Tottenham, Middlesborough, Everton, Liverpool, Leeds, England … and Hull City. When Nick Barmby signed for his home-town team last month, the player Pele predicted would be a world star when he was just 21 and who played in England’s famous 5-1 victory over Germany in Munich in 2001, said he was now at the club he had dreamed of turning out for as a boy.
But at just 30 years old and with 23 international caps, it may just seem a little early for the player, who was Leeds’s last cash signing in 2002, to be playing first-division football.
‘I’ve always had a burning desire to play for Hull City,†Barmby said.
But even though he spent two dismal years at Leeds, making just 17 Premiership starts, a move home at an age when a player is in his prime hints at ambition blunted, especially when you consider his five Premier League clubs and the combined total of nearly £20-million paid for his services.
But Barmby’s is a contradictory story, on and off the pitch. The pattern of his professional life is one of highly impressive starts for club and country, before his form, for whatever reason, falls away. Away from football, he is an intensely private family man who values his wife and two sons above all. He has not spoken to his parents, though, since his marriage 11 years ago, despite living most of his career just a few kilometres away from them in Hull.
Barmby was just 18 when he made his debut for Spurs in a 2-0 defeat against Sheffield Wednesday in 1992, having joined as a trainee from the same Lilleshall class as Sol Campbell two years earlier.
He was an instant success, scoring five times in his opening 15 games, and became an integral part of the ‘famous five†attacking diamond, which also included Darren Anderton, Ilie Dumitrescu, Jurgen Klinsman and Teddy Sheringham, when Ossie Ardiles took over at White Hart Lane the following June.
Barmby had turned down Arsenal, Liverpool and Manchester United to play for Tottenham, citing the influence of then manager Terry Venables (who would give him his England debut and later take him to Leeds) and the chance to join his idol, Paul Gascoigne.
‘Gazza was brilliant. After us kids had finished training, he would suddenly appear and we would play on for another hour,†Barmby said. ‘He loved going in goal and I would practise my shooting against him. He was so enthusiastic and it just rubbed off on us.â€
Barmby, who played rugby league at Kelvin Hall school, has been prone to injuries since he was a teenager. Calf cramps and the resulting corrective surgery cost him eight months while a schoolboy, shin splints sidelined him for six months when he first joined Spurs and, among the many niggles as a professional, the Achilles injury he suffered while at Leeds, during a warm-up in November 2002, meant that by the time he had recovered his mentor, Venables, was on his way out of the club.
Barmby would eventually score 21 for Spurs. But, by the time Gerry Francis had replaced Ardiles as Spurs manager, Barmby was unsettled. Six months later he signed for Middlesbrough, complaining that he and his wife, Mandy, also from Hull, were homesick.
The family feud occurred when Barmby, then 19, married Mandy Telford, a divorcee seven years his senior, in a registry office in 1993, having met the former Blind Date contestant two years earlier in a nightclub.
‘Nicky has made his decision — he has done it on his own. All I can say is that we do not approve,†his father, Jeffrey, a former Hull City reserve, was quoted as saying. Although he said he was unsure how the dispute would affect their relationship, he probably did not anticipate not speaking to his son, whom he had guided through junior football in Hull, for several years.
Barmby’s spell at Middlesbrough began well, with a goal on his debut against Arsenal and 10 games into the season he had scored three times and had a hand in all of Middlesbrough’s other strikes. Then something went awry.
‘He had a fall-out with Bryan Robson [the then Middlesbrough manager], something personal between them, and he walked out on the club,†says former Middlesbrough teammate John Hendrie.
Barmby left Teesside to join Everton for £5,75-million in October 1996 and, despite scoring on his debut in a 7-1 rout of Southampton, his time at Goodison was patchy.
In 2000 he become the first player to move directly across Stanley Park to Liverpool since 1959, when Gérard Houllier paid £6-million for him.
His two years at Anfield yielded five trophies but in August 2002, Barmby was off again, Venables signing him for £2,7-million on a four-year, £30 000-a-week deal. His return of two goals from a paltry 17 starts in two years can be partly explained by the debacle that was Leeds United under Peter Ridsdale and company.
When he was farmed out on loan to Nottingham Forest, earlier this year, it was a familiar story. Barmby began brightly, scoring in his third game. But then at Derby in March, he was substituted by the Forest manager, Joe Kinnear. The pair clashed at half-time and Barmby jumped into his car and drove off. He had lasted less than a month.
It must, then, have been a relief when Hull manager Peter Taylor signed him.
‘He’s come to Hull because he’s very disappointed with his last two years at Leeds United and he wants to enjoy his football.â€
Taylor has signed Barmby on a free transfer, initially for only one year. Even his beloved Hull seem cautious about expecting a long-term relationship with Barmby. —