Chuckling goalie heads for TV

When his teenage sons were little, David Seaman liked to play football with them on the lawn. One day, his son Daniel, who was then eight, turned to him and said, ‘Dad, can I be David Seaman?”

It was the moment at which the England goalkeeper registered the huge and disembodied nature of his celebrity, a moment, potentially, to send him spinning into therapy. But he just laughed. It was, he says, so funny.

Today, he stands in the glass and marble foyer of a television company, like a man who has been drawn not to scale. TV people flutter round him, whispering, ‘Oh my God, David’s so amazingly lovely.”

Seaman scuffs his trainers, bows his head and tosses his mane like a My Little Pony, or rather a My Giant Pony. Shaking his hand is like submerging one’s own in an uncooked loaf.

‘Just give us a sign, David,” says a waifish TV aide, ‘if you want the interview to end.”

‘The sign,” says Seaman, ‘will be Emma going through the window, ha ha ha.”

Seaman rarely gives interviews. During the World Cup, he declined to talk to the press, even before Ronaldinho’s famous shot flew over his head, putting England out of the tournament.

Much of his mystery derives from his hairstyle and his disposition, so untypical for a goalkeeper, which is usually a magnet for show-offs. Seaman is more like a pro from the world of his second favourite sport — fishing. He has been known to stay out all night.

‘There is a shyness in him,” says Bob Wilson, his former coach for 15 years.

‘Just his size — I mean, he’s huge, people don’t appreciate how big he is. He’s 1,93m and 109kg, and his physique is a strange one: he’s not tall and angular, but massive. I’ve only known two keepers who had the ability to walk into a room and fill it with their presence; one is David and the other was Pat Jennings. They have an absolute calm about them.”

It’s with uncharacteristic razzle, therefore, that Seaman has decided to launch what he hopes will be a TV career by becoming a panellist on the sports quiz show They Think It’s All Over. He will be on Rory McGrath’s team, which means becoming a target for rival team member Jonathan Ross’s wit.

‘He can’t do any hair gags though, can he? Jesus,” says Seaman. ‘Ha ha ha ha ha. I’ve been trying to get all sorts of background material. And if he really starts crucifying me, I’m just going to swear and they can’t put it in. Ha ha.”

Seaman’s range of chuckles is extraordinary. Some resonate as if he has made them in a tunnel, some are Father Christmas ho-hos, others devilish cackles. His ease of humour has got him out of trouble more than once, when a coach, a manager, or a player has had a bone to pick with him and he’s chuckled them into good sorts again.

It may, too, turn out to endear him to TV audiences, although whether or not he is actually funny remains to be seen.

‘You’re either witty or you’re not,” says Seaman. ‘I know there’ll be times when Jonathan will be quicker than me. But it’s like stepping out of the comfort zone. You’ve got to give it a go.”

‘I’m surprised that he’s doing the show because he tends to listen rather than participate,” says Tony Peisley, Seaman’s friend and ghostwriter of his memoir. ‘He’ll have to be more forceful than he normally is.”

The move from sportsman to personality is a tricky one. Seaman is in a strong position, having generated a lot of goodwill after crying on camera at the World Cup. It was the only departure from self-possession we had ever seen in him and more common, says Seaman, in the early parts of his career.

‘When it first happens you daren’t even go out of your door. You just want to stay in because you think that everybody walking around” — he whispers — ”knows what you’ve done’. And then you slowly start going out, and then you realise that not everyone likes football.”

Traditionally, in playground football games, it’s the rubbish kid who gets put in goal. Seaman was tall for his age and, at junior school in Rotherham, was invited by older boys to take the least-coveted position in their team. He found he enjoyed it.

‘I knew I was, well — I didn’t know I was good, but…” He looks bashfully at the floor. At the age of 16 he had the choice of becoming a bowler for Yorkshire or pursuing football. ‘I think I chose wisely. When it came down to it, I knew I was a better goalkeeper than I was a bowler.”

His talent as a goalkeeper, says Wilson, is in his understanding of angles and the fact that he never tries to make an easy save look difficult. He’s not flash, he won’t curl his legs up mid-flight for a photo op.

When he occasionally did this in training, Wilson would yell ‘that’s a Brucie” (after Bruce Grobbelaar, a master showman) or ‘that’s a Bosnich” (after Mark Bosnich). Showmanship brings risks and Seaman has always prided himself on having safe hands. But, of course, mistakes do happen.

‘If you choose to be a goalkeeper, you’re going to get big lows. I was England’s goalkeeper and I was Arsenal’s goalkeeper. That’s two massive high-profile jobs where if you play well, you’re going to get a lot of praise, and if you don’t, you’re going to get hammered. You just have to pull your crash helmet on, put your collar up and get on with it.”

His biggest error was in leaving the goalmouth to respond to a free kick from the Brazilian player Ronaldinho, in the quarterfinals of the World Cup last year. The ball went sailing over his head into the net and England lost.

How long did it take for the misery to wear off?

‘It doesn’t —you never forget it. That’ll be there for the rest of my life. Afterwards I didn’t even know if I wanted to carry on playing football. I felt that bad. Because I was 37, 38 when it happened. And you just think, you know, is it worth it after all you’ve done? But then I went away on holiday, sat back and thought, hang on a minute, I love football and I love goalkeeping. It’s what I do and I don’t do it too bad.”

Does he think it was a deliberate shot by Ronaldinho?

‘I’ve heard all sorts of different stories about whether he meant it, whether it was a fluke, and all I can say is, it doesn’t matter if he meant it or not, it still went in. It won’t make me feel any different.”

If he is a lot saner than his teammates, it’s because of his age, says Seaman. He is 40 this month and not, he assures me, depressed about it. He is married to Debbie, his second wife and former agent, with whom he has two small children. His two teenage sons are from a previous marriage. He’ll be sad to retire from playing, but won’t cling on beyond his usefulness.

‘I’m very lucky in that I won’t have to work again if I don’t want to.” His body, he says, will signal to him when it’s time to give up. Earlier this year, Arsène Wenger, the manager of Arsenal, thought he was hearing the signals loud and clear.

”Seaman had been injured a couple of times, not seriously, but Wenger told him he needed someone who was fit all the time. He offered him the choice of being second goalkeeper or becoming a coach.

Seaman wouldn’t have it and left, after 13 years, to take the top spot at Manchester City.

‘It was upsetting. It always is when somebody says they don’t want you as their number one. But Arsène is fine, he’s a gentleman.”

Was it a difficult conversation?

‘Um. He was in France and I was in Portugal, so it was just on the phone. And I told him that Man City were offering, and he said, ‘look, whatever decision you take, I totally respect it’. And that was it. It was fine. I’ll never go round slagging Arsenal off, because I’ve had 13 fantastic years there.”

At the moment, Seaman lives in a hotel in Manchester during the week and goes home when he can. He doesn’t mind being the oldest player in the locker room. ‘No, no, it’s good, it keeps me young. It keeps me up with the fashions. They’ll walk in and you’ll think, oh aye, that looks all right, I might start wearing that.”

When his 20-year-old teammates get ‘cocky and chirpy”, Seaman delights in putting them down.

‘I’ll say something like, ‘Are you a regular first-team footballer?’”

His relationship with the fans is equally robust and a good indicator of how he will fare on the quiz show. Despite his reputation for quietness, Seaman is quick-witted and bolshie with hecklers.

‘I was doing a warm-up once at Southampton and the ball went into the crowd, and this fat guy caught it. He’s got a big belly on him, and I said, ‘Come on, give us the ball back’, and he goes, ‘Nah’, and I said, ‘Come on, give it us’, and all his mates were laughing, and then he threw it over my head. So I said, ‘And now the other one, under your shirt.’ Ha ha ha ha ha. And all his mates were laughing at him. You’ve got to give it as well as take it.”

Anyone who chooses to wear that hairstyle must be impervious to ridicule. So we get to the crux of the interview. Whose idea was the ponytail?

‘I’ve always liked long hair. My dad’s always had long hair, but he always tells me, ‘I never had it in a ponytail.’ And I say to him, ‘You weren’t an England goalie either, were ya?’”

Surely it gets in his eyes?

‘Yeah, that was the worst part, getting it to this stage. I’d go through a tub of gel a game. He he he.”

David Beckham kept his at bay with a hair band.

‘Yeah. But I’m 6ft 4in and a Yorkshireman. It’s Georgina more than anything — oh, I’m not telling you this.”

Georgina is his three-year-old daughter.

‘Go on,” I urge, ‘tell me.”

‘Well, Georgina loves putting rollers in it. Ha ha ha. She likes to brush it. And Robbie [Seaman’s two-year-old] just likes to swing on it.”

In January Seaman will play Arsenal at his old ground, Highbury, which should be awful, but, with impeccable good grace, Seaman says he is looking forward to it immensely.

I have a sudden thought. You’re not secretly manic depressive are you, David, and all this good humour just a smokescreen? This prompts the longest bout of chuckling of the afternoon.

‘Heh heh heh heh heh heh heh heh. Manic depressive? Heh heh heh.”

Seaman clutches his stomach and rocks in his chair. His ponytail shakes.

‘What’ve I got to be depressed about?” —