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Sol Campbell: ‘Doomed? I always felt Macclesfield had enough games to get out’
He was part of the Arsenal “Invincibles” who went undefeated en route to winning the Premier League 15 years ago, and played for England 73 times, but if Sol Campbell keeps Macclesfield Town in the Football League on Saturday, there are unlikely to have been too many prouder moments in his career.
Macclesfield looked a lost cause when Campbell took over at the end of November after a long and tortuous search for a club willing to give him a first shot at management began, literally, at the very bottom of the English professional pyramid. Propping up the League Two table, seven points adrift of safety after two wins from their opening 19 matches, plenty questioned the wisdom of Campbell’s decision to pitch up at a club beset with problems on and off the pitch. Six months later, Macclesfield stand on the brink of one of football’s great escapes. A point at home to Cambridge United on Saturday would almost certainly secure survival, given their vastly superior goal difference to Notts County. A win definitely would.
“I think some people maybe thought, ‘What the heck, we’ll just flip the coin or whatever and give him a chance’,” Campbell reflects. “Who knows what people are thinking but I had to turn that around. People in football know what I’m about but hopefully others realise now that I’m deadly serious.”
There were players and fans resigned to relegation when Campbell arrived but he spotted a chink of light. “Everyone else did,” the former defender says when asked if he felt many believed the club were doomed. “I didn’t believe that. I always felt we had enough games to get out and make a decent fist of it. We just had to organise ourselves. You need a bit of luck along the way, too, but I think you need to work hard to get that bit of luck and I’ve tried to build the right attitude.”
The journey to this point is all the more remarkable when one considers what Campbell and his players have had to put up with off the field. Some staff joke privately that staying up would be a bigger achievement than Leicester City winning the Premier League three years ago but it is easy to see where they are coming from. It was only six weeks ago that Macclesfield avoided a winding-up petition in the High Court over outstanding debts, players’ wages have not been paid on time for the past three months and financial struggles were a factor behind the club having to abandon the training base they used to hire for a school playing field 40 minutes west of their Moss Rose stadium.
Campbell roped in Andy Cole, the former Manchester United and England striker, to do some coaching a couple of days a week but his backroom staff is skeletal to say the least and the kit man, Ged Coyne, needs the help of players to ferry all the equipment around.
Budget? “The budget was gone when I got here!” Campbell says.
It is certainly not the life he was accustomed to as a player for Spurs, Arsenal and England. As Campbell is talking, an under-12s school cricket match is being played behind him and the 44-year-old momentarily has to duck as a ball comes flying over and hits the nearby pavilion roof.
The football pitch that passes as Macclesfield’s training ground is visible in the distance, the property of The Grange School, an independent school in the leafy Cheshire suburb of Northwich. There are worse patches of grass to play on but the only hope of it being watered are the heavens opening. “We have to rely on God to put some rain down,” Campbell jokes.
Campbell signed an 18-month contract when he joined and is reputedly in line to quadruple his £2,000 a week wages should he keep Macclesfield in League Two.
Whether other clubs come calling this summer remains to be seen but, at a time when there is a chronic shortage of black managers in the English game, Campbell’s attitude, approach and success should make people stand up and take notice.