Howard Gayle

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Howard Gayle
Howard Gayle.JPG
Howard Gayle (2010)
Personnel
Surname Howard Anthony Gayle
birthday May 18, 1958
place of birth Liverpool ,  England
position striker
Juniors
Years station
1974-1977 Liverpool FC
Men's
Years station Games (goals) 1
1977-1983 Liverpool FC 4 0(1)
1980 →  Fulham FC  (loan) 14 0(0)
1982-1983 →  Newcastle United  (Loan) 18 0(2)
1983-1984 Birmingham City 46 0(9)
1984-1986 Sunderland AFC 48 0(4)
1987 Stoke City 6 0(2)
1987-1992 Blackburn Rovers 116 (29)
1992-1993 Halifax Town 5 0(0)
Indoor
Years station Games (goals) 1
1986-1987 Dallas sidekicks 30 0(6)
National team
Years selection Games (goals)
1984 England U-21 3 0(1)
1 Only league games are given.

Howard Anthony Gayle (born May 18, 1958 in Liverpool ) is a former English football player . The striker began his career at Liverpool FC , where he made headlines as the “first black player” of the “Reds”. Although he made a remarkable appearance in April 1981 in the semi-final second leg of the European championship competition against Bayern Munich , he was unable to prevail in Liverpool permanently. At his later clubs he was luckier and played mainly for Birmingham City , Sunderland AFC and between 1987 and 1992 for Blackburn Rovers .

Athletic career

Liverpool FC (1977-82)

Born in the Liverpool borough of Toxteth , Gayle joined the youth department of Liverpool FC in 1974 and signed his first professional contract there three years later. The fact that Gayle was the first black player in the professional squad was seen as a milestone - Gayle's father had come to England as a sailor from Sierra Leone and had found work in the city on the Mersey ; his maternal grandparents came from Ghana - and he himself felt proud to represent the black community in Liverpool. The sporting breakthrough, however, was a long time coming, before he received his first real chance of probation in April 1981 after just 20 minutes earlier in the English Premier League in the European Cup .

After a 0-0 in the semi-final first leg at home against Bayern Munich, Gayle was on the bench in Munich when Kenny Dalglish injured himself after just six minutes. Liverpool struggled with serious injury concerns and without regular players like Phil Thompson and Alan Kennedy , coach Bob Paisley had already used the inexperienced Colin Irwin and Richard Money in the starting XI . Completely surprisingly, Dalglish was not replaced by the "logical replacement" Jimmy Case , but by Gayle, completely unknown to most experts. He then occupied the left wing position so that Ray Kennedy could again dodge into the center of the storm. This personality paid off and Bayern had a hard time getting Gayle's speed under control. In an attack on the left side he was brought down by Wolfgang Dremmler in his own penalty area; the penalty whistle failed to materialize. After Gayle saw the yellow card in the second half, Paisley decided to replace him again, so Case came on after all. The game was still goalless at the time, but after two goals on either side in the closing stages, Liverpool qualified for the final due to the away goals rule , in which Gayle was only a substitute. The “61 minutes in Munich” marked Gayle's sporting climax and gave his name to his autobiography in 2016.

Three days after his European adventure, Gayle was in Liverpool's starting XI against Tottenham Hotspur (1-1) for the first time, but after only two more games at the end of the 1980/81 season he went back to the reserve team. The responsible trainer Roy Evans recommended him regularly for higher tasks, but found no open ear. Gayle was considered too impulsive, while this complained that he could not prevail against resistance within the team. In his autobiography, he particularly accused ex-teammate and captain Tommy Smith , who was in the fall of his career, of having racially insulted him.

Newcastle, Birmingham and Sunderland (1982–86)

Before his Liverpool debut, Gayle had played on loan for second division Fulham FC with some success in the 1979/80 season and so he tried again on loan at Newcastle United in the 1982/83 season . There he stormed alongside his childhood idol Kevin Keegan and was part of a team with Terry McDermott , who had shared the pitch with him in Munich. Newcastle he came though often used, but after the club did not want to commit permanently him, he turned on the recommendation of Newcastle's coach Arthur Cox at Birmingham City before.

In the team trained by Ron Saunders , Gayle was from January 1983 now part of a troop that had several dark-skinned players. With his participation, the former top division bottom improved to relegation , whereby Gayle helped the more physically oriented style of play to more esprit and speed. In the following season 1983/84 he was initially the celebrated scorer against local rivals Aston Villa , but after a comfortable start, the team drifted from twelfth place at the end of March 1984 into the relegation zone. After the fall in the second division Gayle wanted to participate in the return to the excellence, but ultimately the club accepted a transfer offer from Sunderland AFC under coach Len Ashurst in August 1984 . Previously, he had participated in the U-21 European Championship (although already 26 years old) and contributed a goal to the 2-0 against Spain in the final .

While Birmingham returned to the top English division in the 1984/85 season , Gayle rose from there one more time with the new club. A respectable success was reaching the final in the League Cup , in which Gayle came on for David Corner after a good hour . However, the game was lost to Norwich City 0-1. After the relationship between Ashurst and the team had deteriorated noticeably and with Lawrie McMenemy the hitherto "highest paid coach in English football history" was hired, the sporting situation continued catastrophically. Gayle, who had already clashed with McMenemy when he was still responsible for Southampton FC , could not get beyond the status of a substitute player. The direct march into the third division could only be avoided in the last games and Gayle fell victim to a fundamental reconstruction in Sunderland. He found it difficult to find a new club in the summer of 1986. Instead, he accepted an offer in US indoor soccer and joined the Dallas Sidekicks in Texas .

Back to England via Dallas (1986–93)

The trip to indoor soccer was unsatisfactory for him, although he had the highest-paid contract of his career to date. Since he sat on the bench more often than on the field, he turned to his coach Gordon Jago with the request to be able to return to England. Jago agreed somewhat reluctantly and so Gayle moved in March 1987 to the English second division side Stoke City until the end of the 1986/87 season. The "Potters" hoped for a promotion to the first division, but ultimately failed three places behind the play-off places and decided against a continued employment of Gayle.

Again he was threatened with unemployment. He applied to numerous clubs in the hope of audition training and also approached the clubs for the first time, which he had previously met with reluctance, as he had been insulted loudly by the supporters. One such club was the Blackburn Rovers . Only 28 years old and well endowed with footballing talent, he was a suitable player for coach Don Mackay , who formed a mix of home-grown, transfer-free and loaned players into a second division team that played for promotion . With prominent players such as Osvaldo Ardiles and Steve Archibald , Blackburn was on a direct promotion place until mid-March 1988, before it was lost and was the final destination in the play-offs of Chelsea FC . Despite this disappointment, Gayle and Blackburn remained again aspirants for promotion in the 1988/89 season . Together with "club legend" Simon Garner in the storm, Gayle reached the play-off games with the club again and failed in the final at Crystal Palace . In the third year , which, as in the two previous years, should end with a defeat in the play-offs, Gayle mostly played on the left wing position, which reduced his goal rate from 19 league goals in the previous year to just five goals.

After these three bankruptcies in a row, the era of coach Mackay slowly came to an end. Despite the arrival of the new wealthy owner Jack Walker , the club could make little of the new opportunities in the 1990/91 season and landed just above the second division relegation ranks. Shortly after the beginning of the 1991/92 season , Kenny Dalglish took over MacKay's sensational successor. Gayle, who was now approaching his 34th birthday, disappeared into sporting insignificance and when Dalglish led the Blackburn Rovers into the newly founded Premier League in 1992 , Gayle only played four championship games. Then Dalglish released him and Gayle let his career end in the fourth division at Halifax Town in the 1992/93 season.

After the football career

Following his active career, Gayle tried his hand at the coaching business. In the professional field, however, he could not assert himself as head coach and did not get beyond a successful assistant role at Tranmere Rovers . Instead, he set up his own football school and is involved in social issues for Liverpool 8 (named after the postcode in Liverpool's Toxteth district).

Gayle is a longtime ambassador for the anti-racism initiative Show Racism the Red Card . In September 2016 he published his autobiography entitled 61 Minutes In Munich .

title

literature

  • Howard Gayle: 61 Minutes in Munich: The Story of Liverpool Fc's First Black Footballer . deCoubertin Books, 2016, ISBN 978-1-909245-39-6 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Liverpool, Howard Gayle and the harsh lessons football can still learn from his story (The Independent)
  2. ↑ a b c d An understated icon: Howard Gayle, Liverpool's first black player (thesefootballtimes.co)
personal data
SURNAME Gayle, Howard
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gayle, Howard Anthony (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English soccer player
DATE OF BIRTH May 18, 1958
PLACE OF BIRTH Liverpool