The Keeper: A Life of Saving Goals and Achieving Them (15 page)

They looked up hopefully. Nervously.

“It’s a boy,” I announced. Later, my mom would tell me that I was wearing the biggest grin she’d ever seen on me in my whole life. “His name is Jacob.”

In an instant, they were out of their seats, hugging and kissing me.

“How can you be a father?” my mother said. She planted a kiss on my cheek. I felt wet tears on my skin. “How can you possibly be a father, when I can still remember holding
you
?”

T
he next morning I returned to training; the moments I spent with Laura on the day of the C-section would be all the paternity break I was going to get.

My teammates offered congratulations and clapped me on the back. Then Alex Ferguson approached.

“Is all well?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s a boy. We named him Jacob.”

Ferguson looked like he approved.

“Good name,” he said. “Jacob. That’s a good, strong name for a boy.”

J
acob was an easy, angelic baby. He took his morning nap and his afternoon nap on schedule. He ate well, he grew quickly,

When he was four weeks old, he slept four hours at a stretch. By six weeks, he was sleeping six hours.

His eyes were bright and curious. I made all kinds of moony faces at him.

“That’s right,” I’d say. “I’m your daddy, Jacob. And I love you forever and ever and ever.”

I couldn’t stop touching him. It was unconscious, almost primal, the way my fingers drifted over to the curve of his cheek, the downy wisps of his hair.

I rocked him to sleep, I burped him, I buttoned him into his little peanut onesie, I pulled miniature sports jerseys over his head. I lay down next to him and gazed at him.

When he napped, I peeked in on him just to make sure he was breathing. It was like I feared he’d be taken away from us somehow, whisked away as if he really
had
been too good to be true all along. We bought baby monitors to hear him at night. We bought a movement sensor, one that was capable of detecting the up-and-down motions of a baby’s breath; if it didn’t detect any motion for 20 seconds, an alarm sounded.

One afternoon, that alarm went off, and Laura and I dashed to the nursery as fast as our legs would carry us. I took the stairs two at a time, then bounded into his room.

There, standing at the center of the room, was my mom, rocking Jacob.

“I’m sorry,” my mom said. She had this guilty look on her face. “I heard him wake up, so I came in to get him. I picked
him up without turning off the alarm. I forgot all about that thing.”

Laura and I took deep breaths. Everything was fine.

J
ust before I learned about Edwin coming to United, I’d signed an extension on my Manchester United contract.

Some keepers would surely have been content to remain the Man U backup. There’s great fame, money, and royal treatment. And, like a backup quarterback in football, the backup keeper is rarely used, so all this would come without tremendous day-in, day-out pressure.

But it wasn’t for me. I had things I wanted to accomplish.

Dan arranged a meeting with Manchester United chief executive David Gill. He told David what I wanted—respectfully, firmly, clearly.

“Man U is a great club,” Dan said. “We respect your decision to sign a new starting keeper, but Tim doesn’t want to be a backup. We’d like to find another place for him.”

Gill said that they’d like me to stay at Man U. They needed a reliable number two keeper as cover for Edwin. He added, “Top goalkeepers are extremely tough to find,” implying that I could be at Manchester United, at least as a backup, for years to come.

But he respected that I wanted to play and that I had been a good pro during my time at the club. David and Dan reached an understanding. If I gave them a good year as a backup, they would help me move to a place I could play regularly.

C
layton was the only one who didn’t adore Jacob from the start. He sniffed the baby when we brought him home, was curious
about this new plaything. But when Jacob didn’t play back, Clayton took offense.

If Clayton was lounging on the sofa and we sat down with Jacob in our arms, Clayton would coolly get off the couch and head to a far corner of the room. He’d sulk at us, as if saying,
Make your choice, people: it’s going to be me, or that baby.

“It’s not going to be you, Clayton,” I’d grumble.

“You be nice to Clayton,” Laura would scold me. “That poor dog’s whole world has been turned upside down.”

T
hat season was one of stark contrasts. On the one hand, there was the warmth of my home life. Every day, I fell in love with Jacob all over again. It was as if every new thing he mastered—smiling, then cooing, then laughing; making fists and picking up toys; pushing himself up, then rolling over; sitting up, then pulling up on furniture—gave me a whole new way to love him.

Then there was work—the coolness of Edwin, the aloofness of Tony Coton, the chill that came over me whenever I was in that locker room. I wanted to get out of there. Go home to my wife and my baby.

But I kept watching Edwin and making mental notes.

When I dove, I caught the ball with my hands. But when Edwin dove, he cradled it with his wrists, his forearms, the curve of his shoulders and back. I imitated what Edwin did, and once I got it down, I made it my own.

Edwin also had this way of fielding those tricky low balls that sometimes come in so close to your body that you can’t quite catch them with your hands. They’re easy to fumble or let roll under you. But Edwin threw his body on the ground so quickly
that the ball bounced off his chest. Only then would he try to grab it with his hands.

I made that one my own, too.

Most of all, I observed Edwin’s confidence. Nobody ever yelled at Edwin to catch or to parry a shot.

I watched. I learned. I sat on the bench. Sometimes Ferguson put me in reserve games.

But there was that voice again:
You’re never going to become great playing in reserve games. Go somewhere that you can become the best.

A
s it became clear which teams would need a new goalkeeper for the following season, Dan began to explore the marketplace. The club that I was most interested in was Everton. My former United defender Phil Neville had transferred to Everton at the start of this season, and his brother, Gary, said he was quite happy.

They played in a great old-time stadium, Goodison Park. I’d always loved the feel of the place when Man U visited—it felt like going back in time in all the best ways.

Dan described his discussions with Everton’s manager, David Moyes. “It’s a really good club. I like Moyes, and I think you’ll like him, too. And, Tim, they seem to really want you.”

The morning after another match that I watched from the bench, I punched the address of the Everton training ground into my car’s satellite navigation system and headed out to meet Moyes. He was waiting when I arrived. Lanky guy. Taller and younger than Ferguson. Red hair, firm jaw, Christopher Walken eyes. He had a scar above his eyebrows—reminders of wounds from his own days as a player.

We shook hands, then he cut right to the chase. “Look, Tim,” Moyes said. “We could use a keeper like you.”

He told me about Everton. The club wasn’t Manchester United, he explained; they didn’t have the massive budgets to buy any player they wanted. They had a fraction of the staff that Man U had. They didn’t have the worldwide brand, the built-in cachet. They didn’t have the same level of corporate sponsorships. Or, frankly, the winning record.

But, he explained, they had their own rich history. They’d competed in the top flight of English soccer for over a hundred seasons. And they had plans. When Moyes came on as manager late in the 2001–2002 season, the club was dangerously close to relegation. Yet he’d guided them to safety, in fifteenth place. The next year, they’d risen to seventh. In the most recent season, they’d gotten to fourth place and qualified for the Champions League.

“We’re ambitious,” he said. “And I know you’re ambitious, too.”

Moyes had been working with a crop of homegrown players—like Alan Stubbs, Leon Osman, and Tony Hibbert—guys who were raised in Liverpool, and who had supported Everton since they were kids, later moving up through the ranks of the club’s academy. Moyes was trying to round out that core group with shrewd transfers. The Australian Tim Cahill, for example, who scored 12 goals in his first season with Everton. The Spaniard Mikel Arteta, a smooth midfield general. And my old teammate Phil Neville.

“We’re hungry,” said Moyes, “but I don’t tolerate egos. We’re a family club. An old-school working-class club, through and through. It’s a great playing environment.”

While we were sitting there, it dawned on me.
He’s selling me.

And that felt so good after being shunted aside for the past year at United.

Moyes told me that if I was interested, he’d try to work out a deal where I’d come on loan as Everton’s starting keeper.

Then I asked the make-or-break question: “And what if I have a bad game?”

He didn’t blink. “Tim, you’re young and I want you to learn,” he said. “Learning requires risk. So I’m going to encourage you to take some risks. Sometimes you’ll make mistakes. When you do, I’m going to be honest. I might even scream and snarl from time to time. But I’m not going to take you out of the game. In the end, I know you’ll win us more games than you’ll lose us.”

I’m not going to take you out of the game.

In that moment, it was as if somebody had opened up a window for me, let a blast of fresh air in.

D
an arranged a meeting with Alex Ferguson. Ferguson held the meeting in his office with a view of the training ground. A chef wheeled in a steak dinner on a white tablecloth. They made polite small talk; when Dan mentioned his Oxford history degree, Ferguson spent close to an hour talking about his cache of rare documents.

It was only toward the end of the meal that the conversation rolled around to my transfer.

“Tim’s a good lad,” said Ferguson. “He’s held true to his part of the deal. He can go on loan to Everton.”

Truth is, I’m not sure Ferguson cared much. I wasn’t really a part of his plans by now.

E
verton called to ask what number I wanted to wear.

Call it OCD, or call it a personality quirk, but I’ve always liked even numbers better than odds, 2’s and 4’s best of all.

Number 24, I said. I want 24
.

Laura ordered a custom Everton jersey in Jacob’s size. The morning I left for my final Manchester United game, Jacob was crawling around the house in that shirt with the number 24 on his tiny back.

I scooped him up. “Looks good on you, little man.” I kissed his cheek, his neck, the top of his head.

Oh, man, how I adored this kid.

I hugged him and set him down. Then I walked out the door.

My deal with Everton was just a loan; there was no guarantee of anything. It was certainly possible that after a year, I’d return to the Old Trafford bench.

But that’s not what I believed.

From that first day with David Moyes, I felt I’d be at Everton for a long, long time.

O
n Saturdays, they come streaming toward Goodison Park, a parade of blue. Blue scarves, blue hats, blue jerseys, blue jackets. They crowd into pubs—the Thomas Frost, the Brick, the Leigh Arms, the Lisbon—to knock back pints before the match. Some remain in the pubs through the game; others depart for the stadium—pass through Goodison’s turnstiles and take their seat in the bright blue stadium chairs.

If they’re loud and rowdy, they head for the lower Gladwys section, behind the goal at the north end. That’s where the hard-core fans, the true nutters, congregate—the boisterous heart and soul of the home crowd. It’s in Gladwys that the madness of the stadium reaches its fever pitch. It’s where the songs echo loudest, where the ebb and flow of the game, the despair and the ecstasy, are felt most deeply.

Not that there’s a single inch of Goodison where the fans stay quiet. Their cheers and groans and chants mirror precisely the action on the field. I swear, there are days when it feels like cause and effect have merged into one, as if those supporters are no longer reacting, but are instead dictating the tempo of the game.

Looking back, I think it was those fans, above all else, who saved me.

I
loved Everton from the start. I loved that in this funny old stadium, I felt closer to the fans than I’d been since my Imperials days. Goodison Park is so compact there’s not even room for a security gate between fans and the field. When I took my place in goal, I didn’t simply hear the roar of the crowd, I heard individual fans calling out, “Come on, blue boys!”

This was English “football” the way it used to be, from the rowdy fans right up to its Liverpool born-and-bred owner, Bill Kenwright, an Everton fan from boyhood.

Even the locker room felt so much more down-to-earth than at United. On one wall was an image of Alan Ball, one of the Everton greats, with his quote:
ONCE EVERTON HAS TOUCHED YOU, NOTHING WILL BE THE SAME
.

It was true: I was welcomed with open arms. Somehow it didn’t matter to my new teammates that I’d been warming the bench. I’d been at Manchester United, the holy grail of English clubs. They were ready to listen to what I had to say.

I felt like a leader for the first time since arriving in England.

M
y new goalkeeping coach, Chris Woods, was confident enough to trust me, to ask what I needed. On our very first day of training together, he set up a bunch of drills, but added, evenly, “If you feel like you need something specific, something I’m not doing, let me know.”

Those were words I never heard at Manchester United. Not when I was playing well, not when I was playing poorly. Nobody once asked me what I needed to be comfortable. Somehow, it had
never occurred to anyone at United that perhaps the key to working with an OCD goalkeeper might just be to give him a sense of control.

Chris Woods let me be my own man from the start. It was clear how sharp his eye was, how instinctively he understood the position. He challenged me, too. He pushed me to do some new footwork drills that required dexterity and balance.