Lomana Lualua backs backflips

Known for his acrobatics, the Congolese star made his point to Bobby Robson at Newcastle – by taking a knife to his tyres

that I was going to become a footballer, and when my schoolteacher watched me play, he didn’t want me to continue with gymnastics. When I did get into football, though, I always knew I was somehow going to make it to the top one day.

It’s a funny story. When I was a kid, I’d go to school in the morning while my mates went in the afternoon, so I didn’t have anyone to play with. We had a little monkey and I learned the backflip from him. I used to love watching him do them and try to copy him. After that, I took gymnastics seriously. Now whenever I run and jump, my body takes me and wants to flip. It helped with my balance while playing football as well. If you play football, you can’t really do other sports, so the only way to maintain the gymnastics was in my goal celebrations. When you score, you get caught in the moment and do a flip. It means a lot to be remembered as the backflip boy, but people usually forget how good a player I was.

He was amazing. One of the players I’d always looked up to was Ronaldo, and knowing Bobby had worked with him at Barcelona was a big thing for me. When I got to Newcastle, he gave me three videos to watch – one of Pele, one of Diego Maradona and one of Ronaldo. He told me to watch and learn from them, and it was the best thing he ever did for me. He felt I had skills and talent just like them, but needed to learn when to do it and when not to. I used to love dribbling, so he schooled me and helped me learn more about football.