord of the Flies. Stuff with Deep Heat which I can’t really say but it was uncomfortable.”

It left him, he insists, wanting something different for boys he coaches, though they would have to demonstrate the hunger that carried Bellamy from being close to giving up on football to a long, successful career.

A fiercely driven man, he says that the Cardiff accusations have to be put into the context of what he found when, soon after his retirement in 2014, he was asked to help out with the academy.

“I had just retired so I was happy to go in, take one or two sessions. How many ex-players do that for nothing?” he says. “I’m grateful for where I’m from and wanted to give something back.”

It went well enough that Cardiff offered Bellamy the head-of-development role. He very quickly concluded that huge improvements were required, a transformation in attitudes.

“They were thinking of shutting the academy. A lot of clubs were doing that at the time, Brentford, Huddersfield. If you are spending £1.9 million and not getting any players in the first team, what’s the point?” he says.

“A lot of people at the club were also saying they didn’t have the quality. But I completely disagreed about that. I said ‘I’m telling you now, you’ve got the players.’ They had the talent but the discipline was abysmal. I went down to see the under-10s and honestly I left with my head scrambled.

“One player was trying to nutmeg me every ten seconds, another jumping on my back, kids misbehaving. It was like a crèche, not an academy. I spoke to the coaches and said, ‘This isn’t good enough. It’s meant to be a privilege.’

“At the under-18s, they were getting battered. They had ability but they didn’t want to run. They were going out, socialising and putting it all on Instagram. So I said from day one, ‘We have to get stricter, enforce some rules.’

“I told the players, ‘This is going to be tough, intensity has to go up. Some will revel in it and some will want out, it will be too hard for you.’ That’s how it was.

“A few wanted to leave but I can’t tell you the amount of supportive letters I’ve had from parents and players who would love to come out here to Belgium. We won the league for the first time ever and the most professional contracts from one age group.”

So why the need to say sorry, to embark on “self-reflection” and “assess the sensitivities of a new generation of players”?

“I never wanted to get too close to players knowing there would be some hard decisions,” he says. “I still don’t know what to say. Say too much and you feel like you are lying to them. But maybe I didn’t show enough empathy. I’ll apologise for that but I won’t apologise for being demanding.”

He has to accept that he broke certain regulations around youth coaching beyond swearing, albeit insisting that they were not at the serious end.

“There was the time it was raining and I stopped to give one lad a lift,” he says. “I broke a rule. I should have had another adult in the car. I should have let the lad walk in the rain, freezing cold.”

One complaint hard not to smile about is when England were playing Croatia in the World Cup semi-final in 2018.

The squad were on a camp and Bellamy was accused of xenophobia for insisting the volume was turned off on the television for the national anthem.

“What people don’t say is that we had two English coaches and when the anthem comes on, one stands up, hand on chest,” Bellamy says, struggling not to smile. “I turned the volume off so he had to sing it out loud.”

Harmless fun or belittling? “I have to understand that we had a couple of English boys who might not like that,” he says. “But to say I was only playing Welsh players, I have to disagree and the evidence never showed it. I just wanted the best players.

“Every training session was filmed. Was there really anything so bad? I was demanding but I felt I had to prepare them that life isn’t fair. Most of those kids won’t make it and even those that do, how do you prepare a kid for what happened with [Granit] Xhaka, 60,000 of your own fans booing? How mentally does he deal with that? They need to have resilience.

“Maybe these are different times. I watched one team: a player was sent off, the coach goes to speak to him and this lad goes ‘f*** off’. The coach turns to me and says, ‘What can you do?’’ Tell that kid, ‘Who the f*** do you think you are?’ and you’re the one in trouble.

“There are complaints against youth coaches on a weekly basis. Maybe some are justified, some not. Mine took ten months and I was assumed guilty. I felt I had to step down because it wasn’t fair on the players, but who is there to protect coaches because not everyone is guilty?”

That is a question being asked in many sports beyond football. Bellamy pauses. “A lot more was said in the media than ever got presented to me as an allegation,” he says. “The FA are taking no action so . . .”

At the worst of the controversy, he wondered whether to abandon coaching younger players altogether. He had come close to the Wales senior job and had accepted the manager’s post at Oxford United before changing his mind.

Anderlecht was impossible to turn down. “Development is something I love,” he says. “Even as a first-team manager I would want academy players because that should be the heartbeat of every team as well as making it work as a business.

“I tried to change it at Cardiff because I’m from there. But you can’t change above you. Everyone at the club has to believe in it. So it’s from one extreme at Cardiff to another here at Anderlecht where it’s all about development.”

He had always hankered after playing abroad — “my biggest regret is that it never happened” — so experiencing it as a coach is the next best thing, especially at a club renowned for their academy.

Under Jean Kindermans, mastermind of the Purple Talent Programme at Anderlecht, the club produced eight of the 23 Belgium players who reached the World Cup semi-finals last year including Kompany, Romelu Lukaku, Youri Tielemans and Dries Mertens.

“They say ‘In Youth We Trust’,” Bellamy says. “You only have to see the first-team squad, some weeks it has been 11 of 18 from the academy. So for me to get that opportunity here, it was the shortest conversation ever.”

Bellamy’s side have been flying but it has not been easy for Kompany’s first team. A local hero, the defender came back as player-manager but after a very bumpy start, the former Manchester City stalwart stepped down from match-day managerial duties to focus on playing, leaving Simon Davies in charge. Then Davies, a former City coach, stepped back into an assistant’s role a month ago and Franky Vercauteren returned as a senior voice — though Bellamy says “there is only one boss” with a nod to Kompany’s status.

After all this upheaval, Anderlecht sit 12th of 16 teams in the Jupiter League. “Vincent has been very bold in what he’s done,” Bellamy says. “Probably only he could try. It’s a massive reboot.

“Are we going to get results straight away? You can’t have this amount of young players and expect to be challenging. But in my opinion, in one, two years this will be a top club. There are too many good young players not to. If we can keep them, there’s so much quality.

“It’s my job to get them ready for the first team. There have been injuries [including Nacer Chadli, Samir Nasri and Kompany himself] so six boys already made their first-team debut. Two were 18, three were 17, one was 16.

“There’s no point having the best young players in Belgium if we are not playing them. It’s very multicultural, a lot of families with Moroccan heritage, Congolese, Mali, Norwegian, Latvian.

“Lots of different cultures and backgrounds but one thing they share is the work ethic. I came from somewhere trying to instil that in them. Here it feels different.

“Kids at home have to understand that they are competing with these players. They are here for your spots and they are getting exposed to first-team football. We can have a kid who has played more than 100 games at 20. They know they are here to play.”

Bellamy says there are plenty of clubs sniffing around exceptional talent such as Sambi Lokonga, who has been tracked by Barcelona. The opportunity to play is one way they try to keep them. “English lads are seeing that now too. Do you want to go to a Premier League club and join the stockpile or have a pathway, progress, a career?”

From his base in Brussels, Bellamy says that he is revelling in the chance to jump on a train and take in games in Amsterdam and so many nearby cities. His family are back home in Wales but this father of three says he has never been busier.

“I’ve been here four months but it feels like two years with all I’ve taken in,” he says. “Two, three sessions a day coaching or observing.”

He talks of the masterclass he has had from Kompany in the methodology of Pep Guardiola. “Balance is everything,” he says. Bellamy spends five minutes with a paper and pad explaining how City and Liverpool have their own versions of a 2-3-2-3 formation and how it works so effectively not just in possession but pressing.

“I’ve learnt so much,” he says. Like what? “I’ve been critical of Liverpool midfield players not getting enough goals,” he says. “I was wrong, didn’t have a clue. I didn’t understand the role in that system. It’s all about the system, balance, knowing your position.”

It is what he seeks to pass on because finding the talent, he says, is the easy bit. Discipline, too.

“Maybe some people still see me as an angry player,” he says. “They would be surprised by my team talks. These kids just want to learn.

“I love it. Those ten months I really missed the job, hated being away from coaching. I need football in my life."

Just as id expected , attitude within our academy.

Incidentally the academy boys still at the club at a professional level by all accounts are good lads, hopefully that can be a lesson to some of the youngsters who think they’ve made it already just being at an academy

He does raise a lot of valid points there, including the fact that no one from first team upwards seems to want to use our youth.

Good read.

Big loss to our academy. Let's hope he comes back wiser one day.

Should be our next manager. Winner through and through.

Just as id expected , attitude within our academy.

Incidentally the academy boys still at the club at a professional level by all accounts are good lads, hopefully that can be a lesson to some of the youngsters who think they’ve made it already just being at an academy

you do realise that's Craigs version ….?
not quite what the club report said but eh oh...

Attacked a player with a golf club.

Slapped a pitch invader.

Broke the arm of another player fighting.

Threw a female out of a car and kicked her.

Turned on Welsh supporters.

The clubs report into what st happened clearly shows things weren't right and on the back of him writi g the article above people want him back and even say in a managerial role.

Best away from the club in my opinion. Has had issues his whole career why would it change now??