Prevented from telling the world about his goalscoring first start for England by the players’ media boycott, young Defoe was not to be denied for long, and the invitation to meet him at a hotel near his Essex home produced a lengthy exposition on his burgeoning career.
England’s man of the moment is an entertaining raconteur, his tales of the unexpected encompassing Ian Wright’s “madness” at West Ham, the square-eyed view of the game that comes from watching too much televised football and Sven-Göran Eriksson’s unsung sense of humour.
Defoe particularly relishes the story of his mother, Sandra’s, encounter with the mathematician who wanted to divert him from his chosen path. “My mum used to hear things about me from school that she didn’t like,” he said. “They’d say I wasn’t concentrating — that I wasn’t a bad boy, but I was distracted easily. ‘All he ever thinks about is football.’ She went to a parents’ evening and when my maths teacher gave her all that, she said, ‘Yes, and I’m going to support him if that’s what he wants to do’. The teacher said, ‘Loads of kids want to be footballers and very few make it. What if he doesn’t?’
“My mum told him, ‘I believe my son is special. He’s got a talent’. At that time, the teacher had never seen me play, but a week later we had a schools cup final and he came to the game. I scored six before half-time. The teacher said to my mum, ‘You’re right, you’ve got to make sure you support him. He’s got something”.
The tale is verified by Phil Lee, from the PE department at St Bonaventure’s in Forest Gate, east London, who said: “It happened, all right. It was the maths man here, but I wouldn’t mention his name.”
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Lee said: “Jermain was a nice kid but his studies were very much secondary. He was always very focused on becoming a professional. He scored hundreds of goals for us, but one sticks in my mind. We were playing Raynesford in an Essex Schools cup tie. Jermain is quite small (he is now only 5ft 7in), but the rest of our team were big black lads, and when we got off the coach you could see all these white kids looking at them in awe. He scored after four seconds. You could see their lot looking at one another, thinking, ‘Oh God. We’ve got another 89 minutes of this’.”
Defoe joined Charlton at the age of 10 and also played for Senrab, a celebrated East End boys’ team that produced two of his current England teammates, John Terry and Ledley King. At 14, already earmarked for the top, he left “St Bon’s” to attend the FA’s national school at Lilleshall with Joe Cole, among others.
“I was in the last intake — the last 16 before the school closed,” he said. “It’s a shame that had to happen, because you got a great grounding there. I learnt a hell of a lot.”
The coaches at the “School of Excellence” were Keith Blunt, formerly of Tottenham who is now working in China, and Kenny Swain, who won the European Cup with Aston Villa before managing Grimsby.
“Mr Blunt was a great influence,” Defoe said. “You just have to look at all the players who came out of the school — Michael Owen, Sol Campbell, Andy and Joe Cole, Wes Brown, Ian Walker, Trevor Sinclair, Nick Barmby. All England internationals.”
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Unlike many, Defoe was never homesick in rural Shropshire. “Playing and training every day was heaven,” he said. “The only bad part about it was going to school in the morning. I just wanted to get it over. I did pass a couple of GCSEs but my only interest was making a career in the game.”
At 16, Defoe returned to Charlton. Briefly. Many of his friends were at West Ham and, to the chagrin of everybody at the Valley, he decided that was where he wanted to be. What followed was the first of two highly acrimonious transfers. Charlton were outraged that a young player in whom they had invested time and money should be “poached” before he had played for their first team. They threatened legal action and complained to the FA, which eventually ordered West Ham to pay £1.6m in compensation. Defoe said: “At 16, all you want to do is play with your friends, and a lot of mine were at West Ham. In 1999, when they won the FA Youth Cup, I went to the final and there were so many fans at Upton Park that they ringed the pitch because there weren’t enough seats. I wanted to be part of it.”
In his first season West Ham won the Premiership Academy Under-19 trophy, beating Arsenal in the final, and Defoe was sure he had made the right choice. “I was 17 and I thought, ‘Yeah, this is the right place for me’. The spirit was fantastic. We were always together, off the pitch as well as on it, always having a laugh with the first-teamers. For that playoff final, Arsenal had Ashley Cole and Jermaine Pennant, and we were all a year or so younger, but we played them there in the second leg and beat them at Highbury (on penalties after a 1-1 draw). The first leg, at our place, had been 5-5. I scored two.”
Harry Redknapp, then West Ham’s manager, had been his mentor. “Harry always said, ‘If you’re good enough, you’re old enough’, and even at 16 he had me training with the first-teamers. Afterwards, he’d make a point of asking if you’d enjoyed it. At 17 he had me on the bench for a Premiership match against Newcastle at St James’ Park. I was sitting there, looking across at people like Alan Shearer, and I’d just come out of school. It was brilliant.”
At 18, Defoe was sent to Bournemouth on loan. “Harry came to me and said, ‘I don’t want you wasting time in the reserves. Go and get some first-team experience, you’ll enjoy that more. Rio (Ferdinand) went and loved it’. I really did enjoy it.”
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Defoe scored in 11 successive league and cup matches, the best run since Stan Mortensen’s 14 in a row for Blackpool back in 1950-51. “Everybody was on about it at the time, but to be honest it didn’t really register with me,” he said. “Playing was all I was interested in.”
He managed 18 goals in 29 games for Bournemouth in 2000-01 and was in from the start with West Ham the next season. He outscored Paolo Di Canio and Freddie Kanoute in all competitions in a team good enough to finish seventh in the Premiership. Twelve months later, they were relegated, and Defoe still cannot understand why. Again, he was the top scorer, with 11 goals, but Di Canio hit just nine and Kanoute was down to five. In May 2001, Redknapp was fired.
“It was a terrible time,” said Defoe. “All the lads had built such a good relationship with one another and suddenly you found your mates were going. I thought, ‘I’m going to have to go as well’.”
Cue contentious transfer No 2. The day after relegation was confirmed, Defoe incurred the eternal wrath of West Ham’s bubble-blowing fraternity by demanding a move. Had he not realised that he would be seen as a rat deserting the sinking ship? “I now regret the timing of my transfer request,” he said, “but then it felt the time was right for me to move on, like everyone else.”
There had been talk of Defoe going to Arsenal or Manchester United, but bids never came, and it was Tottenham he joined during the January transfer window, for what now seems like a paltry £7m. He had jumped at the chance to play in the Premiership again, to improve his international prospects.
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At 19 he was close to going to the 2002 World Cup. “In my first full season at West Ham, Harry (Redknapp) used to say to me, ‘Sven’s (Göran-Eriksson, the England coach) at the game today, here’s your chance’. I’d been in the Under-21s and David Platt would tell me all the time, ‘The manager really rates you. If you keep on playing as you are, you’ll get in’. I just missed out on the World Cup, but when the England manager likes you, you know if you maintain your form you’ll get in eventually.”
His first cap came last March against Sweden in Gothenburg. “I got on early as a substitute (after 12 minutes, for Darius Vassell), and just tried to show people I was up to it at international level,” he said.
Defoe did well enough to be taken to the pre-Euro 2004 training camp in Sardinia, and came tantalisingly close to going to the finals. Then, for the second tournament in succession, it was the fitness of another player that determined his fate.
“I always knew that if Darius was okay, I wasn’t going,” he said. “Mr Eriksson told me he had made his decision. He was taking only four strikers — and I was the 24th man in a squad that would become 23.”
He watched the tournament from afar, while holidaying at his grandparents’ home in St Lucia. “The time difference made it crazy but I watched every minute,” he said. “Obviously, I was disappointed not to be there, but it was a blessing in disguise. Because I didn’t go, I came back for the pre-season determined to show people that I should have been there.”
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He scored in three of Spurs’ first four matches and made another eye-catching appearance as a second-half substitute in England’s friendly against Ukraine to ensure that he was in the squad for the back-to-back World Cup qualifiers in Austria and Poland. In Vienna Defoe got on for the last 15 minutes, replacing Alan Smith, and despite the disappointing 2-2 result he had not expected the team to change in Katowice four days later.
Instead, he was on from the start in place of Smith.
“I was totally at home,” he said. “I knew something special was going to happen that night. I told myself, ‘When you get that chance, stay cool. Don’t panic and snatch at it’.”
What followed made him England’s hero of the hour. In the 37th minute he received the ball inside the penalty area from David Beckham, turned inside his marker and shot past Jerzy Dudek. “I’ve got to rate that as my best goal ever,” he said. “To score that early was brilliant. It’s something I’ll never forget.”
Under normal circumstances, Defoe would have done more press interviews than a politician on the stump, but the senior players, annoyed by criticism they had received for their disintegration in Vienna, decreed that nobody would speak to the media.
“Not all of us were comfortable with that decision, but I suppose we’d done our talking out on the pitch,” Defoe said. “I couldn’t do it then, but I knew there would be a time when I could tell you how I felt.”
Defoe’s performance was eager yet composed and he deserves to retain his place for the next two qualifiers, at home to Wales and away to Azerbaijan, on October 9 and 13 respectively. Deserves to, but will he? Eriksson seems determined to keep faith with Michael Owen and Wayne Rooney is nearing his return to fitness.
Contrary to popular belief, the Swede is a good communicator, according to Defoe: “He can be quite funny,” he said. “With the younger ones in particular, he’s very good. If I’m playing computer games, he’ll come over and have a word. He’s an all-right guy.”
Were computer games Defoe’s hobby? “Not really. Football is my only interest. I watch all the games I can on TV. If I’m not watching that, I’m on skysports.com.”
He will be no couch potato this afternoon when Tottenham play Chelsea at Stamford Bridge. Both have made unbeaten starts to the season, Spurs rather more surprisingly than their rich London rivals. Jacques Santini’s English was improving all the time, Defoe said, and as a former manager of France, his credentials had commanded instant respect in the dressing room.
“He knows what he’s talking about,” said Defoe. “We’re more of a solid unit. That doesn’t mean we’re tightly regimented — sometimes we do play off the cuff — but our organisation is such that nobody is finding it easy to score against us any more.”
Defoe was particularly impressed with two of Spurs’ summer signings — Thimothee Atouba, the Cameroon international signed from Basel, was an exciting acquisition on the left wing, and Pedro Mendes, from Porto, was the dominant midfielder the team had lacked.
“Pedro is a really good player” Defoe said. “He’s played in, and won, the Champions League, which has taught him to keep the ball well. Europe has to be a realistic target this season. If we keep playing the way we are, I don’t see why not.”
On a personal level, Defoe’s sights are set much higher. He said. “My aim is to win everything — medals, trophies and individual honours. I want the Golden Boot (awarded to Europe’s leading goalscorer) and to be Footballer of the Year. I’d love to play abroad one day. I’ve heard David (Beckham) talk about it when I’ve been away with England, how Madrid is brilliant, so yeah, that would be great.”
Beckham, however, was not his inspiration — that was his boyhood hero, Ian Wright, whose adopted son, Shaun Wright-Phillips, is his best friend. “I used to look up to ‘Wrighty’ when I was growing up,” he said. “I loved the way he played and the goals he scored. I get on so well with Shaun because he’s like me — he loves playing football. I’d love to play with him for England. ”
With Beckham struggling for form, it could add up to a match-winning combination against the Welsh. Just ask the maths teacher at St Bons.
Chelsea v Tottenham: Today, Sky Sports 1, 3pm, kick-off 4.05pm