Gazza the power Ranger

Stan Hey
Saturday 22 July 1995 23:02 BST
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ANYONE who sees the latest Batman film may notice a certain resemblance between Chris O'Donnell, the actor who plays Robin, and a former mask- wearing Boy Wonder in his own right, Paul Gascoigne. The similarity doesn't end there - with the fictional character rescued from peril and given residence at stately Wayne Manor, it offers an apt image for Gazza's latest, and possibly last, bid for redemption under the tutelage of the Rangers manager Walter Smith, who must hope that Ibrox Stadium, in Glasgow, will provide a safe but stimulating environment for England's wayward football genius.

The initial signs last Wednesday morning didn't look too encouraging. A pack of tabloid news hounds hung around the main entrance of Rangers' red-brick facade, while a posse of photographers answered the urgent trillings of their mobile phones and fanned out to circle the stadium. Gazza was back on the front page again, albeit for the minor act of impregnating his girlfriend Sheryl Kyle - "Gazza to be a Dadda" screamed the banner headline of the Sun.

As a scrum of teenage fans pressed their noses against the diamond-shaped windows in the huge wooden doors glimpsing Gascoigne in the panelled hole beyond - he'd missed training for a physio session - Smith and his squad returned from a work-out, to find that football was no longer on the agenda. But that, all too often, has been the case in Gazza's soap opera of a career.

For Smith, a hard but humorous man, it was an early lesson on what baggage his pounds 4.3m signing from the Italian club Lazio brings to Rangers. In the cool of the press room, Smith towelled off his sweating torso with his T-shirt before revealing that the lesson had started even earlier - at 12.40 that morning, when he'd been phoned at home by a tabloid reporter for his comments on the prospective addition to the Gascoigne entourage.

"I'd been fast asleep, and my first thought was that the bugger was accusing me of being the father!" Smith joked, trying to reconcile the tension generated when football becomes the territory for front-page scribblers. But with the news reporters excluded, he was soon back to what he talks best - football, although Gascoigne the player, not Gazza the dad, still dominated.

"The boy's fitter than I've ever seen him," was the preliminary assessment, after Gascoigne had played through two of the club's behind-closed-doors friendlies, at Stirling Albion and St Mirren, and in the last 20 minutes of the third, against Clyde, the previous evening. We had only Smith's word for this, because a bizarre ruling by the Scottish Football Association on the number of games allowed before the season had meant that Gascoigne's first three outings for Rangers had been denied to press and fans.

However, the news that Gascoigne had scored a goal in each of the first two matches had generated a crowd of over 500 trying to sneak a look into Clyde's Stadium from a nearby hill. Hype and an imposed secrecy had created a cocktail of frustrated expectation.

In a later conversation, Smith gave me his perspective on Gascoigne and this first week of his Ibrox career. "He's been on the front page virtually every day since he signed, but once we get playing all that will go away," he said, without crossing his fingers.

Smith was more cautious about Gascoigne's readiness for action, however, remembering the long road the 28-year-old has travelled since breaking his leg in April 1994. "His overall fitness is fine, because he's been cycling or working in the gym since January. What he hasn't got yet is match-fitness. His movement and his speed of reaction just haven't got that edge yet. It'll come - but it's going to take most of the pre-season games."

This point was borne out in Friday night's friendly against Brondby in Denmark, which Rangers won 2-1. Gascoigne played well, scored his third goal in four outings, but lasted just over the hour before being substituted. The game also confirmed Smith's hope of a key creative link - glimpsed in the Clyde match - between Gascoigne and last season's import from Italy, Brian Laudrup. "Of course it's too early to be totally confident, but it's one of the reasons I bought Paul, to try to gel with Laudrup, who was magnificent for us last year. I think they'll come together quite naturally because of the skill they've got."

Smith's priority, given that Rangers appear to be virtually unchallengeable in their domestic game - last season's Scottish title was their seventh in succession - is for them finally to punch their weight in the European Champions' League. Early knock-outs, to AEK Athens last year and to Levski Sofia in 1993, may not have been too damaging to one of the three richest clubs in Britain, but they sure as hell hurt its pride. With Rangers obliged to play the Cypriot team Famagusta in a preliminary round before the Scottish season begins on 26 August, Smith's urgency for warm-up games, and for Gascoigne to be at his best, is understandable.

"We had a very good, hard- working midfield last year, but it lacked the exceptional passing ability which Paul has. I want him to use that to control midfield, to exploit that bit more time which you get in European games. And I want goals from another area of the park, which I also believe he can deliver."

Smith is entitled to ask this of Gascoigne but the pounds 4.3m question is, can he do it? Laudrup, after two disappointing seasons with Fiorentina, is confident about his fellow "reject" from Italy. "Paul has a great deal of ability, and skill on the ball. I don't think it will take time for a class player like him to blend in with the team."

An eye-witness testament comes from the Clyde player George McLuskey. "Gascoigne certainly looks fit and can only get better with more games. He was making great runs into the box, and was a real handful to mark. When Laudrup and Gazza get going they'll be a deadly combination."

The question whether Gascoigne's legs can stand up to the challenge of Scottish football was answered by Walter Smith's rebuttal of the stereotype image - "the tackling is nowhere near as physical here as it is in England, but for Rangers, the level of commitment from opposing teams is always intense." So, on the field at least, the omens for Gascoigne seem good, and Smith's relationship with him seems promising. "Paul's attitude to football has always been good, as far as I can see." Smith met, and instantly liked, Gascoigne when they were both on holiday in Florida two years ago.

But much - maybe most - will depend on how well Gascoigne settles off the field. While the team goes through its pre-season agenda - two more games in Denmark, and then a tournament at Ibrox involving Sampdoria, Steaua Bucharest and Gazza's old club Spurs - he will be based at a luxury hotel on the shores of the beautiful Loch Lomond, albeit in the continuing company of his less-appealing five-bellied minder.

Beyond that is the prospect of a house in the Helensburgh area, where his team-mates Mark Hateley and Laudrup have happily settled, and ample opportunities for fishing and shooting. Whether his girlfriend joins him will no doubt prove to be a fertile narrative for the Glasgow papers, whose number is swollen by Scottish editions of all the national tabloids. And that may provide the sternest challenge to Gascoigne's new beginning.

For this concentration of media in a provincial city can seem almost to replicate the newspaper rivalry of Chicago in the 1920s. It used to be said that in Jim Baxter's days at Rangers, news of his first drink of an evening would be phoned through to one paper, and news of his last to the morning edition.

In Italy, apart from his injuries and his weight problems, Gascoigne's scuffles with the media - literally in the case of one photographer - did most to undermine the esteem with which the Lazio club and its fans first held him. Rangers, and Glasgow, are more sophisticated and forgiving institutions now, but Gascoigne's eccentric demeanour - the blond rinse being the latest manifestation - always invites prurience.

Smith remains confident that Gascoigne can cope with it - "It's been over-the-top this last week. Once the fans actually see him play football, it will calm down. That's all they really care about up here."

Gascoigne is owed some luck and goodwill after his injuries of the past two years had seemed to turn him into a one-man national lottery. We've had to make do with mere glimpses of the football that moved him and us to tears but the hope must be, for Rangers and England, that the Boy Wonder can become a Man before it's too late.

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