Craig Bellamy
Craig Douglas Bellamy is a Welsh football coach and former professional footballer who played as a forward. He is the current head coach of Wales.
Born in Cardiff, Bellamy made his professional debut with Norwich City in 1996. He signed for Premier League side Coventry City in 2000, breaking the club's record transfer fee, but suffered relegation in his only season. He joined Newcastle United the following year where he helped the club achieve two top-four finishes during a four year spell. Bellamy fell out with manager Graeme Souness in 2005 and spent the latter part of the 2004–05 season on loan at Celtic, where he won the Scottish Cup. Bellamy returned to the Premier League later that year, playing one season with both Blackburn Rovers, where he was named the club's player of the year, and Liverpool, helping the club reach the 2007 UEFA Champions League final. In 2007 he signed for West Ham United but injury disrupted his time there and in 2009 he joined Manchester City. For the 2010–11 season, Bellamy dropped a division to the Championship to represent his boyhood club Cardiff City on a season-long loan. Bellamy returned to Liverpool the following season, winning the 2011–12 League Cup and reaching the FA Cup final, before rejoining Cardiff City permanently in 2012. He later led them to the Premier League and played one more season with the club, setting a new record by scoring for his seventh different club in the division, before retiring from playing in 2014.
Having represented Wales at several youth levels, in 1998 at the age of 18, Bellamy made his senior debut for Wales against Jamaica. Over the next fifteen years, Bellamy gained 78 caps for his country and scored 19 goals. He was the captain of the side from 2007 to 2011, when he stepped down from the role due to recurring injuries. Bellamy retired from international football following the 2014 FIFA World Cup qualification campaign. He was also a member of the Great Britain Olympic team at the 2012 Olympics in London, appearing five times and scoring once.
Bellamy has been involved in numerous high-profile incidents during his career with teammates, managers and members of the public and was described by Bobby Robson as "a great player wrapped round an unusual and volatile character". Outside football, he has been a patron of several charities and started his own organisation, The Craig Bellamy Foundation, in Sierra Leone to provide schooling and football coaching to disadvantaged children.
Early life
Craig Douglas Bellamy was born on 13 July 1979 at the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff, the second of three boys born to Douglas and Angela Bellamy. At the time, the family lived on Swinton Street near the Splott district of the city, a traditionally working-class environment. Bellamy's mother worked as a cleaner and his father worked at the nearby Allied Steel and Wire site that overlooked the family home, where he remained until the plant's closure in 2002. With both his parents working full-time, Bellamy spent most of his school holidays at his paternal grandmother's home in Adamsdown. He suffers from asthma; as a child he made frequent visits to hospital to manage the condition. At the age of five, Bellamy and his family moved to the eastern suburb of Trowbridge, which is part of a council estate built in the 1960s.Bellamy's father was a keen football fan who supported Cardiff City and Bellamy's first experience of professional football was watching a Football League Fourth Division match between Cardiff and Newport County at Cardiff's home ground Ninian Park during the 1987–88 season, which Cardiff won 4–0. His father played amateur football for local Cardiff-based sides; Bellamy described him as a "sluggish right-back". Bellamy's interest in the sport grew rapidly; he regularly attended Cardiff City matches at Ninian Park and played in a park near his home with his older brother Paul and his friends. Bellamy credits playing against older children as making him "into a better player very quickly".
He first attended Baden Powell Primary School before switching to Trowbridge Juniors where he joined the school football team at the age of seven. Despite being younger than most of the other players, he was selected to play and featured in his first match against Gladstone Primary School. Local team Pentwyn Dynamo took an interest in Bellamy but were put off by his small size; his father offered to form a team if Bellamy could find enough players. Soon after, the under-10s side of local team Caer Castell FC was formed, and Bellamy scored all four goals in the club's first fixture. He was later picked to represent both Cardiff Schools and a Cardiff and District side in national competition. He went on to attend Rumney High School, but left the school with no GCSEs.
At the age of 12, Bellamy became friends with a group of mostly older boys and began to regularly drink alcohol and skipped school for up to two weeks at a time. He saw several of his friends using cannabis and sniffing glue but denies ever using the substances himself. He later admitted to acting as a lookout while his friends broke into vehicles to steal car stereos to sell for drug money. He described himself as "a kid who knew he was going to be a footballer and thought he knew it all". By age 14, Bellamy was barely attending school and was smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol every day. In 1993, his brother introduced him to his future wife, Claire; Bellamy credits the relationship as a key factor in moving him away from his early troubles.
Club career
Bristol Rovers and Norwich City
Bellamy attended youth sessions organised by Cardiff City in Ely for a year after being encouraged by his father. The club, however, took little interest in him as a youngster and, at nine-years-old, he joined Bristol Rovers after being spotted by former professional Stan Montgomery, who was working for Rovers. Although an hour's drive from his family home, Bellamy was swayed by the better coaching and his own playing kit. He spent two years with Bristol Rovers before being spotted by a scout working for Norwich City. The club invited Bellamy to a trial match in Somerset where he impressed and was asked to travel with the side to compete in the Dana Cup, an international youth football tournament held in Hjørring, Denmark. His performances led to a permanent place with the Canary Rangers, Norwich's youth development side. Prior to signing with the club, several other teams took an interest in Bellamy; Leeds United offered his parents £10,000 if he signed for them. Norwich responded by guaranteeing him a two-year YTS contract when he was old enough to sign. Bellamy travelled to Norwich by train on Saturday afternoons, then played a youth match on Sunday morning before returning to Cardiff.At the age of 15, Bellamy moved away from Cardiff to start his youth apprenticeship with Norwich, being placed with a local family along with another apprentice. His first year away from home proved troublesome and he describes it as "the hardest year of my life", regularly crying himself to sleep due to homesickness. Each apprentice was assigned to a senior player for whom they performed basic tasks such as cleaning boots or making tea. Bellamy was paired with John Polston but found the experienced defender difficult to work with and believed Polston tried to "humiliate" him.
Bellamy's homesickness was lessened after he became friends with another apprentice from Cardiff, Tom Ramasut, but problems with his discipline became commonplace. On one occasion, Bellamy received a final warning from staff after he broke the arm of a trialist goalkeeper during a fight on the training ground; Bellamy later wrote that he believed Norwich showed him leniency when disciplining him in fear of losing a player regarded as having a bright future. Bellamy reached a turning point in his career when his girlfriend Claire became pregnant while he was a youth player. He has credited this as a catalyst for his career that saw him become more determined to become a professional footballer, stating, "I have had the career I have had because of that moment when Claire phoned me up to tell me she was pregnant". At the end of the first year of his YTS deal, Bellamy was the only player promoted to the club's reserve side by coach Mike Phelan.
Bellamy signed his first professional contract with Norwich when he turned 16, earning £250 a week, with the option to renegotiate after ten first-team appearances. He made his professional debut for Norwich on 15 March 1997 under manager Mike Walker at the age of 17, as an injury-time substitute in a 2–0 defeat to Crystal Palace in the First Division, the second tier of the English football league system. Remarking on the rushed nature of his appearance, he said, "It all felt very last minute. I was wearing a kit about three sizes too big for me, I touched the ball twice, we lost 2–0 and it was over." Two further substitute appearances in fixtures against Manchester City and Oldham Athletic followed before the end of the season.
Bellamy made his first career start for Norwich in the opening month of the following season in the first round of the League Cup against Barnet on 12 August 1997, and started in the league for the first time on 20 September against Manchester City. During the early stages of the campaign, Bellamy played his tenth match for the first team, leading to new contract negotiations. Despite an attempt by newly-promoted Premier League side Crystal Palace to sign him for £2 million, he chose to extend his deal with Norwich. On 1 November, Bellamy scored his first senior goal, the opener in a 2–2 home draw with Bury. He received his first career red card on 7 February 1998 in the 23rd minute against Manchester City, but finished his first full season with 13 goals from 38 appearances, while playing mostly as a central midfielder.
As a young player, Bellamy was unafraid to voice his opinion to more senior members of the squad. His approach annoyed some teammates who sought retribution during training sessions; Bellamy later commented, "one or two of them would try to clean me out with flying tackles. They wanted to bring me down a peg or two." One training session left him "nearly in tears" after Kevin Scott repeatedly singled him out. Bellamy won support from his midfield partner, the experienced Peter Grant, who struck up a friendship with Bellamy. Bruce Rioch was appointed Norwich manager in 1998 and instantly moved Bellamy from central midfield to attack. The decision reaped rewards immediately; Bellamy scored seven goals in his first eight league appearances of the campaign, including his first career hat-trick on 22 August 1998 in a 4–2 home win over Queens Park Rangers. By November, he was one of the leading goalscorers in the First Division and was rewarded with a new five-year contract.
In December 1998, Bellamy suffered an injury to his left knee following a high challenge by Wolverhampton Wanderers defender Kevin Muscat that ruled him out for two months and left him with a puncture wound in his kneecap caused by one of Muscat's studs. The tackle caused so much consternation that Rioch had to be physically restrained by his coaching staff while Bellamy's Norwich teammate Iwan Roberts later admitted taking revenge on Muscat by stamping on his back when the pair met in a match two years later. Bellamy continued to experience soreness in the knee after his return for the remainder of the season but ended the campaign with a career high 19 goals in all competitions.
In a pre-season friendly against Southend United prior to the following season, Bellamy ruptured his cruciate ligaments in an innocuous challenge with an opposition defender and was ruled out for between six and eight months. He made his return to the first team against Port Vale on 22 April 2000 and finished the season by scoring goals in consecutive matches against Barnsley and Sheffield United. Interest in Bellamy grew during the summer; Norwich rejected an offer of £3.5 million by Wimbledon while Newcastle United showed interest but held back from making a bid because they were waiting to sell Duncan Ferguson to finance the transfer.