On The Road: Tony Adams
After confronting his alcoholism, former Arsenal and England captain Tony Adams has worked worldwide. He talks to Louise Flind
Is there anything you can’t leave home without? I used to take my Alcoholics Anonymous book with me, in the early days of recovery, as a comfort blanket.
What do you really miss from home (apart from your wife, Poppy, and your children)? That’s the reason I travel so much! We live in the Cotswolds, which is a very beautiful part of the world, even though it does rain a lot. We’ve got a pig in the back garden; I take the dog for a walk. I really look forward to going home and being grounded.
Favourite destination? Venice, romantically speaking. It’s great that there are no cars. Florence is also up there, and New York is the fun city. I’m a bit of a sun god as well – I do like sitting around sometimes, just reading a book.
Do you keep in shape when you’re away? Being an addict, I’ve used things to change the way that I feel, and running does do that. We’ve just come back from Cornwall – we put the wetsuits on and we were out there on the body boards; it was great fun. I didn’t think it was possible to have an English fun holiday.
Where did you go on your honeymoon? We didn’t. We went to Middlesbrough. I had a game up there. We got married at Christmas. Because we didn’t have a honeymoon (which Poppy doesn’t let me forget), I have to take her on lots of holidays now.
What are your holiday memories as a child? Going with my family from the East End of London with my Dad, driving up the A12 which used to take for ever – even just to Colchester – to Pontins holiday camps, year in, year out. I always won the running races. One year, we went to the other end of the world, to Weston-superMare, and Dad drove through the night
with us fast asleep in the back seat – they were lovely, magical days. I’d love to take Poppy to a Pontins. As a young man, in the mid-1980s, I went Pontinental to Torremolinos with a few buddies, Martin Hayes from Arsenal, and two Birmingham players, Tony Cottee and Mick Harford.
What was it like travelling with the Arsenal football team? When Arsène [Wenger] came, we started staying in hotels even before home games, because he’d come from Japan where they’d spend a week together before a game. We were very English about it. Some old coaches – Harry Redknapp, for instance – would never go to a hotel because he thought it gave the players too much time to think. My first Arsenal roommate was David O’leary, who took me under his wing. Then I claimed Ray Parlour – he was my great drinking and football buddy. When I was captain of Arsenal, the scout Steve Rowley came to me and said he’d found this unbelievable player but there was one problem – he couldn’t get him out of the Rush Green Tavern. As I was a practising alcoholic at the time, he was ideal for me.
Where are you working at the moment? For about eighteen months, I’ve been working as a sports director for the Chinese in Chongqing, and Beijing – scouting for players. In November last year, I went to manage Granada in Spain. I knew where the [AA] meetings were. I also worked in Azerbaijan for six years, where there were no AA meetings – so I set one up in Baku.
Have you made friends when you’ve been away? I’ve got no friends here! I meet AA buddies – they’re my network of friends. Doing business is difficult with the Chinese – they do it all around drinking. I went to meetings with business people and I said, ‘I don’t drink – when I drink, I am a crazy man; I’ll beat you up.’ You can actually hire people to drink for you. Qi Liu, my assistant, used to drink for me, bless him.
Do you have a go at the local language? I’m not linguistic – I haven’t got much of an ear. Azeri is very similar to Turkish. Six years in Azerbaijan rubbed off – football terminology, really.
Do you like working away from home? It really depends how you are emotionally and mentally. I had a mental breakdown in China two years ago after my heart operation – I had some stents put in. My head went off the rails, but I would have been struggling wherever I was.
What is the strangest place you’ve ever slept in while being away? We stayed in the desert in Jordan in a tent which was different – Lawrence of Arabia country. There were twenty drunks from Belgium who were on a company holiday. They were paralytic at two in the morning. We got up to see the sunrise and we made sure we woke them up, as they woke us up all night.