Stephen Caulker insists he enjoyed his six months at Dundee, but admits he can’t remember some parts.
Having played for England’s top teams at Tottenham Hotspur, Swansea City, Cardiff City, Queens Park Rangers, Southampton and Liverpool, it was a surprise when the centre-half turned up at Dens Park in February 2018. was.
He scored on his debut and went on to make 17 appearances, performing well enough to have a bid from Norwegian side Rosenborg rejected.
However, he said, “I had lost myself by the time I was 25 or 26,” about his struggles with gambling and alcohol addiction.
“Coming from Tottenham and Liverpool, I felt rejected at the top level,” he said on the BBC podcast Sacked in the Morning.
“I needed to find that confidence because I was facing the challenge of thinking I wasn’t good enough.”
Before his move to Dundee, Caulker disclosed his mental health problems, giving candid interviews about his dissipated fortune and drinking to numb the humiliation of the loss.
“It made me feel awkward in the dressing room and it made me feel awkward when talking to potential clubs. They were worried about whether they could trust me,” he says.
“I drink, I’ll pass out. Eight times out of 10 the alcohol was fine, but there was an incident in Dundee when I didn’t know what was going on.
“I got hooked on roulette as a teenager using a bookmaker’s ‘crack machine’. Once you bet your first £1, the world started spinning.”
“By the time I was 19, I was in rehab. You don’t stop until the money’s gone. I wasn’t making crazy amounts of money but to become a Premier League footballer without a penny is pretty crazy.”
“Gambling led to drinking. It’s a way of dealing with shame, and you drink to block it out.”
Pirlo is the worst manager, Mackay is the best…
Caulker turned down options for another season at Dundee and trained on his own for five months before Turkish club Alanyaspor took an opportunity.
“I think people were nervous about what they were signing,” he says. “I knew madness was behind me, but I had to prove it.”
He spent three seasons with Alanyaspor and then also played for two other Super League teams.
And that would be Caulker’s worst manager choice since he was at Fatih Karagmurk during Andrea Pirlo’s ill-fated tenure.
“It was just an anticlimax,” he says. “One of the best players to ever play for us, a really cool guy, but with nothing to offer as a manager.
“But he’s still learning, he’s open-minded, and I’m sure he’ll get better and better.”
Coleker played under Jurgen Klopp, Brendan Rodgers and Francesco Farioli, but his fondest memory was working with Malky Mackay at Cardiff.
“I was very anxious at Spurs and it was pretty upsetting to leave at 21 after playing 28 games that season,” he says.
“When I went to Cardiff I wasn’t feeling too great but Malky put his arm around me and made me feel good about myself.
“He made me captain when Craig Bellamy and Mark Hudson weren’t playing, which was an incredible show of trust.”
Language barrier and working from home as a manager for the first time
Earlier this year, Karkar began taking his first steps into management after a chance meeting on holiday.
He became player-manager of fifth-tier Málaga City before the venture was halted prematurely due to visa issues.
“I was in Spain, talking to the academy, and a number of things led me to become a first-team coach straight away,” he explains.
“I had just turned 32 and was stuck in a relegation battle with poor Spanish.
“But maybe the language barrier was a positive, especially when I was frustrated. When things are translated, it gives me more time to think about what I’m trying to say.
“It’s really hard to play both roles, but it’s fun. As a player, you become friends with everyone in the dressing room to some degree. As a manager, you have to maintain that distance.”
Mr Caulker, who was forced to return to England, initially tried to continue working remotely, but it became clear that working from home as a manager was not possible.
From a Dublin hangover to a Liverpool debut
Caulker has been in contact with “a number of non-league clubs” about continuing with his coaching career, but is not ready to retire just yet as he wants to continue playing for Sierra Leone.
And he knows that opportunities can come when you least expect it.
After all, the man was in a Dublin hotel recovering from a night out, feeling dejected at his lack of prominence at Southampton, when he got a call from his agent informing him that Liverpool wanted to sign him.
“I was lying there thinking, ‘What have I just done?’ and I don’t want to answer that,” he laughs.
“He told me Liverpool had made an offer, to go home.
“Southampton v Liverpool was probably the worst game of my career. We lost 6-1 and I thought: ‘This is meaningless’.”
“A few days later I will be making my debut against Arsenal!”
