Article 99 — Anelka, Misunderstood
You might be aware that there is a documentary on Nicolas Anelka on Netflix now chronicling his life and career. I would recommend you to watch it. I found it gripping and interesting. Here I am just sharing my memory of Anelka and my thoughts after watching the documentary.
Anelka first came to my attention in the 1997–98 season and specifically the first match between Arsenal and Manchester United in that season at Highbury. He had opened the scoring for Arsenal and was a handful throughout the game. During the documentary, I was reminded that it was him who assisted Marc Overmars’ winner in the reverse fixture that season.
The 1997–98 team was the start of Arsene Wenger’s successful era at the club. They ended the season with a Double. His form that season sidelined Arsenal’s star striker until then, Ian Wright who left Arsenal after that season. I remember he scored in the following season’s 3–0 Charity Shield win against Manchester United too.
I felt that he was the most comfortable and felt at home during his time in England. If he had stayed on longer at Arsenal, I felt that he would have had more success and greater stability in his career. A manager like Arsene Wenger and a club like Arsenal would have given him the grounding he needed as a young star to do better in his career. Arsenal and Wenger believed in him enough to sign him as an unknown and give him an opportunity to play regular first-team football slowly establishing himself as a rising star in the world of football.
However, when Real Madrid comes knocking, it is hard to say no and that is what happened. He moved after two seasons at Arsenal in a big-money transfer. Playing for Real Madrid was another matter altogether as it came with immense pressure to perform on the pitch and intense scrutiny on his every move on and off the pitch. In the documentary, he spoke of a less than welcoming start at the club by his team-mates too. After winning the Premier League, FA Cup and Charity Shield at Arsenal, he did add the Champions League to his collection of trophies in his brief spell at Real Madrid despite his struggles there.
I had not known until I watched the documentary that his first senior club was Paris Saint-Germain. He scored once for them in his first spell there and played alongside legends like Youri Djorkaeff, Rai, Leonardo and Bernard Lama. Through my research, I found out that he had a second spell at his first club after leaving Real Madrid but that wasn’t successful.
Coming back to his time in England, he had spells at Liverpool, Manchester City, Bolton Wanderers, Chelsea and West Bromwich Albion. He had mentioned that when he joined Liverpool, he really felt like he was at home. The club, the fans and everything about the club resonated with him but unfortunately for him, despite a good spell on loan there, the club and manager, Gerard Houllier decided against signing him.
At City, he was a top-class player in an average squad. This was a time when City was just going about their business in modest fashion without the sudden injection of large wads of cash. He enjoyed playing under Kevin Keegan there and scored some big goals. I remember not too fondly that he scored one of City’s three goals in their 3–1 win over us in the last Manchester derby to be played at Maine Road.
He had a good one and half season at Bolton Wanderers. Bolton, under Sam Allardyce, had built a reputation of being able to surprisingly sign players that played for big European clubs, were former Champions League and World Cup winners. These were players that ordinarily, no-one expected to see at Bolton and there they were. They did well and elongated their careers there too. Anelka had a great debut season but the club struggled in his second season there after Allardyce resigned near the end of Anelka’s first season.
After Bolton, he had the most successful and stable period in his career at Chelsea. He spent 5 seasons there and won a Premier League title, two FA Cups, a Charity Shield and his solitary Premier League Golden Boot. He was signed to temporarily replace Chelsea’s star forward, Didier Drogba who was away on international duty in January 2008 for Ivory Coast at the African Cup of Nations. He didn’t disappoint playing alongside other world-class players but there is a lasting negative memory of his time there. He was to be the fall guy who missed Chelsea’s penalty in the shootout to seal their defeat to Manchester United in the 2007–08 Champions League final.
He describes that moment as being a traitor as he felt he had no right being there having just joined the club. He really felt he let everyone down at the club. I can understand how he must have felt and it is telling that the success he enjoyed there hasn’t quite eased the pain of that miss.
His final spell in England was to be for West Bromwich Albion but that ended prematurely after the club terminated his contract. That spell had a negative moment as he celebrated by doing the quenelle gesture which was deemed to be anti-Semite. Although the FA did clear him of being an Anti-Semite, they did punish him for making the gesture with a 5 match ban. In the documentary, he clarifies that the gesture was actually meant for West Bromwich’s former manager, Steve Clarke for benching him in his brief spell at The Hawthorns.
Anelka had quite a nomadic career. Besides his spell in England and Spain for a season with Real Madrid, he spent a season in Turkey winning the Super Lig with Fenerbahce, a season in China with Shanghai Shenhua, five months at Juventus on loan where he won the Scudetto and ended his career in India as player-manager for Mumbai City FC. He played for 12 different clubs in his career in 6 different countries.
At the international level, he wasn’t included in France’s victorious France 98 squad despite having a great, breakthrough season at Arsenal leading up to that tournament. It is a pity and so unlucky that he was one of the six players Aime Jacquet dropped from the preliminary squad for the tournament. Considering how the strikers that were selected performed in that tournament, I really felt Anelka had a good shout to be included.
He was in the squad that won the European Championships two years after though and the FIFA Confederations Cup a year after that in 2001. He was left out of the 2002 and 2006 World Cup and 2004 European Championship squads. These exclusions hurt him greatly and you can watch the documentary to find out the reason that was given to him for his exclusion. For the 2002 World Cup, the French manager at that time, Roger Lemerre had first told him that he was not getting selected because Lemerre didn’t know him. Eventually, when he did relent and tried calling him up in desperation, Anelka rejected him instead.
He was in the 2008 European Championships squad that fared badly and was truthfully on the decline and over-the-hill already at that stage. Largely the same squad, just about qualified for the 2010 World Cup after a controversial win over Republic of Ireland in a playoff. The squad approached the first-ever World Cup in Africa in poor form but the team was in good spirits when they were in their training base according to the documentary. Everything changed when Anelka had a half-time outburst in France’s second match against Mexico. France lost that 0–2. After drawing the first match against Uruguay 0–0, they would now need to beat the hosts, South Africa by more than 2 goals to qualify into the knockout stage.
The team’s captain, Patrice Evra and vice-captain, Eric Abidal tried to mediate between Anelka and France’s manager, Raymond Domenech but Domenech didn’t appear. The French media got wind of the half-time bust-up and went to town with unverified remarks made by Anelka. The French Football Federation believed them to be true and sent Anelka home. Anelka was never given the chance to clear the air with Domenech and the manager didn’t help Anelka’s cause by clarifying what was said at half-time.
The French players upset at the treatment of their team-mate and being vilified in the French press then decided against training after Anelka was sent home. They came off the team coach to sign autographs and meet the fans that were there and got back on it, leaving their manager to look silly reading out a message from the team. It was a controversial and unsavoury episode in the history of the game and French football. Anelka retired from international duty with 69 appearances and 14 goals under a barrage of media scrutiny and vilification.
Anelka is not the first Frenchman that has found home and love across the Channel in England. Before him, there were two other talented and gifted Frenchmen that were ostracised in their native France, Eric Cantona and David Ginola who found the love, support and respect that was lacking in their native country.
Due to different reasons, Cantona and Ginola found themselves out of favour by 1995. Cantona was for his infamous kung-fu kick on a spectator. He lost his captaincy too after that and he resented the part played by the higher echelons of French football in that. He did admit that he wouldn’t have retired early from professional football in 1997 had there been a chance of him playing for France at the 1998 World Cup. Ginola was vilified for the part he played in Bulgaria’s winner that eliminated France from qualifying for World Cup 1994.
Years later, there was another talented French striker by the name of Karim Benzema who despite playing a starring role regularly for one of the biggest clubs in the world, Real Madrid, found himself overlooked for the national team, missing the 2010 World Cup and then later controversially Euro 2016 and the victorious 2018 World Cup. Again it seemed that the decision to overlook Benzema came from the President of the French Football Federation after his blackmail case involving his former international team-mate, Mathieu Valbuena.
As a player, Anelka could do whatever he wanted on his day. He had the speed, the trickery, power and could score all sorts of goal. His demeanour on the pitch gave the impression of a player that didn’t care and was brooding thus earning the nickname, “Le Sulk”. Through the documentary, you would find out that it had more to do with his private introvert nature and was used as a defence mechanism against all the attention and pressure around him. His team-mates knew him differently. No matter what your impression or opinion on him, I would suggest you watch this. You might see him in a different light if you already view him negatively.
