Chris Waddle

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Personal information
Chris Waddle
Full name	Christopher Roland Waddle
Date of birth	December 14, 1960 (age 46)
Place of birth	Gateshead, England
Nickname	Magic Waddle/ Mr Mullet
Playing position	Winger
Senior clubs¹
Years	Club	App (Gls)*
1980-1985 1985-1989 1989-1992 1992-1996 1996 1996-1997 1997 1997-1998 1998	Newcastle United Tottenham Hotspur Olympique de Marseille Sheffield Wednesday Falkirk Bradford City Sunderland Burnley Torquay United	170 (46) 138 (33) 107 (22) 109 (10) 4 (1) 25 (6) 7 (1) 32 (1) 7 (0)
National team
1986-1991	England	62 (6)
¹ Senior club appearances and goals counted for the domestic league only. * Appearances (Goals)

Christopher Roland Waddle (born December 14, 1960 in Heworth, Gateshead) is an English former footballer of the 1980s and 1990s.

1 Playing career
2 Post football career
- 2.1 Honours
3 In popular culture
4 External links

[edit] Playing career

[edit] Early career

Chris Waddle began his footballing career with Pelaw Juniors, moving on to Whitehouse SC, Mount Pleasant SC, HMH Printing, Pelaw SC, Leam Lane SC and Clarke Chapman before joining Tow Law Town in the 1978 close-season.

[edit] Newcastle United

After unsuccessful trials with Sunderland and Coventry City and from working in a sausage and meat pie factory he was eventually taken on by Newcastle United in July 1980 for a fee of £1,000. He made his league debut at St. James' Park against Shrewsbury Town on the 22nd of October 1980 and quickly established himself in the Magpies' side, playing alongside Kevin Keegan and Peter Beardsley as Newcastle won promotion to Division One in the 1983-84 season. He was called up for the England Under-21 side and soon made the full squad, making his debut against the Republic of Ireland in March 1985.

[edit] Tottenham Hotspur

After 46 goals in 170 games for Newcastle, he moved to Tottenham Hotspur in July 1985 for a fee of £590,000. At Tottenham he established himself as a regular in the England team, playing in the side that reached the quarter finals of the 1986 FIFA World Cup in Mexico linking up again with Beardsley. After the World Cup he enjoyed his most productive season. He won an FA Cup runners-up medal in 1987 when Spurs were beaten by Coventry, while they also finished third in the League and got to the semi-finals of the League Cup. In the same year, Waddle found himself in the pop charts, with the single Diamond Lights making the UK Top 20 in a duet with Spurs and England team-mate Glenn Hoddle. In 1988, he was in the England side which lost all three group games in the European Championships.

[edit] Olympique de Marseille

In July 1989, after scoring 33 times in 138 appearances for Tottenham, Waddle moved to Olympique de Marseille for a fee of £4.5 million, the third highest fee in history at that time. In a team of stars he was one of the top players and during his time there the club were French champions three times (1990, 1991 and 1992). He infamously missed a penalty in a shoot-out at the end of the 1990 FIFA World Cup semi-final against West Germany, ballooning the ball over the bar.

Waddle was seen as a strong contender for the 1991 European Footballer of the Year. However the tactics of Red Star Belgrade in the 1991 European Cup Final, whose stated tactic was to play for penalties, caused Waddle to have a deeply ineffectual game. Red Star Belgrade went on to win the final and Jean Pierre Papin won European Footballer of the Year. Chris Waddle's performances in the 90-91 season were phenomenal, and probably the most complete season of a British player abroad since John Charles in the 1950s and Kevin Keegan in the 1970s. Because of English disinterest in Continental European football, having just come out of the Heysel ban, and a particular ignorance of French League Football, Waddle's time at Marseille is often overlooked.

[edit] Sheffield Wednesday

Waddle returned to England in July 1992 in a £1.25 million move to Sheffield Wednesday, then managed by Trevor Francis. The club reached both domestic cup finals in the 1992-93 season (losing both to Arsenal - Waddle scored Wednesday's goal in the FA Cup final replay) and Waddle was voted the Football Writers' Association Footballer of the Year in 1993. His later career at Hillsborough was marred by injury and he was released at the end of the 1995-96 season, having played 109 games and scored 10 goals.

[edit] Falkirk & Bradford City

He joined Falkirk in September 1996 as a free agent, in an attempt to regain match-fitness; and joined Bradford City the following month, scoring a spectacular goal in the FA Cup against Everton during the Bantams cup run.

[edit] Sunderland

He moved to Sunderland, the side he had supported as a boy, for a nominal fee of £75,000 in February 1997, but could not help Sunderland from being relegated at the end of the season, receiving a televised slating from Sunderland manager Peter Reid during the fly-on-the-wall documentary 'Premier Passions'.

[edit] Burnley

In May 1997 he was appointed player-manager of Burnley, moving from Roker Park on a free transfer. Burnley had a disappointing season, only just avoiding relegation at the end of the season, whereas they had been expected to be challenging for promotion.

[edit] Torquay United

Waddle left Burnley in the summer, and in September 1998 joined Torquay United. He played just 7 times for Torquay before taking up a coaching job with Sheffield Wednesday. He was appointed reserve team coach in July 1999, and played for a local pub side, but left in June 2000 on the appointment of Paul Jewell as manager.

[edit] Non-League Career

Following his departure from Torquay United, Waddle enjoyed brief playing spells with Worksop Town and Glapwell.

When not commentating you will often find him making appearances in the Wragg League Sheffield for HSBC Over 35s.

[edit] Post football career

He now frequently appears on BBC Radio Five Live as a summariser at Premier League matches and also writes a column in The Sun newspaper.

He also plays 5-a-side at Dore for Loxley Bears where the team often is highly successful, however their most embarrassing defeat came at the hands of the mighty Porn vale who defeated Chris and his team 9-4 in January 2007. Afterwards Chris refused to shake hands with anyone but the goalkeeper, Martyn 'The Hammer' Arnold who he thought had a good game.

He contributed commentary to Electronic Arts' lineage of football video games, infamously including the ironic commentary remark "That's how we score'm, John." for a successfully-taken penalty. His name and occasionally photograph also appeared regularly on the Chanel 9 section of The Fast Show

In 2005 he was charged with attacking a man in a pub in Dore, Sheffield, however the charge was dropped for insufficient evidence. He has one daughter, Brooke, and a son Jack.

Waddle was one of the England's fiercest critics after defeat to Portugal on penalties in World Cup 2006. In an article for the BBC website immediately after the defeat some of his harshest quotes included:

"...we are a quarter-final team and no more"
"Every time we play a team with a bit of craft and skill we can't deal with it."
"We have got to face reality that we are a team nowhere near the top seven countries in the world."
"But we have got to wake up in this country and realise that we are not a great team."

The comments were part of an article which included the post match thoughts of several high profile football analysts. [1].

He is to represent Sheffield Wednesday in the 2006 Yorkshire Masters.

His cousin, Alan Waddle played league football for Halifax Town, Liverpool, Leicester City, Swansea City, Newport County, Mansfield Town, Hartlepool United and Peterborough United.

Chris has also expressed an interest in the vacent managers position at Bradford City since the resignation of previous manager Colin Todd.

[edit] Honours

1990 French Championship (With Marseille)
1991 French Championship (With Marseille)
1992 French Championship (With Marseille)
1993 PFA Player Of The Year (With Sheffield Wednesday)

1987 FA Cup Final Runners Up medal (with Tottenham Hotspur)
1991 European Cup Runners Up medal (with Olympique Marseille)
1993 FA Cup Final Runners Up medal (with Sheffield Wednesday)
1993 English League Cup Runners Up medal (with Sheffield Wednesday)

[edit] In popular culture

Chris Waddle's name was often used amidst the nonsensical speech used in the Chanel 9 sketches on the British sketch comedy show The Fast Show. Its use in this context has no easily apparent meaning; it might perhaps relate to the fact that Waddle became well-known on the Mediterranean coast, where "Chanel 9" was vaguely supposed to be based, but "Chanel 9" seemed more likely to be Spanish or Portuguese than French.

Chris Waddle is remembered also for his tragic penalty miss in the 1990 World Cup Semi-Final v. West Germany, when his kick sailed far over the bar, destroying England's Cup hopes.

Chris Waddle also had a Mullet (haircut) while playing in the late 1980's - early 1990's hence his nickname of Mr Mullett

[edit] External links

Preceded by Gary Lineker	Football Writers' Association Footballer of the Year 1993	Succeeded by Alan Shearer

Preceded by Adrian Heath	Burnley manager 1997-1998	Succeeded by Stan Ternent

	England squad - 1986 FIFA World Cup Quarter-finalists
1 Shilton \| 2 Gary Stevens \| 3 Sansom \| 4 Hoddle \| 5 Martin \| 6 Butcher \| 7 Bryan Robson \| 8 Wilkins \| 9 Hateley \| 10 Lineker \| 11 Waddle \| 12 Anderson \| 13 Woods \| 14 Fenwick \| 15 Gary A. Stevens \| 16 Reid \| 17 Steven \| 18 Hodge \| 19 Barnes \| 20 Beardsley \| 21 Dixon \| 22 Bailey \| Coach: Bobby Robson

	England squad - 1990 FIFA World Cup Fourth Place
1 Shilton \| 2 Stevens \| 3 Pearce \| 4 Webb \| 5 Walker \| 6 Butcher \| 7 Bryan Robson \| 8 Waddle \| 9 Beardsley \| 10 Lineker \| 11 Barnes \| 12 Parker \| 13 Woods \| 14 Wright \| 15 Dorigo \| 16 McMahon \| 17 Platt \| 18 Hodge \| 19 Gascoigne \| 20 Steven \| 21 Bull \| 22 Beasant \| Coach: Bobby Robson

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