‘We’d never seen anyone take people on the way he did’
DAVID GINOLA’S MAGPIE TEAM-MATES LOOK BACK
YOU only get one chance to make a first impression and David Ginola certainly took his when he rocked up on Tyneside 25 years ago.
After completing his £2.5m move from Paris Saint-Germain, the Frenchman was allocated a room at the Gosforth Park Hotel, where two of his new teammates, Les Ferdinand and Warren Barton, were staying.
Ferdinand and Barton were having their breakfast when Ginola, wearing an all white linen outfit, breezed over to introduce himself as Newcastle United’s new signing.
“There was talk about him coming and it was the film star look, the film star lifestyle and the model wife and everything else,” Ferdinand told The Chronicle.
“He was the archetypal footballer. Everything you talk about in a footballer, David was that.”
Just as his new team-mates never forgot their first meeting with Ginola, the 28-year-old also made an impression in his very first training session at Maiden Castle.
We have all become accustomed to blanket coverage of Ligue 1 and the Champions League in 2020 but this was a very different era – and not everyone necessarily knew what to expect from Ginola.
“Every one sort of stepped back and went, ‘Wow!’” firstteam coach Derek Fazackerley previously told The Chronicle.
“Kevin [Keegan] knew about him and had seen quite a bit of him. He had played in the
Champions League for Paris Saint-Germain and played for France as well but we weren’t quite as aware of him.
“But when he came in, you just thought, ‘If this lad performs, you’ve got a real star on your hands’ and his first six months at the football club were absolutely fantastic.”
Thousands of Newcastle fans rushed to Maiden Castle to watch those summer sessions and it was quickly apparent that Ginola was a little bit different: the flair, the height, the strength, the skill, the first touch...
It is not often wingers can turn both ways with the ball when close to the byline but Ginola, who was so good with both feet, could do just that. Wide men tend to cut inside when defenders are tight but Ginola could also go down the line. It was pure intuition. Having already caught the eye in training, Ginola soon proved he could deliver in a black and white shirt.
Barton recalls: “There had been inklings in training when he was going forward but we played Hearts away in a pre-season friendly and David was on fire. “Rob [Lee] and I were playing in midfield and we kept pinging the ball out to him. He was taking people on and we both just looked at each other. I’d never seen that before. He was just a top-class player and he had that aura and that confidence about him, but I think you would do when you’re that good-looking and that good.” Something was stirring on Tyneside. A whopping £14m had been spent on four new signings, all four corners of St James’ Park were finally covered and the club’s first kits with Adidas were launched.
It is rare that four key players arrive in the one window and Shaka Hislop, Barton, Ferdinand and Ginola all started the first game of the new Premier League season against Coventry City.
The squad was unrecognisable from Keegan’s first game in charge three and a half years previously and Lee Clark was among a handful of survivors still at the club.
“The manager was constantly improving the squad and it was the norm. We got used to it,” Clark told The Chronicle. “Month by month, the standards were rising all the time and the quality of the squad was rising all the time.
“It was great to already be in the club because you knew these types of players were only going to make you better.
“Obviously, when the likes of David and Les come in, you’re really excited by those type of signings.”
While Hislop, Barton and Ferdinand all knew about life in England, it understandably took a little while for Ginola to fully adjust to his new surroundings.
All these years later, Ginola still looks back fondly on one of his first experiences of getting changed in the dressing room at the club’s shared training ground at Durham University.
Ginola, who had been used to a more private, secluded facility in Paris, spotted a fresh face and asked Ferdinand if he was a new signing – only to discover it was a student getting ready to play tennis.
It may have been a little different from what he’d previously experienced, but Keegan’s Newcastle and Ginola were a perfect match. Not only was Ginola afforded the freedom to wreak havoc on the field but he was adored again after previously being scapegoated by Gerard Houllier following France’s failure to qualify for the 1994 World Cup.
Perhaps it was only when he scored his first goal for Newcastle, against Sheffield Wednesday at Hillsborough, that Ginola truly realised what he had let himself in for after cutting inside and unleashing a stunning strike past Kevin Pressman.
With the game broadcast live on Sky, Ginola left the field to thousands of Geordies chanting
his name, and saluted the away end at full-time with his taped left hand.
Although he often had his hands full defensively, left-back John Beresford struck up an understanding of sorts with the new arrival.
“The lad who played in front of me before David was Scott Sellars and we had a fantastic understanding,” he told The Chronicle.
“We were both from Sheffield and he had a left foot to die for, and great skill. But we heard on the grapevine we were signing this Frenchman but we didn’t really know too much about him – but boy, did we know after a few weeks of signing.
“In fact, the first day he trained, you knew. He just had undoubted talent. On his day, he was unplayable.
“A lot of people used to say it must have been tough to play behind him because his work rate wasn’t the best but I never fell out with David.
“Don’t get me wrong, I would give him a rollicking when I needed to, but his job was to get the ball and create a goal or score one.
“Yeah I would get teamed up, but I knew that so I had to play a little damage limitations. I had to slow it right down even though it might be 2 v 1. When the ball did break, we had to get the ball out to David and let him do what he could do.”
Off the field, Ginola quickly threw himself into life in the North East and locals Lee Clark and Steve Watson gave him his first taste of the Three Mile Inn.
An afternoon session soon escalated into a full-blown night out and although Ginola was feeling the full effects at training the next day, to his astonishment, Clark and Watson were no worse for wear.
On another occasion, Ginola had been advised by Derek Wright, the club’s physio, to take the family to Whitley Bay for a day out.
As he parked up his Range Rover, Ginola was struck by the locals playing volleyball in the water and ambled over. However, after dipping his toe in the water, he recoiled at how cold it was compared to what he had been used to in Saint-Tropez.
The diet was also a little different. Ginola had been used to pasta, rice, chicken breast and olive oil at PSG but on his first big away day on the way back from Southampton, assistant manager Terry McDermott was taking orders ahead of stopping off at the Wetherby Whaler for fish and chips while the team watched Only Fools and Horses on the screens above their heads.
But the winger bought into it tellingly, he has an Only Fools box set in his home today – and
Ginola was certainly not without his own vices, infamously lighting up a cigarette at the back of the club’s luxury coach shortly after arriving.
Someone who got to know Ginola’s many habits was Keith Gillespie, who shared a room with the winger the night before games.
“I don’t know how that happened but I got to know him better than most!” he told The Chronicle.
“It was just that incredible skill that he had, something Newcastle fans weren’t expecting. The first few days in training and you saw his technique, his ability, everything, and it was just incredible how he adapted so quickly to the Premier League because he wasn’t a person who was that well known outside of France, probably.
“It was great to know him as well rooming with him and seeing what kind of person he was and I had a really great relationship with him.
“Obviously, with him on the left and myself on the right, it probably benefited Les that he was there with the balls that he was putting in for him.”
Ginola made a remarkable start, winning the Premier League’s player of the month award in August, and the manner in which he tormented Middlesbrough full-back Neil Cox is still talked about by Newcastle fans today.
But just as Newcastle’s season could be divided in two – the Magpies had raced into a 12-point lead in January – the same could be said of Ginola.
Lee Dixon was one of the few defenders who soon knew just how to handle the No 14 and because the Arsenal full-back was smaller, he was also sharp over a short distance.
Ginola saw red against Dixon and Arsenal in a mid-season League Cup tie at Highbury and struggled to recapture his rhythm when he returned a few weeks later.
The reasons for Newcastle’s collapse have long been debated: tactics, individuals’ loss of form, a lack of title-winning experience, a reshuffle to accommodate the club’s midseason signings.
That failure to win the title in 1996 has certainly stayed with Ginola, who left for Spurs a year later, as former Newcastle firstteam coach Chris McMenemey explains.
He said: “It had a profound effect on everyone because you knew you were the best team in the league that season, you knew you should have won it, but your name is not on the trophy. I’ve talked to David a couple of times about it and he said it really affected him deeply and Les, I think, was the same. You’re so close.”