If Gazza had run straight, he would have scored... but he stopped!
Christian Ziege played in THAT Euro 96 semi-final and admits...
CHRISTIAN ZIEGE turns and nods to the mountains. Those, he says, are the reason we find him deep in the Austrian countryside, in the dugout of a stadium so picturesque you wonder how anyone concentrates on football with the snow-capped Alps for competition.
‘Ah, but our football is good,’ grins the former Germany star, once of Liverpool and Spurs and now head coach of Austrian third-tier club FC Pinzgau Saalfelden, newly backed by American investors whose ambition it is to bring European football to this sedate town of 16,000 inhabitants.
Before training on this sun-splashed autumn morning, we meet at a nearby coffee house. Ziege strolls in, his leisurely pace reflecting the serene surrounds.
‘The only time I move quickly now is in the car,’ he says. The complications of a thigh injury at Spurs that nearly cost him his life have reduced his mobility.
Now 47, this is the life for him. ‘We lived in Majorca but every day is the same. Get up, swim, drink, then drink some more, then go to bed,’ he says.
Trade ‘swim’ for ‘ train’ and it sounds like some of the anecdotes he shares from his one season at Middlesbrough with Bryan Robson and Paul Gascoigne.
He says: ‘ I was born in West Berlin. Everything is quick, nobody has time. I always dreamed to live in the mountains. Now our three kids have grown up, we decided to move here. It is the best decision I’ve ever made.’
Ziege’s son, 21- year- old Alessandro, plays for Pinzgau. After training, he is among a group playing basketball behind us.
Ziege explains: ‘My son was here first and the manager went in April. I told them, “I’d love to train the team until the end of the season”. At the same time the Americans came along and told me their plans for the future.
‘Now, I have the best of both worlds — living in the mountains and coaching a club with ambition.’
Ziege, with 72 caps, was a Euro 96 winner and World Cup runner-up in 2002. Here, some of his squad are part- time, including students and bank employees. As happy as he is, it’s not without its challenges.
‘When I came they had a big fridge in the dressing-room, full of beer. I gave them one day to drink it. Then, just water.
‘I can’t get reports on opposition and my fitness coach also works with the ice-hockey team, so he misses sessions.
‘But this isn’t about money, it’s about doing things properly. Some players would call me a couple of hours before training to say they couldn’t make it. I said, “I’m here to play football. We either do this or we don’t”. It’s about standards.’
Englishman Harry Cooksley, once of AFC Wimbledon, talks happily about his manager’s standards. ‘We were practising free-kicks and no-one could score,’ said the 24year-old. ‘He whipped it straight in the top corner, it was ridiculous. He tells us about the one he scored for Spurs against Arsenal. I love listening to him. He’s a good man, so approachable.’
Charlie Adams, 25, is Pinzgau’s other English player. ‘He (Ziege) can’t really run but he’s still got it. We played keep-ball in a circle last week, he wasn’t even wearing boots and he’s nutmegging us and seeing passes we’d never dream of, it’s frightening.’
Ziege honed those skills in the shadow of the Berlin Wall. ‘It was my house, the street, then the Wall. I played football against it every day. A lot of balls went over,’ he says.
In England, I explain, we’d climb over to get our ball back. Any chance of that in 1980s Berlin? ‘No way! It taught you to keep the ball on the floor. Just over the Wall there were mines. Every 500 metres you had guards with guns in the tower — and then the dogs. So no, you just had to buy a new ball.’
Did he try to find those lost balls when the Wall came down in 1989? ‘I should have done! But that was such a big, big thing for us. Even today, it is weird seeing Berlin without the Wall.
‘We later discovered there were secret files on my family. One day the police came and took my mum, separate from my dad — I still don’t know why. We had one guy from my family who would come over from the East to see us, and I still don’t know what he did either…’
By 18, an ambitious Ziege had hatched his own escape plan. Munich was his destination.
‘Everyone said, “You’re stupid going to Bayern, there is no chance you will play”. But I wanted to prove that I could.’
After seven seasons he had won two Bundesliga titles and the UEFA Cup. Two years at AC Milan brought a Serie A crown and then, in 1999, Middlesbrough.
‘I lived in a little village — with four pubs! The drinking culture was new to me. After training they’d go out past midnight. It was too much and too quick! I had one bad experience and said, “Never again”.’
Ziege mimics his walk between bedroom and bathroom on the night in question, kind of like a slalom skier on the nearby slopes.
The following morning, Boro boss Robson took a taxi to collect his car from the pub. The driver told him, “I had the drunkest man ever in here last night, a German guy”. Robson replied, “That was my star defender!”.’
But swapping Milan for Middlesbrough — really? Ziege takes us back to the Euro 96 semi- final. ‘ England, at Wembley, wow, the biggest game I ever played in,’ he says, blowing his cheeks. ‘I always wanted to come back and Boro gave me that chance — and Gazza was there, how could I say no?’
Ziege is on his feet, recreating Gascoigne’s agonising stretch in that semi-final. Had he connected with the ball, it would have sent England to the final.
‘I remember it so clearly. If Gazza had run straight, he would have scored. But he stopped, for a splitsecond, and it was too late.’ And so to penalties. Ziege and Gascoigne were among 11 scorers.
‘Ah man, the quality of those pens, so good. Paul Ince had been kicking my shins, I could barely walk, but I told myself, “Just put it top corner”. And I did. Then, poor Gareth Southgate. It was such a shame, GermanyEngland should have been the final.
‘But I always had that over Gazza and Incey at Boro, “Who won? We did. So shut up”.’
Ziege was so good at Boro that Liverpool activated a £5.5million clause after one season. He regrets the move.
‘I didn’t play enough and still don’t know why. I scored a penalty in the shoot-out to win the League Cup but then didn’t play in the FA or UEFA Cup finals. Gerard Houllier had a problem he never bothered to explain.’
If life at Anfield was difficult, it was nothing compared to his trauma at Tottenham.
On Boxing Day of 2002, Ziege nearly died. He had just been sent off for the second time in four days during a 2-2 draw with Charlton at White Hart Lane.
Come early evening, red cards were the least of his worries. He rolls back his shorts. The scar is painful just to look at.
‘I had a dead leg but my thigh was swelling and swelling. I learned later that blood was trapped between two skins, it had nowhere to go. I did not want to go to hospital, not at Christmas, but my wife insisted. Thank God she did. By the time we arrived I was unconscious, fighting for my life.
‘They opened the leg and it went down like a balloon. But it left a big hole, something went completely wrong. I still suffer now, but I am lucky. Another 30 minutes and they would have cut off my leg to save me.
‘In this moment, you realise that life is so much more than just a football game.’ And that brings us back to the reason he is here in the first place.