'I was lucky. Football gave me a way out'
By Donald McRae (The Guardian)
"Football saved me," Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink sighs with amazement as, tugging at the diamond in his ear, he begins to describe the desperate and reckless life that almost ruined him. "You should have seen me at 16. One of those bad boys, running with a gang, trying to look cool and act hard. I thought I was a tough guy, stealing or scaring people with my friends. Crazy huh?"
I had expected Hasselbaink to be a reluctant interviewee, a surly Premiership peacock who would light up only if dutiful homage was paid to those garish studs glinting in each lobe or to his goal-scoring record at clubs as different as Atlético Madrid and Leeds United, Chelsea and Middlesbrough. But five minutes after meeting him it is already plain: interviewing Hasselbaink is a breeze. He talks with such gritty colour it feels like we're back in Zaandam, not far from Amsterdam.
"Like most towns," he explains, "it has a rich area and a poor area. We were in the poor area with a lot of people from Surinam, Turkey and Morocco. We lived in this 14-storey block. Sometimes I'd be playing football at the back with my mates and we'd see a body falling. We saw people kill themselves two or three times and we weren't surprised. There were a lot of broken people, a lot of bad things. I carried a knife myself but I never used it because, really, it was just to look cool."
I ask Hasselbaink if, like most bad boys, he was secretly scared. "Yes - in the sense I was easily influenced and wanted to fit in. I was actually quite a smart learner but it was more important to look cool. That was stupid. And it was tough for my mum. She had to provide for six children who came with her from Surinam. My dad, who was no good, stayed in Surinam and that's why I took the wrong direction."
Wild young Jimmy was about to fall. "One night we went to Amsterdam to see Public Enemy. We had no tickets so we just took them off people. But those guys whose tickets we stole went to the police. The police searched my home and found watches and car radios. I was dealing in stolen goods."
Hasselbaink looks suddenly sheepish, as if all the bravado has drained out of him. "I went to court and stood in front of the judge. She sent me to this detention centre, Het Poortje, for three months. I pretended it was a big joke but it was like jail. It hit me when I walked into this scary room I had to share with three other guys - and one was crazy. He didn't get violent but you had to watch him carefully. He was Moroccan and you never knew what he was shouting because he couldn't speak Dutch. Maybe it was the big shock I needed. When I got out it took me a long time to get disciplined but football was the one thing, with my mum, that promised me I could do something better in life."
From the small Dutch clubs of Telstar Velsen and AZ Alkmaar, Hasselbaink became a footballing nomad as he moved across Portugal, England and Spain before, in 2000, he finally signed for Chelsea. If Zaandam is the bleak source of this story then Chelsea is its zenith, the glittering opposite of all Hasselbaink endured as a boy. Chelsea's seductive appeal is even more striking this week for, on Saturday, Hasselbaink returns to Stamford Bridge as a Middlesbrough player.
"It is the second time I go back because we played Chelsea in January. I was given a medal before the game and made to feel very special." Hasselbaink almost swoons with a devotion that will make Boro supporters mildly queasy - particularly when they remember the ensuing 2-0 defeat for his new team. The Dutch striker, however, is smitten. "Chelsea is the club closest to my heart. They have always made me feel one of them."
"Jimmy," I say, "you're still in love with them."
He nods dreamily. "I'd go back tomorrow." Then he bursts out laughing. "No! Don't write that - I'm joking! But Chelsea is a lovely, lovely club and I think it will be the Premiership giant for the coming decade. I hope they keep winning magnificently - but obviously not on Saturday."
Part of the allure, for Hasselbaink, was the rush of gambling in London. He is remarkably candid about his adventures on the roulette wheel with his Chelsea team-mate Eidur Gudjohnsen. "We couldn't look more different - a black Dutch guy from Surinam and a blond boy from Iceland - but we are quite similar. We like a good time and we started gambling because we were having trouble with our girlfriends. We didn't want to go home so we went to the casino."
Hasselbaink is reported to have lost more than a million pounds on gambling, Gudjohnsen £400,000. "It wasn't as much as that," Hasselbaink says with an airy wave. Yet he concedes, "I was losing a lot. But you don't care. You know the value of money, and that it is wrong, but you are in a cycle. I play roulette and the first time I won a few grand it was great - same when you win £10,000 on a number coming up. Then one night I won £80,000 and it was so exciting. But big wins are worse because you think it's normal. You go back expecting the same - and you get trapped."
Hasselbaink thinks hard when asked about his heaviest loss. "One night I lost £40,000. I knew then I had to sort out my personal life to walk away from the casino. Maybe my bank account also told me something because it was getting less and less!"
The flood of cash swamping Chelsea did not encourage restraint. Hasselbaink remembers that after Chelsea had shocked Arsenal by winning the Champions League quarter-final at Highbury in April 2004, "Roman Abramovich came into the dressing room, smiling very much. We'd been promised £50,000 each if we made it to the semi-finals and [Adrian] Mutu jokes, 'C'mon, man, double the bonus for fun!' We were quite excited and Abramovich, who observes quietly most of the time, just said, 'OK, why not?'" In his new book Hasselbaink suggests, "At the end of the month, instead of the promised £50,000 there was £100,000 in our bank accounts. I went on holiday with that bonus."
The Premier League confirmed this past weekend that it will investigate these possibly illegal payments. "I don't get pissed off this is a big story," Hasselbaink insists, as he backtracks and tries to clarify his assertion. "I only said we got double the bonus. It's important to know that we got 50% straightaway and 50% the next season. The newspapers assumed Abramovich paid us black money but that was not the case. So I'm not worried."
Hasselbaink looks more contrite when asked about his gambling habit. "I still go to the casinos but I only play with a couple of hundred quid - a thousand maximum." He says that, this Saturday night, he will be suitably measured. If he visits a casino in Chelsea, "it will probably be just to have some drinks and a meal with old friends. Eidur's knocked gambling on the head. I think, like me, he's got it under control. His girlfriend is pregnant with their third child - and he's got a lot to aim for at Chelsea."
While Hasselbaink stresses how impressed he has been by Steve McClaren and how much he enjoys playing for Middlesbrough, his persistent yearning for Chelsea remains. "I could have done a good job for them - especially last season when [Didier] Drogba struggled. I think I would have scored more goals than him. This year I feel the same."
But Jose Mourinho had mentally discarded Hasselbaink even before he arrived as manager. "His mind was made up. I saw him once at the training ground and he didn't talk to me. I would've loved to have spoken to him, to have told him what I could do for him."
Hasselbaink looks briefly downcast when I suggest that, at 33, he is regarded more as one of football's "difficult characters" than as a great player. "I don't see myself as being difficult, not at all. All my managers will say, 'Jimmy speaks his mind but he's not much trouble.' Look at me and George Graham. He is very strict but I love George! That's why Mourinho appealed. If he gives you the chance, he is very tough but fair. He's also one of the few managers who can make you 5% better as a player. Under Mourinho I could have been a Premiership champion last year - and who knows how many trophies Chelsea might win this season? I've not won many medals so I think about what might have been."
Yet his formative memories are too vivid for Hasselbaink not to realise his more lasting good fortune. "When I go back to Zaandam I sometimes I run into those old friends. Some of them are drug dealers. Some are junkies. They are stuck in the same life. I go over and say hello to them. I might buy them a drink or give them a few hundred quid if they ask. But I don't want to be around them long. Our lives are now too different and there is no big bond. We were just thrown together all those years ago in a very tough life. I might still be down there with them, but I was lucky. Football gave me a way out."
