In the final part of our interview with Liverpool soccer great Craig Johnston, he talks about life after retirement, the innovative Predator boot, and how he’s standing ready to add his expertise to Australian soccer – but his approaches have been ignored.
Paul Marcuccitti: Because you retired young there were rumours of comebacks but you always said you’d never play for anyone but Liverpool. Did that mean any other English club or would you have played somewhere else in the world? Did anyone in Australia come looking for you?
Craig Johnston: I don’t know and I don’t care because I retired because I wanted my sister to come out of the coma and to get better. So I said what I said, that I’m retiring and that’s it, and I was true to my word. I never ever played again and I can’t recall if any Australian clubs came after me. Certainly some English and some continental clubs came after me and I said, “no, I’m not interested” because Liverpool were the best team in the world, we had won everything and everything (else) was second best.
I fought so hard to get there; it wasn’t about the game any more, it was about the achievement, the experiences and the life lessons. My focus was my sister but also, I had to get a job really quickly.
David Hill offered me a job at Wide World of Sports at Channel Nine in Sydney. I had to go to work because I had three kids and no income – it’s not like I had a testimonial or money stuck away. I was on £1000 a week back then – and we were winning everything – not, did I recently read, £180,000 a week for an unknown player? So I had to go to work.
Unfortunately Faye has never recovered from her illness. Poor old mum is still looking after her up in Newcastle. I never really fulfilled everything I wanted in my career but, as I said in the (1986) Cup final, I’ve done the journey and I’ve proved that a dream can come true from the other side of the world. And that’s why I didn’t want to come back.
PM: Your life since then has been quite remarkable. Lots of different ideas and you’ve been entrepreneurial. You famously developed the Predator soccer boot, which became phenomenally successful. That should have made you wealthy beyond measure but, just as famously, you got a raw deal out of Adidas. Did you get any commercial advice when you were dealing with Adidas or did you just trust them?
CJ: Yes I did (get commercial advice) and it cost me a lot of money. The commercial advice was what got me in trouble and allowed Adidas to take the patents. Having said that, I had a good run and it’s been 20 years since the Predator patents were actually bought from me by Adidas. So, what I’d love to do is come back and have another look at the Predator because people have been phoning me and saying, “well everybody knew it was your baby that Adidas took, why don’t you relaunch the Predator?” And I keep thinking that that’s a very good idea so maybe I might have the last laugh after all!
PM: You also developed software programs, came up with a game show concept and you’ve been passionate about photography since you were a kid. One of the things you pursued was a coaching system for young kids called SupaSkills but it lost you a lot of money and you had little or no backing, including from the English Football Association. Why did things break down there?
CJ: When you’re speaking to the governing bodies of the sport, all you’ve got to do is look to FIFA to understand the animal you’re dealing with. Funnily enough, SupaSkills is the only ever coaching program in the world that has been endorsed and contracted by FIFA. So there must be something pretty special and unique about it.
It’s a measurement and rating standard much like in the golfing world where you have handicaps so every golfer knows where he stands. This is the golf handicapping system for soccer players. That’s what was given by FIFA as the denomination and then they said “go to the (English) FA and get the course up in England in the first instance”. But the FA is a really interesting bureaucratic operation that is incredibly difficult to deal with. I ended up losing on that deal. So I’ve lost two deals in my life: one with the FA and one with Adidas.
It’s funny but you learn your lessons in life. I’m 55 years old and you start to think about your life and how lucky you’ve been and what you’ve achieved and the glory and the triumph. And then you think about the tragedy and the losses. The tragedies were my two sisters because Charmaine my eldest has passed away. And you think about the triumph, the Liverpool and the Middlesbrough triumphs and Predator, the largest selling soccer boot of all and The Main Event TV show (which was created by Johnston) and the Anfield Rap (song written by Johnston).
I’ve achieved in football, in music, in television – all the things I love in life – and I think, “how lucky”. But having been bankrupt and having been turned over a couple of times in big business, you look at your ups and downs and you think that you’ve learnt a lot of lessons the hard way. And you’ve got to leave a legacy for young kids, and young Aussie kids, about life and how it works and what the pathway to success is; how it’s all about hard work, commitment and dedication but it’s also having a plan.
That was how I got out of the Middlesbrough car park because I invented a key performance indicator to be better on a daily basis which later, funnily enough, turned into SupaSkills. So SupaSkills is an industry key performance indicator which says that there are only four skills you can do: control the ball, pass the ball, dribble the ball and shoot. All the rest are a derivative of that. And if you can get faster and more accurate with those skills on a daily basis you’re going to be a better footballer. That was the fundamental way I got out of the car park.
Since I’ve retired from football and moved into business, I’ve learnt an awful lot of things about football from business. Now, a lot of businessmen want to pick your mind about how they can learn for their business from professional sport so that’s what I used to talk about but now I’ve spent years and years in business. Because I’ve been bankrupt and because I’ve had huge international successes in television and merchandising, I know what not to do.
I’ve got this amazing experience and I look around at good Aussie kids and life is not black and white anymore, like it used to be for us old guys. There are so many areas of grey with the Internet and proliferation of media which is damaging to young minds. You don’t know which way is right and which way is wrong and that was the joy of my childhood. There was no Internet – we knew what was right and what was wrong – there was only black and white television!
Now I think kids need a bit of a road map and we can inspire them through sport. That’s why I love the visit of Liverpool (to Australia), the second visit, because this is what we have to aspire to. Through sport we can say, “well here’s your pathway to be a better sportsperson” and use that as a hook to say, “here’s your pathway to being a better kid and a better community citizen, a better team player, better for your parents, better for your mates and better for your school”.
That’s the legacy now. When you get to a certain age, you look back and you say, “what was the use of all of that struggle and fight if you can’t leave the valuable lessons that you learnt for other kids so that you can help them along in their fight to be better at whatever they want to be?”
Johnston promoting an All-Stars versus Socceroos match in 1999. AAP image
PM: Even though you live abroad, you’re still passionate about Australia and you’re still passionate about soccer. Would you like to make a contribution to the game here?
CJ: When you say I live abroad, we still do a lot of travelling but I spend three or four months of the year in Australia, at home up in Newcastle, and up and down to Sydney.
For years and years I’ve tried to contribute to the game in Australia. Think about it. What am I? I’m an Australian that used to play soccer. What would I like to do? I would like, as an Australian, to help Australian soccer.
Can I say it any clearer? Do I have to beg and say, “please, please, please, FFA (Football Federation Australia), can I share my experience with kids?” Because I’ve actually done that and still nobody comes back to you and still people ignore you. So what do you do? Apart from what I did years ago, go back overseas and help someone else with coaching kids? What else can I do? I don’t want that to sound like a whinge but they’re the facts.
PM: My next question was going to be whether you’ve ever been asked to take a role here but you’ve answered that!
CJ: I’ve never been asked by Australian soccer to take a role.
PM: Or any clubs?
CJ: Or any clubs. I’ve got a lot to offer and I’m not asking for a job by the way. There’s a philosophy about how to get better at football and that’s invested in my years and years of experience of trying to be a better player. That’s what I’ve tried to pass on.
The interesting thing is that nobody at the FFA has listened for a long, long time. The biggest underutilised asset in Australian soccer is actually parents, school teachers and education departments. They all do maths, science, English, geography tests and basically what we need to set up are skills proficiency tests in their PE lessons and soccer lessons.
What a measurement or rating standard does – a golf handicap for soccer players – is allow people to know where they stand with their skills. I was coaching some Australian kids recently and I explained to them, however good they think their touch is, it’s not nearly as good as the kids in the Liverpool Academy. And the ones in the Liverpool Academy? Their touch isn’t nearly as good as the Brazilian kids with no shoes in the favelas. So what’s the common denominator? It’s the amount of time you spend with the ball in your own backyard and your relationship with the ball. It’s the craft of the game and we just don’t spend enough time on the craft of the game and that’s my big concern.
It was an unbelievable achievement by Ange Postecoglou and the Aussie players (to win the Asian Cup), and I was incredibly proud. I was there at all the games and at the final, an incredibly proud moment, but that’s covered up a lot of cracks at grassroots level.
The problem is that we only have one Australian player that’s good enough to be playing in the best league in the world, the Premier League. And why? Because we’re not good enough; because the touch isn’t good enough. It’s not the heart and the soul and the dedication, we’ve got that, we just don’t have the touch and that’s been my big issue for years with Australian soccer – we need to get the touch. If you just look at the stats and the facts, we’re going backwards.
Some things have improved but they’ve improved in a lot of countries. That’s the problem. Whatever we think we’re doing, it’s not enough. Ten years ago, there were several players in the Premier League – Schwarzer, Kewell, Cahill and others – and now we’ve got one, Jedinak at Crystal Palace.
You have to ask why we haven’t got the players coming through and it’s because the touch and the craft isn’t there. Whatever we’re doing, other countries are doing more. Part of the reason is there’s no hunger and there’s no poverty and that’s wonderful for Australia as a nation but in other places, like in Africa, where there’s poverty, the kids have to get out and they know the only way to do it is to be better and better on a daily basis with the ball. That’s my concern. If we want to be a serious soccer nation, rather than having only one player in the Premier League, I was hoping that we’d have 30 or 40 by this stage but in the last ten years, we’ve gone backwards. We’ve got to all ask ourselves why we’ve gone backwards and who’s running the show? And what are they really delivering?
COMMENT: Let Johnston work with Australian soccer
PM: You’ve been an ambassador for the Liverpool tour. Do you see these tours as mutually beneficial? Good for Liverpool to promote its brand and good for promoting the game in Australia as well?
CJ: Of course. It’s testimony to the fact that they’re back (after touring in 2013) that they know that Australia is a very savvy soccer audience and that people understand the benefits for everybody. They might come back in two years’ time and finally play in Sydney, which would also be great.
What I’ve been pushing for a long time is, rather than a tour, why don’t we have a legacy with Liverpool so they can do more than Chelsea, Spurs, Man City and Real Madrid. Australia has a deeper connection to Liverpool. I think they (Liverpool) feel it. That’s what I’m pushing for – some really interesting legacy. And I’ve got a few plans.
PM: Finally, I’m sure all Liverpool fans want to know how you think this season will go. Do you expect Liverpool to be at least challenging for a return to the Champions League spots or perhaps even better?
CJ: Yes. Obviously Chelsea, Man United, Arsenal, Tottenham, are all sitting there planning how they’re going to get into the Champions League. Liverpool as well. Some of them have got much more money than us.
As a big fan I’m asking every question such as: is Benteke the right power horse for us? I think he is; I think we need a bit of steel up front. And you just start to think, what is it that can really propel us this season? You’ve got to go back two seasons when we nearly won the league. What was it about our players that was so electric? Well, Suarez was part of it but it wasn’t just Suarez. He was leading the charge but everybody was full of the joys of spring and (they were) at people and hunting in packs. That’s what I think was the big difference, a real team spirit. People were saying, “we haven’t seen this since the good old days when we were winning everything”.
That’s what I’d be looking forward to, that bonding. These (off season) buys look good to me and hopefully they can buy into the history and heritage of the club and Brendan (Rodgers) can fire them up.
READ part one of our interview: Craig Johnston – the kangaroo in the car park
READ part two of our interview: Craig Johnston’s Aussie Rules “brother”
Interviewer Paul Marcuccitti is InDaily’s soccer columnist. He is a co-presenter of 5RTI’s Soccer on 531 program which can be heard from 11am on Saturdays.
