Andy Scores! Vol 2 - Part 2/3: The Ghost of Poverty
Andy Chapman vows to be the last Chapman to grow up poor
To read Part 1 of Volume 2, click here.
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And now, Andy Chapman, in his own words:
I was very fortunate to have such an excellent team, with Mike Dowler, and then Kim Roentved and Jorgen Kristensen...I played on a line with Jorgen, who just loved to set up goals. There is nothing better for a goal-scorer. I could score individual goals that you can do because of some of the things that you work on, like receiving the ball at your feet and spinning and scoring. But there were also goals I scored where Jorgen would beat two or three guys and lay it to me. I had the simple job of tapping it in...but it’s not a simple job because there are a lot of players that can’t tap a ball in from three or four feet out in the heat of the game because it’s a lot harder to do than people realize.
Based on the players and how we were, it enabled me to turn those great chances into goals. With that comes confidence. My confidence was sky high. I never ever thought, when we went into overtime, that I WASN’T going to score the game-winning goal. In my head, I said ‘I’m going to score the goal.’ And a lot of times that happened. Not every time, but a few.
In my family it’s still a standard joke: In one of the magazine [interviews] they asked, ‘What is your hobby?’ I said, ‘Thinking.’ [laughs] ‘What were you thinking when you said that?’ my family always asks. I said that because I used to love to think. I got that from my father. He left school at 13, grew up in poverty in the East End of London. He was a self-educated man. He was always making me think about things. I can remember so many sayings he used to tell me…and as I started growing older, they started to come true. My son, Dillon, is in Los Angeles, and was born in 1989 when I played in Wichita...He’s a soccer player and I told him that everything I learned inside the lines [could be applied outside].
When you go into the arena and go onto the field, you are crossing the line and are there. And everything you have and is required of you: your responsibilities and duties on the field, your responsibilities to your teammates, being honest…all that I could apply to things outside the field. I used to bring Dillon up like that. Everything I learned outside the lines I learned inside the lines. I wouldn’t say I was smart in the sense of a Rhodes Scholar. But I was very street smart. You had to be, growing up in the East End. The main driving force in me, apart from soccer, was where I came from. I wanted to get out of that area.
Growing up on government property in the East End of London is not the most desirable thing you want to be able to do. That was the fuel in me to become better. When I was suddenly earning amounts of money that were way beyond whatever I thought I was gonna earn, all I did was save it and invest it. I purchased houses and stuff like that. I grew up in a government property. My mom had never driven a car. My brother and I grew up in a house with no heat.
My dad would always point to a home that was owned by somebody and say, ‘See that house there? I could have purchased that for $1,000 and now it’s worth $10,000.’ My brother and I would hear that all the time, so I always remembered that. So at 21 in California, I took every penny I’d saved, which was $12,000, and bought a condo in Anaheim Hills. 18% interest on a land contract. I didn’t sleep for two days. Then, because I couldn’t afford to live in it, I had to rent it out. That investment wiped out every single penny that I had. The reason I did it was because my dad used to say, ‘If I’d purchased that or done that...’
And then I realized that I didn’t care if I lost it all because at least I’d never have to say, ‘I should have done that...I should have purchased that.’ So I did it and never looked back. I got into being motivated because we were a long way from our families and it WAS a big deal. The team was your family, but at times you felt alone. I always thought at the end of the season there’s going to be a reason why I played that season and I’m going to save and purchase something as an investment so I can say that’s why I was there. So in the ‘82-83 season the purpose of me playing that year and doing well was to save a lot of my salary to purchase a home in Michigan. So I can always look back at the home I have and go, ‘The ‘82-83 season purchased that home.’
I lived with Jimmy Ryan on the west side in 1982. It was an incredible time in my life. His daughter Jane used to wake me up in the morning for Jimmy and I to “go to work.” She’d bring a cup of tea in for me. I loved Jimmy, he ended up being best man at my wedding. A few years later he became an assistant coach at Manchester United. You pretty much knew you were getting caught up in something exciting.
In 1983 I got a year-round contract. I would get phone calls from players who were back in England and they’d ask me to come back and play there. A guy called me and said, “I want you to come back and play in the football league.” I asked how much, and it was like four times less than what I was making. I said, “I can’t afford to [come to England].”
There was still a part of me that wanted to say I’d played in the English League, for my brother. To say I’d played in the First Division, or won an FA Cup medal. The reality was I wasn’t going to turn down all that money just to play in England. I’d established deep roots in the USA: With a place in California, and two places in Wichita; a condo on the west side, and a duplex with Joe Howarth and Don Tobin. I couldn’t leave.
Was there always that romantic notion of my school friends seeing me play for the Hammers? Yeah. But I remember saying in an interview, “It’s not how many medals I’ve won, or how many league games I’ve played, it’s how I’ve done for my family, financially. How have I maximized my career in something I’ve been blessed with.” At the time it might have sounded mercenary, but that was not true. I was fed up with reading stories in the Sunday newspapers of ex-players, like Tony Currie, who played for England, who was a superstar, who was driving a cab. Or guys who were homeless. That wasn’t going to happen to me.
[Stay tuned for Part 3 of 3 of Volume 2 next week!]