Rodney Marsh on His Colorful Career, Regrets, and His Outspoken Nature | OneFootball

Never one to bite his tongue, Rodney Marsh has been a source of entertainment both on and off the field since his pro debut in 1962. We sit down with the ex-Man City and QPR lightning rod to reminisce on his career as a player, coach, and pundit. 

October 11, 1944. The United States First Army began their intense, house-to-house assault on Aachen, the first major German city to be captured by Allied forces. The film noir classic To Have and Have Not, which marked Lauren Bacall’s screen debut, premiered in New York City. And in Hatfield, England, one Rodney Marsh was born.

Marsh’s parents, William Marsh and Lilian Dredge, had fled London in order to escape the constant aerial terror from Nazi forces, heading to Hertfordshire in order to go into labor and welcome their new son into the world. Initially mired in poverty, Marsh endured a rough childhood while rising through the ranks of the West Ham and Fulham youth systems.

He’d make his first-team debut with Fulham on March 23, 1963, scoring the decisive goal in a 1-0 win over Aston Villa. Later that season however, a bad collision with Leicester City’s John Sjoberg left Marsh with a broken jaw and skull, in addition to permanent hearing loss in his left ear. He was unable to stand up or keep his balance for weeks, with one doctor even telling him that he would no longer be able to play football again.

But if there’s one thing about Marsh, it’s that he’s never been one to walk away from a fight. He returned 10 months later and finished as Fulham’s top scorer with 17 goals before falling out of favor under new manager Vic Buckingham. He dropped from the First Division to the Third Division and joined Queens Park Rangers, where he excelled with 134 goals in 242 appearances.

After leading QPR to multiple promotions, Marsh would leave London for the first time and join Manchester City, who acquired him in March 1972 for a club record £200,000. With City in prime position to claim their first league title in four years, it seemed that Marsh’s arrival would be the icing on the cake. Instead, they ended up finishing fourth in the table, just one point shy of league champions Derby County.

“To this day, people still accuse me of losing that championship back in 1972,” Marsh said to Urban Pitch. “I think it’s true. I think I upset the balance of the team. What was fascinating was I came from a lower division team, playing with Colin Bell, Mike Summerby, and Francis Lee, all England internationals, all who played in the World Cup. I joined the club, and for some reason inexplicably, they tried to play to me.

“Instead of me fitting in with the way they played, it was like giving me the ball and seeing what I was gonna do, and I influenced the team in a very negative way. That was down to me. I was a football player. I didn’t ask to be picked, I didn’t ask to be benched. If I was picked, I played, and I was picked for the rest of the season. But that’s not on me, that’s on the coach that picks you, in my view.”

Photo by Daily Express/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Marsh was able to make amends and score 47 goals in 150 appearances for City, but his flamboyant nature would land him in hot water with City manager Tony Book, who discarded him from the squad despite him being club captain.

In 1976, a 31-year-old Marsh would join NASL side Tampa Bay Rowdies, where he was introduced as “the white Pelé.”

He then retired from football and coached New York United, Carolina Lightnin’ and the Rowdies, where he also served as a CEO and a player, before going on a three-year roadshow tour with ex-teammate George Best. After a brief spell as QPR’s CEO, Marsh then stepped into punditry with Sky Sports, where he spent 11 years before being sacked in 2005 after joking about the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami on a live broadcast.

“I believe that my asset in my job as a pundit is recognition and the ability to articulate in a real, fair, and balanced, genuine, and honest way, with transparency,” stated Marsh to R.Org. “To this day, I’m real, and my Achilles heel is that I probably see humor in things that maybe there shouldn’t be humor in them.”

Marsh enjoyed a brief spell at Talksport before going through various reality TV shows, but he’s nevertheless spent the past decade involved in football punditry and is regularly featured on the SiriusXM FC channel. We caught up with Marsh to discuss his colorful career and the regrets he may or may not have picked up along the way.

Photo by Central Press/Getty Images

Urban Pitch: Let’s talk a little bit about your England career, because you were able to get nine caps and a goal, but your Three Lions exploits came to an end after six straight starts. Why did your time at England end so abruptly?

Rodney Marsh: Over the years, people thought that this was a joke. People thought 30 years ago that I was making this up when I used to tell the story as one of my after-dinner speeches. And then it was in Sir Alf Ramsey’s biography, which validated my story. We were about to play Wales, and Ramsey came into the locker room before the game in his lovely navy blue tracksuit and his clipboard.

He said, “Tonight, this is the way we’re going to play, this is how we’re doing it. We have to work very hard, because if we don’t work hard tonight, we’re going to lose this game. I’ve told you before, when you come from your clubs and you play for England, you have to work harder. You in particular Rodney.”

He looks over to me and says, “I’m going to be watching you tonight for the first 45 minutes, and if you don’t work hard tonight, I’m going to pull you off at halftime.”

I replied, “Christ, at City, we only get a cup of tea and an orange.”

That was the last time I played for England. I played the whole game, but he never forgot the comment.

Were there players who were struggling to hold in their laughter?

The late, great Bobby Moore was creasing up. Oh, well, it is what it is.

You seem to have that mentality for quite a lot of things. Are there any particular things that you wish you’d have done differently from your playing career?

That’s a terrific question, because it overlaps many things. You’re talking about my playing career, I would take it a stage further, and say my life. I’ve always been in control, to some degree, of my life, and my football, and my career, and whatever it’s been. Not a lot of people know this, but in the last two years of my school, before I dropped out, there was part of the studies which was art classes and English literature and English language at a place called the Jeffery Museum in Shoreditch.

I went along to that, and one of the courses was on William Shakespeare. I read the complete works of William Shakespeare over a two-year period with the professor. One of the lines that really bit into me was, “Above all else, to thine own self be true.” And I think I’ve tried to live my life like that. So when you talk about the regrets and the overlapping of things in my life, I’ve always said regret the things that you don’t do. Don’t regret the things that you do do.

You shared a locker room with so many legendary players over your playing career. Who was your favorite teammate?

As you’ve framed the question that way, my favorite teammate would be Willie Donachie, a Scottish international left back who played for Man City. I was there for four years, and we we were together virtually every single day. He was Scottish and I was English, and the Scots hate the English because of all the political and wars between Scotland and England, but we just got on great.

We roomed together, we stayed together, we drove in cars together to training, and we became family friends. My wife was very friendly with Yvonne, his wife, and even today, I’ve been friends with Danny Donachie ever since he was a baby. He’s now a mentalist working with Anthony Gordon and Marcus Rashford. Danny’s come a long way as well, but Willie was my BFF in soccer.

You almost became teammates with George Best in the NASL, and then, you did become teammates at Fulham. What exactly was your relationship like with him?

We had a fantastic relationship throughout our lives, because even when we both retired, we both went back to England to work for Sky Sports for a while. I kept my home in Florida the whole time, and I would go backwards and forwards to London to work for Sky Sports. George was there, and we did the Best and Marsh Road Shows, and then after dinner, speaking at Sportsman’s Evening and all that, and we used to spend so much time together all the time. I loved George, I loved him a lot.

Lastly, Do you feel like the collapse of the NASL influenced the way that MLS has been run?

Let’s unpack that a little bit, because the North American Soccer League was fundamentally like the Harlem Globetrotters. It was taking the best of everybody around the world, and when I say the best of everyone, literally the best players in the world. Pelé, Carlos Alberto, Franz Beckenbauer, Johan Cruyff, George Best, Bobby Moore, Gerd Müller, Johan Neeskens, Eusébio. I mean, there were just so many great, great football players, and they were all in America.

It was very much Harlem Globetrotters where there were great games and great goals, and it was all so bright, but was it meant for longevity? No, it was like a one-hit wonder. It was all bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, like the candle in the wind, and it all burned out. I think Major League Soccer is very much a residue from that.