The ball's in wor Cort - Carl's Tyneside tales | OneFootball

It is 23rd August 2000 and a 22-year-old, £7 million-pound, centre forward is preparing for his home debut. St. James’ Park will have more than 50,000 punters click through the turnstiles for the first time since the mid-1970s.

Within four minutes, Cort rises to meet Nolberto Solano’s cross and wheels away in a sea of black and white delirium. The memory evokes a broad grin. “I’d thought to myself, ‘If I score today, I’m going to celebrate in a cool, calm way’,” Cort tells newcastleunited.com. What happened? “The total opposite,” he says chuckling. “I ran and I jumped – I’ve still got a photo at home today – the feeling just took over my body. The atmosphere was phenomenal. I’d played in some big grounds, but this was unbelievable. It was the first time I’d heard noise like it.”

Twenty five minutes later, Cort’s left hamstring popped. Keen to impress, and feeling a touch rushed by the medical staff, he returned after just four weeks for a two-legged League Cup tie against Leyton Orient. Having scored in the first game, he started at Brisbane Road in the second. 39 minutes in, the same hamstring snapped.

Cort was flown to America to visit Dr Richard Steadman, a pioneering surgeon with a burgeoning reputation for saving footballers’ careers, including that of Cort’s teammate Alan Shearer.

Cort was told that the hamstring was formed of three muscles - the semitendinosus, semimembranosus, and biceps femoris – and that cutting the least used one would “release it and, with a lot of strengthening work, I’d be back in the position I was in before. I trusted him, so I had the operation.

“I did all of the rehab and, because a few others were coming back, Bobby put on a practice match. Marcelino was marking me, and I jumped, landed and hyperextended really badly and damaged my knee. I remember Bobby having a go at Marcelino, but it wasn’t his fault. There was nothing malicious in it.

“That was the start of the knee issues. They hadn’t told me that the knee and hamstring are connected and now I’d be less stable. I started having all these meniscal injuries and I constantly needed fluid draining.

“If I’m honest, looking back now, that was the end. I wasn’t able to perform at my best after that.”

Cort is from a footballing family but was not a football fanatic. He was the first of his brothers to turn professional. Elder brother Wayne played non-league, younger sibling Leon was a centre-half who spent time in the Premier League with Burnley and Fulham and half-brother Ruben Loftus-Cheek has recently returned to the England fold.

Bar a few stray sheep, the family were Arsenal fans but Cort was “not an avid watcher”. Football was simply “one of those things I found myself doing and being good at it”. He played locally for Bradfield, Peckham, facing a young Rio Ferdinand at youth level.

As he reached his teens, a Wimbledon scout noticed a tall, rapid youngster with a knack for scoring. Cort was soon one of the infamous Crazy Gang.

“Every practice felt like going into a game,” Cort explains. “Nervous feelings, kind of anxiety, because it was full on. It was like you weren't playing against your teammate. Full throttle tackles, challenges, verbal abuse - everything came with it.”

The names were notorious. Ben Thatcher, who later committed one of the worst fouls in Premier League history on Pedro Mendes, was a “no nonsense character.” Vinnie Jones “was a weird one because he trained differently to how he played. He didn't have that same bite in practice as in games. He would stand on the wing and get people clipping the ball so he could volley at goal.” However, for Cort, Mick Harford “was the one. No-one messed around with him.”

Cort coaches children now and, on reflection, it is obvious he cannot fathom how it used to be. Two instances have stuck with him.

The first involved a new pair of Clarks’ shoes that Cort had proudly bought. He thought he looked ok, but Robbie Earle thought otherwise. “Robbie looked at them and said, ‘you've got a warning, don't wear them again.’ As a young kid being, you know, Mr. Know-It-All, I brushed it off.”

Cort wore them for the following match but when he came out of his post-game shower and went to get dressed his footwear had been “cut to pieces. Every inch of my socks and shoes. I had to walk to the car barefoot.”

Soon Cort was baring more still. Wimbledon used to train at the Richardson Evans Memorial Playing Fields, a public space in Roehampton where they were surrounded by joggers and dogwalkers. Unbeknownst to Cort, he had been stationed in a specific spot for the warm-up.

“I literally got jumped,” he tells newcastleunited.com. “They stripped me stark naked. I'm standing in a public park, no clothes on, and they all run off. My instant reaction was to dive on the floor. I just lay there. They left me there for about ten minutes and then the ladies from the laundry room came out to give me a towel. Imagine doing something like that today?”

Cort is smiling as he talks but the eyes tell a different story. He was not like the others at Wimbledon, and the lad culture did not suit him. But he knew that reacting angrily would simply encourage further mischief. Some might lap it up, but the sense is that, for Cort, the embarrassment and humiliation ran deep.

When Cort broke into Wimbledon’s first team, Joe Kinnear was manager. Cort would later discover that his youth coach, Lawrie Sanchez, was “harping on at Joe to give me a chance. But I don’t think Joe was having it. Wimbledon were known for their aggressive style, and I don’t think he saw me that way. To an extent, he was right.”

But injuries twisted Kinnear’s arm and Cort’s full debut came at St James’ Park. Wimbledon were bottom, United unbeaten and preparing to face Barcelona the following week. Cort headed past Shay Given within two minutes and United lost 3-1.

“’If anyone had asked me, ‘are you ready for it?’ I would have said ‘no’,” Cort says. “I’d never played in a stadium that big, with that kind of crowd. There was black and white everywhere. Going from playing for the reserves at Plough Lane to that was like stepping onto a different planet.

“For the rest of the game, I was – and you hear it a lot out here in the US with American teams – in that zone where nothing exists. In the lead up to it, in the warm-up, I was really, really nervous.”

Just like that, Cort was a first team regular, learning from the likes of Earle, Jason Euell, Jones, Neil Ardley and John Hartson. The squad barely caught a glimpse of Kinnear until Fridays, with Dave Kemp and Terry Burton overseeing training. “Joe wasn't a tactician. He was more of a motivator,” Cort explains. “I'm not being cruel but with Wimbledon’s demise there wasn't any adaptation when the foreign players started to come in. It was always ‘let’s smash him, let's hit him’. But what next if that doesn’t work?”

Having made England’s under-21 squad, Cort wanted “to try and play.” He was training with the likes of Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard and then returning to his club where “I’m just in a fight every week”.

Cort might stand at a lofty height, but he is gentle, sensitive and thoughtful. He met with Kinnear to explain his concerns but that only led to his omission, and he returned only when Kinnear fell ill and Norwegian Egil Olsen was appointed. He was sacked just before Wimbledon were relegated in May 2000, but Cort grabbed nine Premier League goals and six assists that season.

Leicester City, whose manager Peter Taylor worked with Cort at England under-21s level, were interested. Tottenham Hotspur too, with the lure of staying in London tempting. But United came in with a “concrete” £7 million offer and Cort was sold on a cocktail of his new teammates, the club’s history and Sir Bobby Robson.

“Bobby called and he had this upbeat personality,” Cort recalls. “He was ecstatic and was congratulating me. To hear that coming from someone like him was amazing. People will say this is silly, but I was oblivious to the price tag at the time.”

Whereas some try to control life’s minutiae, Cort’s approach to life is more relaxed. “I’ve learned more and more as I’ve got older that you obliviously take actions that gear you towards certain things. But I believe if something doesn’t feel right, don’t do it. I did what felt right at the time.”

Immediately upon arrival, Cort felt Tyneside’s warm embrace. He loved it. “But sometimes I do look back and ask myself whether it was the right decision.”

Cort knew Shearer was idolised at Newcastle, but he had not appreciated the extent of the worship. “I didn’t think about the fact that there was just one club in the city,” Cort begins.

“You couldn’t speak a bad word about Alan. A friend came up to watch a game and that night we were out and in the bathroom. He said something about Alan not having had the greatest of games and another guy in the toilet kicked off. We ended up calming it down, but I realised that you had to be careful of everything you do, everything you say. You were being watched.”

The likes of Shearer and Gary Speed were the group’s seniors, but Robson also wanted to drink the elixir of youth. Cort was surrounded by the likes of Kieron Dyer, Lomana Lua Lua, Shola Ameobi and, latterly, Craig Bellamy.

His eyes widened as another name floated across his brain. “There was one player who I thought was phenomenal that I didn't know too much about before I joined: Nolberto Solano. He didn’t look like your poster for an elite player, and you wouldn’t say he took care of himself very well, but his intelligence and technical ability were phenomenal.”

Cort regularly spent evenings at Casa Solano being wined, dined and serenaded by the Peruvian and his musical pals.

Cort’s love for Robson shines through in both his words and his facial expressions. He recounts the tale of Sir Bobby thinking he had lost his phone, only for John Carver to call it and Robson to pick it out of his pocket. Robson’s first words were, ‘John, I’ve lost my phone’.

Once or twice Robson would call Cort ‘Shola’ and vice-versa and “he would have these little moments where we’d think ‘okay, you’re getting on’. Some of us used to wonder and say to him, ‘Bobby, you’ve made it in the game, you’re in your seventies now, why don’t you just chill out?’ But he never would.”

Was Robson the man supporters saw in public? “Absolutely,” Cort responds without a glimmer of hesitation. In fact, Robson’s support became crucial when Cort’s injury nightmare began.

“Bobby was always encouraging me, always trying to make me feel comfortable. In those days £7 million was a lot of money. He could have gone out and bought a bunch of other players, but he decided to come for me. That made me more relaxed.”

Amidst the injuries, Cort had moments for United. A thumping volley against Middlesbrough in March 2001. A sublime outside of the foot, first time finish in a 6-2 demolition of Everton a year later. Micro-flashes of what could have been.

But his favourite memory is of a 90th minute winner, a strike that never looked like beating Tim Flowers until it hit Gary Rowett. The reasoning speaks volumes for Cort as a person.

“I’d missed a good opportunity…” A sitter? “Yeah, a sitter but then a chance came right at the end where I probably should have laid it off. After the game I met a supporter who had flown in specifically for this game with her daughter who said to me, ‘I’m so glad that you scored. We really wanted to experience that atmosphere.’”

While his body was already beginning to fail him, Cort was enjoying reasonable on-field success. Fifteen appearances in his first season brought him seven goals. A small sample size yes, but also a show of promise.

However, he was struggling to adjust to things away from the pitch. Cort had not considered the spotlight that came with playing for United. “Being at Wimbledon, you’re not really in the picture at all. But having made the move, I’m being spoken about on TV, and it’s all, ‘is he worth the money? Should he be here?’

“I’m a very private person. I have a very close circle of friends. But even when things were going well, I didn’t really take to the attention. Of course, I didn’t mind people saying hello but there were a couple of occasions it got too much.

“I’m very patient and I was happy to stand there and sign everything and speak to anybody. I found it difficult to turn people away. It’s nothing against anybody else – it’s just who I am. I didn’t know how to navigate it. Some people thrive on it, but it wasn’t for me.”

Across 2001/02 and 2002/03, Cort managed just 731 minutes of playing time. He “lost his way” but still tried everything in his power to return to playing “but I found that I’d not be anywhere near the same player. Mentally, that starts to creep in. It was soul destroying. I remember one game there were boos and jeers from the fans, but they had no idea about the extent of the injuries.”

Partying became a crutch, or at least a form of escapism. “Not excessively,” he explains. “But I was trying to fill the gap that football left. Prior to going to Newcastle, I never went out. I’d have a drink or two, but nothing really. Maybe deep down I knew already that there was no way for me to come back from those injuries. It sent me down the wrong route and I knew I had to leave so I spoke to Bobby, and he was understanding. I was doing myself no justice going out there.

“We had a long conversation in his office, and he wished me all the best. It was unfortunate because Newcastle was a huge opportunity for me to make a mark. The coaching staff would be telling me how happy Bobby was with me at times, and I think I had the right temperament to play for him. I was never flamboyant. That just wasn’t in my nature. I knew what I was good at and stuck to it.”

In January 2004, Cort joined newly promoted Wolves for £2m. The Chronicle published an article that left “a really bad taste” in Cort’s mouth. “They were rubbing it in by setting out how many games I played, how much money I cost per game etc. Bobby backed me on that – he had a go at the writer.”

Cort was suffering an identity crisis. Footballers become just that – they are seen, and often view themselves, as simply people who kick a ball. It is neither healthy nor right.

“You create an identity where you’re a footballer not a person,” Cort explains.

“When things aren’t working well, you are thinking, ‘what now?’ I couldn't run. When I went to Wolves, they videoed me and showed me – I couldn’t even lift my left leg up properly.”

He was stuck in a vortex. His playing career was effectively over yet he was still playing. “You hear players talking about never being 100% but this was something different. I was going into games waiting for the next setback.

Reaching out for help never felt like a viable option, though. “I didn't feel like I played under managers at that time where I could say to them, ‘look, I'm not feeling right mentally.’ I think that would have jeopardised my situation. This was still the tough man era – if you had a broken leg, you were expected to put a band-aid on it.”

In late 2004, Glenn Hoddle replaced Dave Jones at Molineux. Cort sings the praises of the former England manager. “His man management skills were…” Cort pauses. “…questionable. But his attention to detail with me was phenomenal. He was the first coach I played under who went into such detail on individual moves in certain situations.”

Despite his failing body, Cort scored 32 goals in 99 appearances for Wolves, including 15 in the 2004/05 Championship season. “I was flying but I’d go home after games and my knee would balloon. I wouldn’t train until the Friday.”

He visited a German specialist, Hans-Wilhelm Müller-Wohlfahrt. “He looked at me and the first thing he said was that I never should have had that operation at Newcastle. In a nutshell, he couldn’t do anything. All I could do was try and strengthen it.”

Regret spreads like butter across Cort’s face as he talks. “At the time [of visiting Dr Steadman] I didn’t ask him anything. I was really quiet. I didn't ask him or the Newcastle medical team any questions.” He clearly still sits uneasily with his past silence.

On leaving Molineux, Cort finished his career with spells at Leicester City, Marbella, Norwich City, Brentford and Tampa Bay Rowdies. At Leicester, under Ian Holloway, there was an injury crisis and Cort agreed to play simply to “be a body. It was one of the worst games I played. I couldn’t move. Every time I ran it felt like my knee was going to fall off. I landed after jumping and my knee went. I stayed down and the whole stadium booed. They had no idea whatsoever what started. Ian came out afterwards and had a go at the fans for it.

“I was holding everything in. There wasn’t any release for it.” By the time his career finished, Cort had “lost my way a lot”. While stuck in the cycle, he had not realised that he’d lost it but stepping off the wheel made him understand that “things were still haunting me big time. It crept into other aspects of my life, like the way I behaved and reacted to certain things.”

For a time, Cort removed himself from the game completely, chucking out all his kit and balls in a rage. Living in Las Vegas, he was easily able to keep away from the game, but he wanted to go further, suggesting to his wife that they move to several places “no one had heard of. I just wanted to get away from it.”

A therapist helped, and still helps, Cort gain “a better understanding of what happened, and how to deal with these things. It all ended so abruptly. I didn’t know how to deal with it.

“You don't learn this until later on but as a footballer you're a commodity. You think everybody loves you but now you're on your own. It’s one of the reasons I keep my circle close.”

Cort dabbled in a few things, driving an Uber for a time. But he “always ended up gravitating back to the game.” Having spurned several chances to coach at professional level, he is now working as head coach of the girls’ team at Faith Lutheran Middle & High School in Vegas. The side were crowned State football – Cort has to stop himself saying “soccer” – Champions in his first season.

He also runs his own soccer school focussing on training fledgling forwards and is trying to change the football “culture” locally via his Clever Cleats – “if I say boots out here no one knows what I’m talking about!” – programme, which is part of the Carl Cort Academy.

“I see six- and seven-year-olds getting yelled at by parents. I wasn’t to help change the culture and get them to see that at that age, the game is not serious, it’s fun. I didn’t really get into it seriously until I was 14. People are shocked by that when I tell them: they think it’s too late if you’re not in an academy by age 11.”

Cort has regained his happiness, having dealt with the “demons that were in there. I wouldn't say I'm over it all. There are times when I fall back into traps and things spark up again.

“My therapist tried to help me connect the dots and most things went back to football, and most of it back to the Wimbledon days, which is interesting. But everything is on the up. I feel a lot more positive going forward. I'm feeling good and that is why I’m doing this with you now.”