Bought by Bayern for £2m… now he’s playing for Runcorn
DALE JENNINGS ON RE-BOOTING HIS CAREER IN THE NINTH TIER
PETER CROUCH IS AWAY
DALE JENNINGS can still remember the day Bayern Munich, or more specifically Dietmar Hamann, came knocking on his door in 2011.
Hamann waxed lyrical about the 18-year-old from Tranmere Rovers to Christian Nerlinger, then Bayern’s sporting director, who was on the lookout for the next Franck Ribery.
Convinced, Nerlinger sent Hamann to seal the deal. Jennings, a boyhood Liverpool fan, sat with one of the heroes of the 2005 Miracle of Istanbul and signed on the dotted line.
Who wouldn’t? It cost Bayern £ 1.8million but the German giants thought they had got one over on their Premier League counterparts, plucking a gem from obscurity. One thing led to another, however, and the transfer turned sour.
Jennings failed to settle in Germany. He struggled to learn the language and his lack of culinary skills meant one cupboard in his Munich apartment was used purely to store Pot Noodles. Homesick, he cut his contract short in 2013, leaving without a first-team appearance on his c.v.
It was a tale of too much, too young. Now, after five years and significant soul- searching, Jennings is trying to reboot his career with Runcorn Town in the ninth tier of English football.
Runcorn’s Viridor Community Stadium, overlooked by a chemical plant, is a far cry from Bayern’s 75,000-capacity Allianz Arena, but this is where Jennings will start from scratch.
‘I remember putting the Bayern kit on for the first time and running out on to the training pitch. I looked down and sort of laughed at myself, like, wow,’ says Jennings, now 25. ‘I was like, “How has this happened?” I was immature. I just thought, “This is going to last forever”. I thought I was better — I wasn’t. No one is bigger than football.
‘I’ve got that into my head now. You beat yourself up about it sometimes. You think, “What if I did this differently… what if I had a different attitude to doing that?” I’m more mature now.’
With 18-year-old Jadon Sancho taking the Bundesliga by storm for Borussia Dortmund, the winger cannot help thinking about the ‘ what ifs’ and ‘maybes’.
Runcorn are a charming club headed by an understanding manager in Chris Herbert, who is happy to give Jennings a platform for his comeback.
After having the world at his feet, then seeing subsequent spells at Barnsley and MK Dons fail, he wondered whether he was destined for football’s scrapheap.
It took its toll mentally, draining him of motivation. As a result, the man who was once mentored by Germany World Cup winner Philipp Lahm has barely kicked a ball in the last three years.
Jennings is a father of three — to Mila, four, Meadow, two, and Noah, one — and was recently forced to take his first job outside football, working at a warehouse for Amazon.
It was girlfriend Abby who supported him during his difficulties. The hunger is now back in his belly and his main aim is to reward his family by returning to full-time football.
‘When you go through hard times, you see who’s there for you,’ Jennings continues. ‘I hit some terrible times. I couldn’t get out of bed. I was struggling to motivate myself.
‘Mentally, I couldn’t take all the pressure. Without Abby, I wouldn’t be sitting here today ready to play. I was getting too much pressure thrown at me.
‘We spoke about it a lot. Every day. There were tears. She stood by me. You’re shown who your real family and friends are.’
And what about his comeback? ‘Three years is a long time out of football,’ confesses the former Liverpool academy kid who has scored once in his two appearances for Runcorn since signing two weeks ago.
‘But people have written me off before. I left Liverpool at 15 after being there for eight years and a lot of people didn’t see me coming back. I came back stronger, went to Tranmere and the rest is history.
‘So I’ve been written off before. That just adds fuel to my fire. I love to prove people wrong and I want to do it for my family. I’ll give it everything I’ve got.’
Jennings has no regrets over his ill-fated move to Munich. If nothing else, it helped him escape a bad crowd in Liverpool who threatened to drag his life in a very different direction.
He insists the immaturity of his youth is in the past. That includes his diet, which became a bugbear of manager Karl Robinson at MK Dons. Rest assured, the Pot Noodles are now off the menu.
Jennings went from Merseyside to Munich in a move that seemed more PlayStation than reality.
He has pressed the reset button, starting again at the bottom but still striving to get to the top.