Shaka's story - 30 years on from Hislop joining Newcastle United | OneFootball

Fortunately, by the time Shaka Hislop heard of United's interest, his Football League apprenticeship meant he was fully aware of Newcastle's draw. The magic dust Kevin Keegan was liberally scattering on Tyneside was grabbing much attention and Hislop's reaction to the possibility of a transfer was as sweet as it was simple.

"'I can't believe this is happening'," was his opening thought. "As much as you think about your dream, when it's suddenly knocking on your door, it doesn't feel real in any way.

"I was aware of everything going on at Newcastle and the signings they'd already made that summer - Les Ferdinand, David Ginola, Warren Barton. The speculation, when it first becomes real, it seems surreal."

While any doubt in Hislop's case was minimal, a phone call with Keegan will dissolve most issues faster than sugar in water. "For context, this is just after Newcastle had sold Andy Cole to Manchester United and Kevin stood on the steps speaking to supporters (to justify the decision)," Hislop tells newcastleunited.com.

"His personality, his reputation almost went, dare I say, beyond who he was as a player. It struck me that this was a guy that players love to play for, somebody who's going to be stand up out front and wear his heart on his sleeve. It ticked every single box. Suddenly, it was an easy decision."

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Technically, a Londoner because his dad was in the UK completing law school when he was born in 1969, Hislop is a true Trinidadian. His family returned home when he was three and he grew up a junior national team-mate of Dwight Yorke.

He also wielded a little willow, sharing a dressing room with Brian Lara for a time. But for football, might Harry Brook and Joe Root be chasing Hislop's Test record right now? "Absolutely not," Hislop replies, sporting the biggest grin of many that flash across his face during an hour-long conversation. "I can say that with absolute confidence!".

After high school, Hislop studied mechanical engineering at Washington DC's Howard University, playing football as well. He also completed an internship at NASA. "This is where I get to tell my corniest joke; everything just seemed to go over my head. Boom. You have the brightest engineering minds in the world and I'm just tagging along to meetings. It was way beyond anything I was capable of."

After graduating, Hislop pulled up "at a bit of a crossroads". Major League Soccer was still a few turns of the earth away, as was the men's World Cup that would give football the adrenaline shot it needed in the USA.

Hislop was drafted by Baltimore Blast, a professional indoor football team, but he really wanted to be diving about on grass. In 1992, he had a spot of luck. The Blast travelled to Birmingham to face Aston Villa, and a Reading scout took a shine to him.

His story from there is not atypical. A weeklong summer trial turned into a month or so, but feedback was lacking. All he had for encouragement was the fact that plenty of others came and went during that time.

Eventually Hislop penned a two-year deal with Reading, but winter was tricky. After struggling to acclimatise to a new country, culture, and climate, twelve months was almost enough and, while back home that summer, he told his dad that he wanted out. His old man was having none of it. "He said 'if you're still not enjoying it when the contract ends, then you figure out what's next. But you don't walk out on an agreement with anyone.'" It proved critical advice, a door-sliding moment in Hislop's career.

On his return to England, then Reading manager Mark McGhee told him that first-choice Steve Francis had been shifted to Huddersfield. "I can't remember his exact words, but he bluntly said they basically didn't have the money to bring anyone else in!". A show of faith if ever there was one.

And so Hislop was in and, for the next two years, he didn't skip a beat. In his first full season, Reading won the Division Two title (now League One), extending his deal as a result. The following year, 1994/95, the Royals finished second in Division One (the Championship) but owing to a slashing of the Premier League from 22 to 20 teams, only one automatic promotion slot was available. That was claimed by champions Middlesbrough, with Reading losing to Bolton in the play-off final.

By then, Hislop had piqued the attention of plenty of top-tier clubs and speculation swirled. McGhee had left to join Leicester in late 1994, and Hislop almost certainly would have joined him had the Foxes not been relegated.

That summer, Hislop and fiancée Desha wed in Trinidad. "This was pre-cellphone days," he explains. "My agent in England called to say Newcastle were interested."

While the decision proved a no-brainer, a key Keegan facet was his honesty. He told it how it was, and with the late Pavel Srníček having made 52 appearances in 1994/95, Hislop was far from guaranteed permanent residency in goal.

However, Keegan could at least offer a guest slot, with Srníček serving a suspension that straddled the previous season and the upcoming one. "Kevin said 'how those two games go for you will determine role that you play in a longer term, certainly to start with'. And that was it."

The newlyweds were whisked by the Shepherds to watch United's pre-season clash with Hearts, before being driven back to Tyneside where Hislop signed his contract. "Suddenly, I'm joining a club on football's highest stage in the Premier League. Surreal is the only adjective I can think of to describe it. I played the scenario out in my mind so many times as a kid growing up, but this was beyond anything I'd ever thought of."

Hislop slipped into a goalkeeping gaggle made up of Srníček, Mike Hooper and a baby-faced Steve Harper, with the two-year battle between Shaka and Pav beginning immediately. "Pav was great," Hislop says. "He understood his standing in the North East at the time, understood how we felt about the club and that you only wanted the best for it.

"I think we pushed each other and as goalkeepers that's all you ask for, somebody to push you, somebody to work with who helps you get the best out of each other. I'd like to think I did that for him, and he certainly did that for me."

Training under Keegan at Maiden Castle, home of Durham University's student athletes, was "unlike anything I'd ever experienced before". Thousands of fans in attendance and quick-fire, small-sided games were both par for the course. Then there was the talent. Hislop's eyes widen as he reels off the names: Ginola; Ferdinand; Alan Shearer; Peter Beardsley; Keith Gillespie; Rob Lee. Name, after name, after name. "Talented players would struggle to adjust to start with because it was so tight, so fast. You had to be so exact in everything you did."

Hislop settled into his new life rapidly, the whole squad wrapping its collective arm around him. He remains close friends with the Steves - Howey and Watson - John Beresford, Lee Clark, Ferdinand, and Barton. "That was one of the beauties about Newcastle at the time. There were no cliques. On a night out it would be 30 strong. It would be most senior players down to some of the young pros who were just breaking through. Everybody went out together. We'd always find ourselves dancing and singing in Julie's."

Hislop had little more than a week to adjust to his to new surroundings before his debut against Coventry City on 19th August 1995. United's home was 16,000 shy of its current capacity back then but it was the "loudest 36,000 I've ever heard. You could sense a lot of expectation given the signings we had made that summer. Dare I say, I think we lived up to that expectation early on."

Coventry left feeling dark blue following a 3-0 defeat. After a 3-1 win over Bolton, Srníček's suspension expired but Hislop kept his spot, United suffering just one defeat in their opening 16 games - a 1-0 loss at the Dell - while winning a dozen. Any title tittle-tattle? "No," says Hislop emphatically. "That went without saying. I distinctly remember how we felt - we were just playing really well and enjoying every minute."

Keegan's side had by then been branded the Entertainers and lived up to it with 36 goals in that first chunk of the season. "Kevin had spelled it out to me. He explained that he builds attacking teams so me not keeping many clean sheets was part and parcel of it. I wasn't there to win clean sheet awards; I was there to win games as a team. I loved it - that's the football I'm used to."

To coin an Americanism, Match Day 17 was a trip to Chelsea and Hislop's season turned on a goal kick. "I felt this sharp pain in my thigh," and he was replaced by Srníček. After a month of rehab and no sign of improvement, a follow-up scan showed that the thigh muscle had bled into the tear. "They had to draw the blood out with a needle. Once that was done, I was back playing within a few weeks. It was a longer, more frustrating experience than it should have been and a blow I didn't see coming. I don't think I'd have been displaced if I had continued as I was, and the team had continued as we were."

Rather than title chasing, Hislop found himself bench warming. He missed United opening up a 12-point gap at the table's summit in January 1996, Tino Asprilla's famous debut at Middlesbrough in the February, and the now infamous 4-3 loss at Anfield in April. Only after that game was Hislop restored, and by then Manchester United had regained top spot.

Following a narrow win over Leeds at Elland Road, United trailed Alex Ferguson's team by just three points with a game in hand. Then Keegan gave perhaps the most famous post-match press interview football has seen. I. Would. Love. It.

"It didn't come as much of a surprise," says Hislop when asked what the dressing room made of that slew of emotion. "A lot of us felt that you could kind of see that pressure building, certainly with Kevin. Things had turned at the start of the year, and we hadn't been travelling well. We were still winning at home but found points harder to come by on the road." Victory at Leeds was United's first in six away from St. James' Park.

"Manchester United had slowly chipped away at our lead and then Sir Alex Ferguson had something to say." Newcastle were due to play Nottingham Forest in Stuart Pearce's post-season testimonial but not before facing them in the penultimate game of the Premier League campaign. Ferguson suggested that Forest would roll over and let United tickle their stomachs. "Kevin took exception to that," Hislop recalls. "We fully understood why he took exception to it. The pressure mounted as Manchester United closed the gap on us and then after that Leeds game, it erupted."

Did Fergie get to King Kev? "I think it impacted Kevin the player, more than Kevin the manager. As a player, the most hurtful thing anyone can do is make accusations around who you are and your integrity. I think that is what Kevin reacted to, the questioning of both his and Stuart Pearce's integrity."

As the history books, videos, and podcasts constantly remind us, United fell agonisingly short. A final day draw against Tottenham proved academic given that 40 miles away Middlesbrough slipped to defeat against Manchester United. "It was heartbreaking," Hislop says. He pauses. Takes a breath, almost as if he is composing himself before facing a penalty. His mind is undoubtedly back there, re-living it. He then speaks again. "There's no other way to put it. It was heartbreaking, but I felt that we were in a good position to have a go again. We just needed to kind of let the dust settle, deal with that emotion, and pick up where we left off."

But that did not happen. Buoyed by the financial advantages Manchester United had acquired by floating on the stock exchange a few years prior, talk of Newcastle doing likewise intensified. "And along the way you started to realise that Kevin was being undermined in certain ways, which was more surprising, because I thought they would build around Kevin Keegan and the successes that he had. But it seemed to go the other way.

"I feel that a lot of what happens on the field is impacted by what happens off it, what happens in boardrooms etc. Kevin being undermined took its toll on the players as we were there, for the most part, because of him."

True, United were runners-up again in 1996/97, but they never "hit the heights that we did the previous year. That was a disappointment. The record books will show that we again finished second, but for a long time during the course of that season, Liverpool were actually the runaway leaders. We were third throughout. We barely threatened Liverpool.

"Then all of a sudden, Liverpool had an end-of-season collapse and Manchester United again won the league. It was Liverpool's title to lose - we were never really in contention of winning it and I think a lot of that was because of what was happening behind closed doors."

Yet the summer of 1996 had been stuffed with promise. Yes, United added just one new set of boots to the squad, but those shoes belonged to Alan Shearer, the Premier League's greatest goalscorer, stolen from under the noses of Manchester United for a then world-record £15 million transfer fee.

The squad were on a tour of Asia when the signing was announced. "Shearer is the best finisher I've played with. He hits the ball so hard," Hislop says, looking at his hands as if they ache at the memory.

Shearer was not, though, the most technically proficient of United's squad. "That was David Batty". Really? Not Beardsley or Asprilla, maybe even Ginola? "Absolutely, I thought so." Batty always promised to vanish once the boots were packed away "and he did. I can't tell you the last time I've seen or heard of, never mind heard from, David Batty. He just didn't like the spotlight."

On 8th January 1997, with United five points behind leaders Liverpool having played a game fewer, Keegan walked away. Kenny Dalglish slotted in as replacement, signing a three-year contract of which he would ultimately serve half.

"From a personal perspective, I figured Shay Given would be joining pretty soon, so I felt the writing was on the wall." Dalglish did not tell him so directly, but "transfer speculation, players coming and out, is all part and parcel. I continued to do what I needed to do as best I could. I let things play out and that is exactly what happened - Shay came in."

Hislop started 1997/98 as Given's understudy but came back into contention in November. "I had a decent little run, and eventually Newcastle offered me a new contract. I turned that down and, to be fair to Kenny, he called me in to explain that if I didn't sign the new contract, he'd bring Shay back in.

"I already had my mind set that I was going to move on. There were no hard feelings. I absolutely loved Kenny Dalglish, because the one thing as players you ask of a manager is honesty. Kenny was never anything but that with me."

On Given, who would remain United's number one until his departure in 2009, making 463 appearances - third on the all-time list behind Jimmy Lawrence and Frank Hudspeth - Hislop is gushing in his praise. "He fitted in seamlessly in terms of the culture, never arrogant, just there to work hard and be the best that he was. I think he tried to bring the best out of me in much the same way that I tried to bring the best out of him."

It was also during that time that, despite having played his youth international football for Trinidad and Tobago, Hislop found himself warming England's bench. A stand-off with Jack Warner - then president of CONCACAF and now the disgraced former FIFA official who has since been banned for life by the sport's governing body - saw him omitted from the 1998 Gold Cup squad. Without prior warning, Hislop was named in England's B team by Peter Taylor.

"Chris Sutton had previously refused a call-up to the B side and there was a huge fallout," Hislop says. "While I still harboured ambitions to play for Trinidad and Tobago, I didn't want to turn it down and come under the same scrutiny as Chris Sutton. Plus, as I was out of contract, I thought it was a way to showcase myself, to put myself on teams' radars."

But with David Seaman injured, the senior squad had just two goalkeepers, and when Tim Flowers subsequently pulled up, Glenn Hoddle needed a back-up to Nigel Martyn. Hislop was joined on the bench against Chile that day by Shearer and former Newcastle star Paul Gascoigne. Batty started the game alongside Lee, while Sol Campbell, Nicky Butt and debutant Michael Owen - all of whom would later represent United - did likewise.

Two months later, Hislop, then 29, started for England under-21s against Switzerland. Again, he was hoping to attract admirers, but he feels the opposite happened.

"I had a stiff neck but again, I'm thinking 'listen, give yourself a shot, put yourself in somebody's shop window'. But I had an absolute stinker." Hislop pauses and visibly shudders. He continues, laughing. "Oh, God, it was an awful game. I came away from it feeling as bad as I ever have professionally. I was really worried that I had ruined any opportunity to move. I was really upset with myself."

Fortunately, Hislop's disaster scenario did not unfold, and he spent another eight seasons in England, first at West Ham and then at Portsmouth. He returned to West Ham briefly after leaving the south-coast in 2005 and finished his career with FC Dallas.

When Keegan was England manager, he named Hislop in a European Championship qualifier squad in the summer of 1999. However, by then he had "kind of buried the hatchet with the Trinidad and Tobago FA" and his junior national coach Bertille St Clair had taken over the senior side. "I grew up wanting to represent Trinidad and Tobago, and I respectfully declined the call-up from Kevin." A hard man to say no to? "He was, but my mind was set."

Hislop retired with 26 international caps, including a group game against England at the 2006 World Cup. In his post-playing days, he has become a prominent pundit in the USA with ESPN and in 2022 was awarded the Freedom of the City of Newcastle upon Tyne. He may not have yet grazed goats on the Town Moor, but his love for United still burns bright. "It's a big club that hasn't had the success that the fans deserve," he says. "But it's a club that once you get to know even a little bit, you can't help but love everything about it."