Paul Gascoigne: The Legacy of an English Footballing Maverick | OneFootball

The story behind Paul Gascoigne’s rise

Today, the England’s men’s national team boasts a world-class arsenal of attacking midfielders and forwards ranging from Harry Kane to Eberechi Eze to Marcus Rashford to Bukayo Saka, the likes of which can only be rivaled by a select few countries like France, Spain, Argentina and Portugal. Such is their attacking profligacy that, for the recent international matches, a number of top-tiers creative dynamos like Jude Bellingham, Phil Foden and Jack Grealish were nowhere to be seen.

However, there was a time when English football was defined by crunching tackles and rain-soaked pitches, rather than graceful, technical play. It’s why, when Paul Gascoigne came along in the late 1980s, he was immediately heralded as a breath of fresh air.

‘Best player in the world’

Born in Gateshead, England, on 27 May 1967, Gascoigne was forced to undergo a number of unsuccessful trials at the likes of Ipswich Town and Southampton before finally joining his boyhood team Newcastle United in 1980, eventually signing on as an apprentice after turning 16. He made his first-team debut on April 13, 1985 in a 1-0 win vs. Queens Park Rangers and quickly emerged as a vital cog in the team under Willie McFaul. It wasn’t long before Newcastle’s then all-time leading scorer Jackie Milburn declared him to be the best player in the world.

After a stellar 1987/88 season that saw him named as the PFA Young Player of the Year and included on the PFA Team of the Year in the 1987–88 season, Gascoigne joined Tottenham Hotspur for a record British fee of £2.2 million, rejecting a charm offensive from Sir Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United in the process. ‘Gazza’ continued his ascent in England’s top-flight, winning the club’s Player of the Year in 1990 and finishing fourth in the 1990 Ballon d’Or standings.

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However, with Spurs drowning under a mountain of £10 million in debt, the English side had no other choice but to sell their creative talisman to Lazio for £8.5 million to Tottenham. But just when he looked set to make the move to Italia, Gascoigne committed a dangerous knee-high foul on Nottingham Forest’s Gary Charles and ruptured his own cruciate ligaments in his right knee in the process.

Spurs would end up prevailing in extra time to secure the 1991 FA Cup title, but as for Gascoigne, he would miss the entirety of the 1991/92 season before finally joining Lazio for a fee of £5.5 million, receiving a £2 million signing-on fee and signing a contract worth £22,000 a week.

Such was the national hype around him that his ongoing transfer saga often overshadowed the uptick in unemployment and recession in terms of the tabloid news. In order to take advantage of the fascination around his move to Italy, British free-to-air public broadcast television Channel 4 decided to launch a program called Football Italia, sending James Richardson to Italy as a hands-on producer to film segments with Gascoigne. But when Gascoigne stopped showing up to record, Richardson was able to take advantage and stake his claim as one of the greatest presenters of all time.

“Paul was coming for 18 months of injuries,” stated Richardson in an exclusive EPL Index interview. “He’d been England’s star at the 1990 World Cup and then the biggest talent that this country had produced for a long time. Beyond his football ability, he just culturally was somebody that everybody was interested in, everyone had an opinion on. When I first met him, I was very intimidated because he was so famous and because he was a really good footballer, and football’s such a big social skill in England, like in many countries. I was never any good at football, so I kind of felt very self-conscious with him, but he was so relaxed and so generous and so easy to work with when we actually met up.”

“As I say, part of working with Paul was the fact that you kind of had to factor in the fact that maybe 60-70% of the time, the things you thought you were going to do, you weren’t, because he just wouldn’t be there. And you just had to be quite flexible, I guess. So, he had a lot of demands on his time, and there was a lot of pressure on him in his spell in Rome. And I think that probably meeting our broadcast schedule wasn’t the most, well, the highest priority.”

Gascoigne spent three seasons in Lazio, helping them qualify for Europe after a 16-year drought, before making the move to Rangers in 1995 for £4.3 million, where he led them to two league titles, a Scottish Cup and a Scottish League Cup. He returned to England 1998 after joining Middlesbrough for £3.4 million move to Middlesbrough in 1998. However, he was unable to attain the longevity that his career deserved due to off-the-field and on-the-field woes.

After elbowing Aston Villa’s George Boateng in the head and breaking his arm in the process, Gascoigne received a three-match ban and £5,000 fine from the Football Association. He attempted to bounce back after joining Everton in 2000 only to struggle with injuries and depression, prompting him to seek out an alcohol rehabilitation clinic in Arizona. He cut his two ill-fated years at Everton short and joined Burnley, spending just two months at Turf Moor, before signing a nine-month contract with China League One club Gansu Tianma in a playing and coaching role.

Struggles off the pitch

Having scored 2 goals in 4 league matches, Gascoigne reneged on his contract and returned to the US for alcoholism and depression. He joined League Two side Boston Outfit as a player-coach in July 2004, where he made just five appearances, before hanging up his boots. Two decades later, it’s evident that Gascoigne hasn’t changed much. Despite multiple stints in rehab, he continues to struggle with alcoholism.

“I have not changed, I cannot change, I would not know how to change,” stated Gascoigne in a recent interview with the Mirror. “I will probably die as Gazza. But I have nothing to hide. The whole country knows what I have done now. I have had a great life, travelled the world, had everything money can buy. Jimmy Greaves stopped drinking, but that is Jimmy Greaves. I am not Jimmy Greaves and I am not George Best.”

“I don’t get drunk because I hate my mum and dad or I hate the public. It is not about that. I do it for the sake of it. I don’t think about yesterday, I don’t think about tomorrow, because tomorrow I could be drinking. Hopefully I won’t be, but I just keep it in the day now. I’m not always perfect, I don’t want to be perfect. No one’s perfect anyway.”