“I’ve got four League Cups, an FA Cup, a Uefa Cup, a Super Cup and a Charity Shield. I have played in two World Cups and two Euros,” Emile Heskey said. “I’m happy. That’s not bad.”
He was not boasting. Rather, one of the most maligned footballers of his generation was reflecting with satisfaction on a career that has lasted two decades.
It has entered extra time and, at his own admission, Heskey expected by now that he would be on a beach in Antigua, the land of his ancestors.
Instead, he is in snowy Bolton, contemplating an unexpected return to the club where he reached his greatest heights.
“Would I have been thinking I would be playing against Liverpool at Anfield? Probably not, but I am going to relish every moment of it,” he said.
The FA Cup has brought a romantic return, a valedictory appearance on one of his favourite stages.
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It was all the more improbable when he left Australian A-League side Newcastle Jets.
He spent several months without a club before signing a short-term deal with Bolton Wanderers last month.
That, too, is a reunion of sorts. His new manager, Neil Lennon, was a teammate when he made his name.
“I always look at him as still the 17-year-old boy I played with at Leicester for three or four years,” Lennon said, “and I keep forgetting he is 35 or 36. I keep calling him ‘kid’.”
Heskey is in fact 37, but much of his game remains the same.
“His link-up play, his hold-up play, his aerial ability is still there,” Lennon said. “He doesn’t have the pace he once had, but he has the power.”
There was another difference Lennon noted. “He scored on his debut, which isn’t like him,” the Bolton manager said.
Heskey has delivered 162 goals in his career while acquiring a reputation as one of football’s non-scoring strikers.
There were 46 goals in 197 games for Leicester City, plus 60 in 223 for Liverpool before his return started to depreciate: just 16 in 78 for Birmingham City, then 15 in 88 at Wigan and a mere 14 in 110 for Aston Villa before he departed for Australia, seemingly the last stop en route to retirement.
Owen’s foil
“If I could have got more goals, I would have loved to,” Heskey said. “But it never hindered me from achieving and from going to World Cups, Euros, winning the trophies I did.”
The reality is that he is an altruistic attacker, a player who devoted much of his time to helping teammates.
“He got 62 caps for England and seven goals and people will go ‘that is poor’, but it’s not when you weigh up his contribution in the games,” Lennon said.
Heskey did have one golden season when he was genuinely prolific.
Liverpool won the FA Cup, the League Cup and the Uefa Cup, and he scored during a historic humbling of an international superpower.
“The 2000/01 season was a great one for us,” Heskey said. “It was a great year and a great time to be playing football. That year as well we beat Germany 5-1. Everything just came at once.”
Heskey was Michael Owen’s foil for club and country then. Now he lines up alongside another forward who is older than Owen: Eidur Gudjohnsen, the former Uefa Champions League winner, who was another veteran to sign up for the Bolton cause.
“We have got a combined age of I don’t know,” Heskey said. The answer is 73: Gudjohnsen, 36, is a few months his junior.
The Icelander’s Chelsea past means he can expect a hot reception today. As one of football’s great triers, Heskey is confident he will be afforded the ovation Anfield normally affords to former Liverpool players.
It was there his playing days peaked during eventful times on and off the pitch.
“I met my wife there, if that was a development as a person,” he said before wondering. “Am I going to get divorced now?”
His Liverpool years have left a legacy, in his personal life and his trophy cabinet.
“I had a wonderful time,” he said.
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