FROM BORO TO BARCA!
Martin Braithwaite couldn’t get a kick under Tony Pulis recently but now plays alongside Lionel Messi at the Nou Camp. He’s gone...
MARTIN Braithwaite is proof that a footballer just never knows what lies around the corner. One minute you’re not Tony Pulis’s cup of tea at Middlesbrough, the next you’re teeing up Lionel Messi at the Nou Camp... the toast of Barcelona.
There is plenty of depth to Braithwaite’s story — speaking from the club’s training ground before the season restarts this weekend, the 29-year-old Danish international talks about being in a wheelchair from the age of five to the age of seven.
And he jokes about going to such lengths to keep his move to Barcelona a secret that his wife thought he was having an affair.
But we have to start with the career path — Boro to Barca inside three seasons. How is that possible?
‘I am the same person here that I was at Middlesbrough,’ he says. ‘While I was there, I was not complaining, I was always working hard. But if you have a manager who doesn’t look your way, that’s part of football. It’s not personal. You just have to keep on going.’
He was signed by Garry Monk for £9million from Toulouse in July 2017, but by December Monk had been replaced by Pulis who, apart from a spell at the start of the 2018-19 season, rarely played him.
He was then loaned out, first to Bordeaux and then Leganes and it was while he was in Spain that Braithwaite gave an interview saying he couldn’t imagine returning to Boro. Pulis labelled him ‘ungrateful’ and accused him of ‘astonishing’ disrespect.
A permanent £5m move to Leganes followed last July and then the shock £16m switch to Barcelona in February this year.
But there are no hard feelings towards Pulis (below). ‘People can have their opinions on him but he has his way of playing and it has worked for him his whole career,’ says Braithwaite.
‘I don’t have anything against him. It’s just that there were things said about me that are a long way from the truth. I was unhappy about that. But not playing, I don’t have any problem.’
Why would he, now that he’s at Barcelona? On his Nou Camp debut as a substitute, he set up two goals in a 19-minute cameo.
The first assist was for Messi who scored four in the game. And it was the prospect of becoming Messi’s team-mate back in February that provoked suspicious behaviour, all part of a failed attempt to make sure his wife, Anne-Laure, was first to find out.
‘I didn’t tell anyone,’ he says of the weeks leading up to the move.
‘I felt that if my wife was not the first person I told it would be a lack of respect because we share a life together. But my wife felt something was going on, because I was taking a lot of phone calls, sneaking out of the house, and it was freezing outside. She was wondering, almost asking if I had a mistress! ‘The day I was going to tell her, it broke in the media and I was thinking, “Oh, s***!” I sat her down that night and said, “I have to tell you something”. She said, “I know”. ‘Her phone had been as busy as mine. I was disappointed I couldn’t get that shock reaction from her.’
He h has spent plenty of time with Anne-Laure during lockdown and a month ago she gave birth to the couple’s fourth child, Valentino.
‘I have heard a lot of people are getting divorced (because of the strain of lockdown) so I realised I really love my wife, because we have become even closer.’
And she knows it was Barcelona he was secretly courting? ‘Exactly,’ he says.
Braithwaite realises there is a perception that he was signed as a temporary solution because of injuries to Luis Suarez and Ousmane Dembele in February.
That may have been fair then but the post-coronavirus financial crisis makes it more likely he’ll stay. He has already shown his courage — with his first chance to make an impact on his debut he sliced a cross horribly wide.
Lesser characters might have folded but he recovered to set up Messi’s next goal.
‘My head doesn’t work like other people’s,’ he says. ‘I didn’t even think about that cross. It was only later, when people said, “You showed your character because it was a huge mistake, you looked like you couldn’t play, kicking the ball miles behind the goal”.’
Such strength of mind may be a consequence of him being struck with Perthes’ disease as a child.
The rare condition occurs when blood supply to the ball part of the hip joint is interrupted and the bone begins to die. The body eventually restores blood supply but sufferers cannot run around like other youngsters. He was in a wheelchair for two years from the age of five.
‘My parents have told me that I just wanted to play football and I needed someone on top of me because I was trying to jump out of the wheelchair. It was difficult to keep me still. My dad said that when I started playing again it made him sad because he could see his son running around but limping. I don’t have a lot of memories. It was a sad time in my life that I’ve erased.’
But now it’s only happiness. On Saturday he will be in Mallorca for the first game back. ‘I woke up on Monday the way a kid wakes up for Christmas,’ he says. ‘It’s match week. I am really here.’
And he will play an important part in the remaining matches.
Suarez has only just come back from injury and will not play 11 games in 35 days. But there is always Messi. ‘When he is on the ball,’ Braithwaite says, ‘all eyes are on him. People forget to look at what’s happening around him.
‘So there is lots of space. Use it well and people realise, these guys are making runs, watch out. Then you’re giving more space to Messi. It’s about playing intelligently.’
He sounds like he belongs at Barcelona. And he speaks like a man determined to prove it.