Connor Goldson Interview - ST

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JONATHAN NORTHCROFT | CONNOR GOLDSON INTERVIEW

‘Will Uefa really stand that strong against racism?’

Rangers defender Connor Goldson talks about racial abuse, heart surgery and having your hero turn up at your home

Jonathan Northcroft

Football Correspondent

Sunday March 28 2021, 12.01am, The Sunday Times

 

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/will-uefa-really-stand-that-strong-against-racism-mw6k092sq

 

Goldson has played every second of the season for Rangers, playing his part in the successful bid for the league title

 

Connor Goldson’s team-mate, a friend so close that they sometimes go on holiday together, suffered racial abuse at his workplace this month. Take the football out of it and just look on a human level: you can understand why Goldson is still chewed up, more than a week after Glen Kamara said that he had been called “a f***ing monkey” while playing for Rangers against Slavia Prague in the Europa League.

As Kamara’s captain, as Kamara’s mate, Goldson confronted the alleged abuser on the pitch — Slavia’s Ondrej Kudela — and spoke out powerfully at a press conference the next day. “I was emotional, but stand by everything I said — but will Uefa really stand that strong against racism with the punishment they give?” Goldson says.

“We’ve all been party to these movements: Kick It Out, taking the knee, wearing T-shirts, but [racism] keeps on happening.”

The human level: “I feel like footballers only get seen as footballers, like we’re these robots that don’t get affected, but when you’re coming off the pitch to messages on social media, players having monkey emojis, banana emojis, the words black players get called, it affects you,” Goldson says.

“But listen, it’s not a sob story. I’m proud of who I am. I’m proud of the colour I am. I think we all are. Yet it’s still something you don’t want to see, because it looks like you’re downgraded in society.”

 

Courage, strength and leadership were part of the package Steven Gerrard knew he was getting when he made Goldson one of his first Rangers signings in 2018, driving all the way from his home in Merseyside to Goldson’s house in Brighton to seal the deal.

Goldson’s partner, Kayleigh, was past her due date while pregnant with Caleb, their son, so the only place a meeting could be held was the central defender’s abode. “[Gerrard] still moans about it now,” Goldson says.

 

Goldson confronted Slavia’s Kudela after the alleged racist abuse

 

Goldson supports Liverpool. So what do you do, if you are a Koppite and Stevie G knocks on your door? Goldson went into overdrive. Kayleigh had cleaned everywhere and when the bell rang, he ushered in his guest and offered a drink.

The request was for water and whether through nerves, eagerness — laughing as he tells the story, he says he is not sure what — Goldson thrust a two-litre bottle of Highland Spring in front of the visitor. “I only wanted a glass, mate,” Gerrard said.

 

That meeting did get better and convinced Goldson to leave Brighton & Hove Albion, for whom he had played in the Premier League but was still behind Shane Duffy and Lewis Dunk, to try an adventure in Scotland. “[Gerrard] just sold it to me, what the project was and how he wanted me to be a main part of it — I don’t know . . . I just believed him,” Goldson says. Three seasons on he is a league champion and Rangers’ bedrock, having played in every second of the club’s 48 games during their triumphant season. “An absolute mountain, a warrior,” his manager says.

 

At 28, Goldson feels at his peak and that a combination of boss and environment has pushed him there. With Gerrard, “You know you’re in the presence of a winner, you know what he expects from you every day. He brings complete clarity and I don’t think I’ve ever come out of a team talk thinking, ‘I’m not sure today.’ ”

With Rangers, “You have to be here to realise the demands. You can play a Scottish League One team or Benfica and it really doesn’t matter — the fans think you should win every game and the club expects you to.”

 

Scottish football is, he says, “quick, a lot more physical. In the Premier League there was more time on the ball, but the intensity of Scotland is a different level. Some games, I call it murderball.” But what that means, reflects Goldson, is having to be physically and mentally “on it” in every second. “If you’re soft in Scotland or let your standards drop, you’ll get beat.

“When I came up here I thought not ‘I’ll cruise it’ but ‘I’ll look very good here’. Then all of a sudden there’s balls into your channels, balls into your box, corners, throw-ins, and you’re conceding goals unless you’re in the zone. The pressure has helped me improve.”

 

He describes Gerrard’s drive to bring elite standards everywhere, whether through the quality and detail of tactics sessions, delivered by his assistant, Michael Beale, or revamping the auditorium at the training ground and canteen, tunnel and changing rooms at Ibrox.

The manager has entrusted players to look after improving culture and Goldson is in a leadership group with the club captain James Tavernier (absent against Slavia), Ryan Jack, Steven Davis, Allan McGregor, Scott Arfield and Jermain Defoe, who developed a “creed” that all players sign up to. It includes such tenets as: “I give my obligation to this club to work hard every day, improve every day and sacrifice myself for the team.”

“There’s a page of it,” Goldson says. “Attitude. Relentlessness. Togetherness. We always say the team is the superstar, not any of us.”

 

Against Livingston this month Goldson became the fastest player to reach 150 competitive games for Rangers. His availability and readiness to play are quite something for a player told his career could be over when he was 24. In 2017, a routine heart test at Brighton picked up a serious issue, later diagnosed as Marfan syndrome, a genetic condition that can fatally enlarge the aortic valve.

He had not wanted the scan, organised by Brighton’s head of medical, Adam Brett, whom he will always thank for a belief (not shared at every club) that players should have routine cardiac screening. “A group of us played Call of Duty every afternoon and I remember being in the gym and saying to the boys, ‘I’m going straight home and getting on.’ I walked through the physio room, just to have a laugh on the way back to the changing room, and Adam reminded me about the screening. I was, ‘Aw, no, do I really have to go?’ ” Goldson says, reliving how close to a different fate that he perhaps came.

A specialist in London said that his aorta “was stretched to a point that if he let me carry on, it might pop and I’d be dead. He said he would send me to a surgeon and told me, ‘I don’t know if you’ll play football again.’ That was the worst day of my life. We got back in the car, I remember Gibbo — the player liaison [officer] — drove, our club doctor was in the back and I just cried my eyes out and spoke to my missus.

“She said, ‘Keep strong and just wait till you see the surgeon,’ but I thought I was finished, aged 24. I’d bought a house the year before and remember thinking, ‘Seven hundred grand, I’ve got a mortgage, I’ve got bills, how am I ever going to live?’ ”

His mind swam with family history too. His grandad died of cardiac problems and his father, Winston, had just turned 30 when he had a heart attack while playing for a Sunday league team in Wolverhampton. Connor was there on the touchline aged three or four, though he does not recall it. “I was out for just four months — and two months involved waiting for the operation,” Goldson says. “I always say I was fortunate. It sounds horrific when you hear the word ‘heart’ but in terms of injuries there are many that put you out longer.”

 

Within three days at the end of May, Caleb turns three, it is Kayleigh’s 30th birthday and they are getting married in Cheshire. It will top off, he says, an amazing year. The future? He loves Rangers but there is an ambition he would like to fulfil. “My dream was always to play week in, week out in the Premier League. Whether that happens, time will tell but I think for any English player that’s the dream.

“Playing in Europe against really top teams has made me realise I am good enough to play at that level.” A leader, brave as they come, scores at set pieces, good at build-up play — and does not miss matches. Whenever he does leave Ibrox, there will certainly be interest.

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