The ex-goalkeeper and current pundit talks through a life and times, and what ‘made him’ as a goalkeeper…
Header Image: via West Ham United
You can take the man out of the Caribbean but you can’t take the Caribbean out of the man, so the adapted (North American) saying goes.
Shaka Hislop’s 15-year career was almost played out entirely in England. He was born in Hackney, East London but spent most of his formative years in the place that he calls home, Trinidad and Tobago. The story of the former Reading, Newcastle, Portsmouth and West Ham goalkeeper starts there.
“The love story is that I played outfield growing up in Trinidad and Tobago, and my dad took me for trials. They were trying to put together a national under-12 team to play a couple of friendlies against Venezuela. I actually left home as a striker, so to speak, having never played in goal before.”
The tale of the goalkeeper that started elsewhere on the lushest part of the outfield feels ever more familiar. Sometimes, the prism to talent spot came from the base look at a physique. There was nothing wrong with trusted traditional methods this time.
“As I'm walking up, the coach - I still remember his name, Basil Smith, everybody calls him Barney = said 'Right, you're the tallest, you're the goalie', simple as that! And I went on a series of trials for my zonal team, made the East Zone team as a goalkeeper, made the national team as a goalkeeper. And right there I guess my path was charted,” says the amicable 6 foot 4 inch veteran.
The next pathway was to try and get on the well-travelled soccer scholarship to the United States in the days before the advent of the Major Soccer League. Hislop wound up at Howard University in Washington D.C. to study mechanical engineering. That may be a very useful education in the design of the 55-year-old’s forthcoming glove. Watch this space. After all, he was an intern at NASA too.
Certainly, Hislop has a lot to thank the United States for in his former and current life as a respected commentator on ESPN.
He was drafted by the Baltimore Blast and it just so happens that on the cusp of his ‘92 graduation, he went on tour with them to England. What do you know, but their regular No. 1 gets called up to the national team and the young Shaka takes the gloves for two games against an Aston Villa side that featured Dwight Yorke. A Reading scout is watching and they like what they see.
He was now in the big ball game, even if it was a bit early for someone not used to the rigours of English winters. “I get my chance, I start playing, I start quite well so because I get that chance, I'm offered a two year contract, as I mentioned £400 a week to start with. And I start off doing quite well, but probably about seven or eight games in it takes a toll. And so it's a part of the learning process, I guess, which I recognize now.”
Adrenalin can only get you so far, but when Hislop thought of pulling the plug, his father told him to stick it out and then reassess.
“I said to my dad, I'm really not enjoying this and I've had enough I'm going to pack it in you know. And my dad's advice was simple. You don't renege on a contract. You know, you honour every contract that you sign, you sign two years, you go back, you see it out, if things still feel this way in a year's time you come back and you go back to school and do your masters in engineering.”
That trip back home in the summer of ‘93 would change Hislop’s direction away from the football pitch, too. “That same summer, I also proposed to my wife”, he recalls, grinning. In fact, he tells me, our interview was scheduled precisely for today because yesterday marked his 29th wedding anniversary.
Though Hilsop would go on to play for some 15 years, his educational endeavours never left him. The warm-natured former number one joked about how “in engineering, 50% of what I learned was absolutely obsolete. So I probably came out knowing considerably less than when I went in.
That same thirst to learn stayed with him into retirement. Hislop got an Executive MBA from his alma mater, Howard University, upon finishing his playing career.
That sense of completion served Hislop well when Reading found themselves shorn of two goalkeepers on the eve of the 1993 season. His presence was requested at manager Mark McGhee’s office – an ominous or positive sign in equal measure sometimes. It was the latter albeit delivered with all the panache of a hoofed goal kick.
“Reading didn't have much money and the message was kind of…well…we couldn't afford anybody else. So you're in. So that was it,” the ex-’keeper recalls (are you ever really an ‘ex-goalkeeper?). Sometimes that’s the luck you need. He had less time to prepare for his 2006 World Cup debut when Trinidad and Tobago’s number one pulled out in the warm-up before the match against Sweden. Hilsop’s career is littered with examples of being in the right place at the right time.
The sense of purpose engendered by being the clear number one helped the then-24-year-old shine. He played every game in the old Second Division as Reading were promoted as champions. They were within a whisker of making it to the Premier League (or the Premiership as it was known) via the play-off final when 2-0 up against Bolton in 1994/95. Hislop was voted player of the campaign. “Shaka, Shaka, what’s the score,” was the chant.
“I’d say in terms of a healthy goalkeeping department, you have to know who's the number one. You also have to have a number two who's ready to step in, who trains as though he's going to step in on the weekend, but also knows that his job is to get the best out of the number one, both in training and your own preparation.”
This didn’t happen when switching to Newcastle in 1995 under Kevin Keegan. The messaging was very much that the club had two number ones, vacillating between himself and the late Pavel Srnicek. “I don't think that served either Pavel or me any good because you start to play within yourself, you know, you only do what's safe, as opposed to what you think is right,” Hislop muses.
Nevertheless, the former England Under-21 international thoroughly enjoyed his time with the Geordies as he struck an excellent relationship with Shay Given who had come in and established that hierarchy of being king of the ‘keepers. It would be pretty hard to imagine this cool and laid-back shot-stopper having a kind of ‘Lehmann/Almunia’ relationship with anyone.
That aspect of culture is an abstract that oscillates with time. When our conversation moved on to the differences between football ‘back in the day’, and now, there are a few stark differences - but also, at a deeper level, a lot of continuity.
“Dressing room culture has changed in much the same way as in along similar lines, as general culture has changed. The advent of mobile phones has changed the way people go about their social lives outside of football. So I think there's far more care about what you do, how you act, how you behave.
“Certainly back when I was playing, there was a far bigger drinking culture around the game, I think that has moved on primarily because of a better understanding of nutritional science. Going out as a team, and drinking together as a team was more about building bonds with the teammates. Now, I guess players do that differently.
“But some of the smaller details for me, I don't think have changed that,” he admits.
“You're a group of young men enjoying what you're doing and enjoying the trappings of chasing boyhood dreams. The one thing I think that players miss most is that kind of camaraderie, the banter within a dressing room”.
One continuity that does disturb Hislop is the racism that still infects the game. Show Racism the Red Card was in part funded by him when it was established in 1996. One of the famous founding stories goes that Hislop was filling his car at a petrol station when a group of youths started shouting racial abuse. When they realised who he was, the aggravation turned to autograph-hunting.
Hislop’s take on things has somewhat changed organically in recent months. After facing racial abuse, Real Madrid’s Vinicius Jr. altered the narrative.
“Vinicius Jr. said he's not a victim of racism. I think he said that he was not a victim of racism but the one who makes racists come out of their shell”, recalls Hislop. I can't remember the exact quote, but I thought that was an incredible way to view it, you know, and I've been subjected to racist abuse myself, and I wish I'd had that kind of head on my shoulders at the time.”
Hislop subsequently now tells goalkeepers of colour something more specific after the Real Madrid striker spoke out. “The abuse isn't because of the colour of your skin. It's because of their feelings, their questioning of their identity or lack of it.”
As for the end game, a move back to the States at FC Dallas in 2006 signalled what he knew was already coming at the age of 37. When the body can’t do what is beyond the bread and butter, it is time to accept the best before date has passed.
“You're just not far off where you once were. You would have odd days where you were great. And that for me was the frustrating part, trying to get back or trying to believe that, you know, I could still do certain things or I should be able to do them more consistently”, Hislop says of the final months of his career.
His encouragement is clear in the final passages of our discussion. Modest as always, the respected broadcaster insists that he wasn’t hugely talented. “I hope I can also be an example to other black kids who kind of look at football from far away. I don't see myself as extraordinary in any way. I just had a set of tools and worked hard to get the best out of them.”
He signs off with a casual five words, looking back on his achievements and career as a whole: “I’m pretty easy to satisfy.”
Well, they do say that Trinidad and Tobago is one of the happiest countries in the world…
