Relegation pay review
Troy Deeney was an angry young man who was sent to jail, now the Watford star is creating a new legacy
THE amount of parachute payments given to clubs relegated from the Premier League i s under review amidst concerns that the system is being misused.
The ‘ Big Six’ clubs are questioning whether payments of up to £90million for relegated sides is encouraging them to pocket the money rather than invest in
AFEW hours before each match he plays, Troy Deeney switches music on. It is not just random music. It i s the same music every time. It is a playlist that takes him back a decade or more to a council house on a Birmingham estate on a Saturday morning.
His mum, Emma, who worked three jobs to bring him up, cleaned the house at the weekend. While she vacuumed and ironed and mopped and yelled at her teenage son to get out of bed, she played James Brown and Aretha Franklin, Abba and Lighthouse Family.
Hearing the music again makes Deeney remember why he first started playing the game: so he could make sure his mum never had to work three jobs again. It lets him connect with all the anger that used to boil inside him about the things he shouldn’t have seen and the father that he lost too early.
It gets him into character for the 90 minutes ahead. It strips away the veneer of gentleness and geniality that covers him in normal life now. ‘ That angry person is still there and it’s difficult for me to bring him out but I have to bring him out to be who I am on a football pitch,’ says Deeney.
‘Then I have to contain him as soon as I get back to real life and bury him back inside me. It’s the aggressive man in me, the man who just wants to win, win in any aspect of life. That’s what makes me good at football but it also makes me an animal. If you prod me, normally there’s a reaction.
‘The playlist brings me back to my childhood and makes me really angry. It’s slow music but when I listen to it, I hear a song and I know that Mum would be doing a particular chore at this point. My mum is my best friend. She used to proper graft and I wanted to succeed so my mum didn’t need to do that any more.
‘It took me 10 years to go from being that angry person to calming i t down with t he help of my psychologist. I know where the anger was coming from. I’ve nailed it. I’m angry at myself. I’m angry at my dad dying. He never went on a holiday. I’m angry because I never took him on holiday. I wanted to do it. Never did it.
‘Little things. Never said, “Love you”. I don’t do hugs and kisses. My dad was from an old-school generation Jamaican family. It’s not something we did. I was angry about t hings l i ke t hat. Hindsight is wonderful.
‘The way I was brought up, I got caught up in a lot of things I shouldn’t have got caught up in. I am angry at it but at the same time it has made me who I am. What I have learned from my psychologist is that all people contradict themselves. We don’t want any of the bad stuff to happen but we needed it to make us who we are now.’
Deeney is 28 and getting closer to knowing who he is and realising what he needs. He has many of the lifestyle accoutrements a Premier League player regards as normal: nice house, nice car, nice watch, a son, Myles, in private school, a daughter, Amelia, who will go to private school.
He is the Watford captain, a consistent scorer in the top flight, a player who is regarded as an unselfish foil for team-mates on the pitch, a forward many believe must have been close to a call-up for Gareth Southgate’s England squad for today’s qualifier against Lithuania.
But as he thinks back to his troubled past, the father who was in and out of jail and died of cancer when he was just 45, and his own imprisonment for beating a man in a brawl in Birmingham city centre, he has come to understand that even a Premier League player’s salary cannot be the salve for his problems. Deeney’s an unusual footballer l i ke that: he knows money is not enough.
It is one of the reasons why he and his wife, Stacey, have started the Troy Deeney Foundation with an initial target of raising £40,000 to provide new multi-purpose sports areas for Garston Manor School, in Watford, which serves students with learning difficulties, autism and speech, language and communication needs.
‘They have a gravel surface for their play area at the moment,’ says Deeney, ‘and some of the problems they have mean that their balance is a little bit out so there are a lot of grazes and cuts and bruises. We’re going to give them a better surface and better facilities.’
When Deeney, his wife and their supporters reach their target at Garston Manor, the plan is to move on to other schools and projects.
‘There is a level of earning money,’ says Deeney, ‘where you can just go, “Yeah, we’re great, we all go on nice holidays, we all live comfortably”. But there’s got to be a bit more to it than that. When you’re younger, you always tell yourself, “I want to be a millionaire, I want to be a footballer, I want to be this or that,” but once you get there, you go, “Oh, is this all there is?”
‘After a while, you’ve got a couple of friends and more money than you’ve ever had but you can’t do anything, you can’t go out, so there’s an element when you think the idea we’ve had for the foundation is the only thing that will bring me pure satisfaction. I get it on a Saturday when I play but eventually that’s going to die.
‘ I have seen people like Paul Gascoigne looking for other highs and I would like to do it through this, by giving back and helping and having something I can go back to when I’ve finished playing.
‘I took my son and daughter to Garston Manor a couple of weeks ago. She’s only two but my son is seven and he had never been to a learning difficulties school before. He realises a bit more now that he is fortunate.
‘I took him out a few weeks ago to spend his Christmas money and
when we were on the High Street in Solihull, he saw a homeless person sitting by a shop window. He said he wanted to give his £ 20 to the homeless man. He said: “He needs it, I don’t.” So if a seven-year-old can start getting that concept, I’m quite happy with what I’m doing. ‘ Look, you get to a point where there are only so many pairs of trainers you can buy. My son broke his iPad some time ago and he said: “I don’t care, you’ll get me a new one anyway.” I made him wait two and a half years for it. He now has to do chores to understand the value of money. ‘There is a social responsibility to realise that people are out there grafting. I’m not saying footballers don’t work hard but my mates work at Jaguar in Castle Bromwich on the morning shift from eight to half-two, making tyres. That’s hard graft.
‘Private school gives the kids benefits. My son can speak French. I can’t speak anything but Brummie. But I make sure he plays normal Sunday league football. I make sure he gets kicked. I make sure the managers are harsh on him. Just so he understands what it’s like to be in the real world.’
That i s another reason why Deeney wants his foundation to last. More Premier League players are starting to establish charitable outlets for their wealth but there is some public scepticism. Deeney does not want his work to be seen as a footballer’s flash gesture.
‘It’s not a case of, “Let’s do this for the great charity ball at the end and we can all have a drink”,’ he says.
He is aware of how much work and effort Craig Bellamy, for one, put into his foundation and the project he started in Sierra Leone.
That project is over now and Deeney knows that he will face some of the problems Bellamy encountered, particularly the idea that Premier League footballers are so rich they shouldn’t need any help raising money.
‘I know people have looked at our first school project,’ he says, ‘and said: “Forty-thousand pounds? You should be able to do that.” But that’s not the message I’m trying to give.
‘Just throwing money at an idea or a school doesn’t make you a good person. You don’t just walk away rubbing your hands saying: “That’s done, look how great I am.”
‘I want to build something and be a part of the whole journey. I am trying to come up with little ideas. I got a letter off a lady today who gave me £50 because she says I have done so much for Watford.
‘ I want to do something like a training gym session where you pay £20 and we just have fun and everyone can work out. Just me giving money doesn’t have the same feel. I want people to be involved with it as well.
‘ The way footballers are perceived now, it’s money, money, money. But this is something that’s close to our heart. We’d like to give this school what they need and then move on to Birmingham and then Manchester.
‘I want it to be something to show my kids and say to them they are going to have a comfortable lifestyle but have a bit about you and appreciate that other people are suffering, either financially or medically. Don’t just think because you’re all right, that’s it.
‘That generation is just me, me, me, me, me. If you look on social media, everyone’s got the best life in the world. No one puts bad stuff up. It’s a generation where people are just saying: “Look how great I’m doing and let’s forget everybody else as long as I look good.”
‘This is going to be a long stint for me, not just a gesture. If you’re putting your name to it, as I’ve done, then there’s a massive responsibility to make sure everything is run smoothly and correctly.
‘If anything goes wrong, it’s not the people that work for the Troy Deeney Foundation who get the bad publicity. It’s Troy Deeney.
‘ There is a gala dinner at The Grove next month and it is about making money and doing it for the right reasons. I have put in about £60,000 in of my own money so far for the ball and that gets the first night rolling and hopefully all the money we can generate from that will benefit people.’
Maybe it i s already helping Deeney. The anger is fading and he is starting to find answers to questions that have haunted him. ‘My dad died five years ago so he never saw me in the Premier League,’ says Deeney. ‘I’ve always got that burning question: “Do you think he’s proud?” You always want one more conversation.
‘It’s still tough for me to hug but I do tell my boy I’m proud of him, which I think is needed. I’m a lot better than I was.
‘I’m the oldest of five siblings and I have two children of my own. I’m 28. I’m the man of the family now.
‘I have made a lot of errors but I also hope that one day my kids might be able to say, “yeah, my dad made mistakes but for every bad thing they say about him, look at what he did with this foundation”. I hope it makes them proud of me.’
I’ve seen people like Gazza looking for highs. I’d like to think my foundation will bring me satisfaction when I stop playing