Got a book about this guy, had never heard of him before.
Scored the winning goal for Arsenal at Juventus in the cup winners cup semi final in 1980 at 18/19. The first time Juventus lost to an English team at home.
His career was cut short by a knee injury and by 1982 his career in football was all but over.
Following his forced retirement from football, he descended into a life of crime and drug addiction. In 1985 he survived being stabbed multiple times in a drug deal and losing 40 pints of blood. On another occasion he was arrested for stealing ladies tights from ASDA.
He eventually died in from a drug overdose IN 2001.
Tony Adams wrote the foreword and he describes how the impact and his own addiction problems, led him to setup the sporting chance clinic. I also found out that Tony Adam's ex wife was apparently a heroin and crack addict, who has since spent time in jail.
Anyway, it's an interesting story of how a footballers life can be turned upside down. If anyone is interested in these kinds of books it's worth picking up. I'm only about half way through but it's still a good read.
Any Arsenal fans have any knowledge or memory of this guy at all?
Scored the winning goal for Arsenal at Juventus in the cup winners cup semi final in 1980 at 18/19. The first time Juventus lost to an English team at home.
His career was cut short by a knee injury and by 1982 his career in football was all but over.
Following his forced retirement from football, he descended into a life of crime and drug addiction. In 1985 he survived being stabbed multiple times in a drug deal and losing 40 pints of blood. On another occasion he was arrested for stealing ladies tights from ASDA.
He eventually died in from a drug overdose IN 2001.
Tony Adams wrote the foreword and he describes how the impact and his own addiction problems, led him to setup the sporting chance clinic. I also found out that Tony Adam's ex wife was apparently a heroin and crack addict, who has since spent time in jail.
Anyway, it's an interesting story of how a footballers life can be turned upside down. If anyone is interested in these kinds of books it's worth picking up. I'm only about half way through but it's still a good read.
Any Arsenal fans have any knowledge or memory of this guy at all?
It was 22nd April 1980, the eve of the European Cup-Winners' Cup semi-final between Arsenal and Juventus in Turin and Paul Vaessen had a dream, a dream in which he came off the bench to score the winning goal, silencing the Stadio Comunale and catapulting himself to overnight fame. The next day he lived the dream, heading in Graham Rix's cross with only seconds left to score one of the most memorable goals in Arsenal's illustrious history. It was Paul's moment, a moment of supreme elation, a moment he would spend the rest of his life trying to recapture. Because the dream would soon turn into a nightmare as, eight months after his exploits in northern Italy, Paul would suffer the knee injury which would eventually curtail his career at the age of twenty one. Paul was on the scrapheap. And he was poorly equipped for life without football. After a comeback with non-league Fisher Athletic was aborted, most job offers were too mundane for him to even contemplate. Nothing could give him anything like the buzz he was looking for. Nothing, that is, except drugs. Paul would spend most of the following fifteen years battling drug addiction, eventually dying alone and anonymously in his Bristol flat in August 2001, a manic depressive and schizophrenic facing up to the likelihood of amputation. His knee caused him agony, a constant reminder of what he'd once been and how high he'd once flown. He told those close to him that he wouldn't make forty. He was thirty nine when he died. There were, though, good times along the way, as we hear from former team-mates such as Liam Brady, Frank Stapleton, Alan Sunderland, Graham Rix, Brian Talbot, Brian McDermott and Kenny Sansom. Fellow apprentice, Nicky Law, relives the mischief of the early years and we meet Paul's school friends, teachers and family. But this is primarily a sombre tale, a tale of seduction and abandonment.