IF YOU WERE going off isolated screenshots and incorrect AI summaries of quotes James McClean made about therapy in his interview with the Sunday Independent at the weekend you might expect his autobiography to be a kind of macho manifesto.
Sorry to disappoint you.
By the end of The Walls, written with Daniel McDonnell, you will have as much a sense of despair for the Republic of Ireland centurion’s future without football as some of those people closest to him whose voices add an important layer of context to where he is at in this current point in his life.
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The Walls is out now and encapsulates so many elements of this troubled, determined, angry, vulnerable and generous man.
He will soon be a former professional footballer.
He may well become a novelty boxer.
And yet it’s in the chapter ‘Who Am I?’ that McClean opens up on who he thought he was as a younger man. He had a different surname for the first eight years of his life. He also lived with his grandmother away from his mother.
As he got older and returned to Creggan with his family he had other kids and adults shouting at him on the street that the man who was raising him – Waxy – was not his biological father.
His mother had been in a previous relationship, one that was violent. McClean’s dad left for Belfast and when he returned to Derry he was one of the local alcoholics. When he questioned his mother about it he was told to pay no attention.
The truth eventually came out but it was not discussed much more than that.
He would see the man, who he refused to acknowledge, prone on the streets, laying against shutters in a stupor. McClean felt nothing. It was the same after he died.
The family was split on developing relationships with the other side of this family. McClean wasn’t going to engage. The loyalty to the man who raised him and his mother was, and is, powerful.
His willingness to open up about vulnerabilities extends from revealing he could not use a knife and fork when he joined Northern Ireland for U-19 duty, to a poignant reflection that he was not a late developer in football, it was his personality that was late to develop and that social situations intimidated him.
That would remain with him and an autism diagnosis later in life would provide more clarity.
This is a book that ticks so many boxes for any football autobiography yet doesn’t feel like its doing so with a quick flick of the pen. You get everything from McClean, or at least as much as he’s able to give.
There is deep-rooted trauma and emotions that remain buried. Or at least those closest to him believe so. McClean’s comments to the Sunday Independent that seeking therapy is a sign of weakness for a man are stronger and more unpalatable than any reflections on the matter in the book.
But when you don’t take them in isolation and judge them in the context of his life they don’t feel anywhere near as resentful. Instead you feel a degree of empathy.
He went to anger management as a player in England and spoke to a sports psychologist on Ireland duty. He insisted he couldn’t see the benefits. “If it’s not broke don’t fix it,” he says at one point. Only for his wife, Erin, to reply “but you are broken.”
That passage knocks you for six towards the end, when it also becomes clear that McClean might just be happy never to leave his home again. He speaks about how the controversy regarding the poppy which followed him for almost all of his time in British football change him completely as a person.
You at least get to see both of these people. This is a football book that will more than adequately satisfy the salacious desires of the fan who wants to know how much money he earned and how much money he spent throughout his career.
Some of the figures are jaw dropping. Some of the purchases, like a Harley-Davidson that became an ornament in a conservatory, hilarious.
At one stage at Sunderland he was taking home over £30,000 per week yet had no heating in his house and filled his bath with dirty football boots. The place was called “The Cave.”
He takes aim at those who he feels deserve it, not to mention those he just happens to come across scrolling online. Former Stoke City boss Michael O’Neill is one casualty, so too Stephen Kenny from their time with Ireland, although the voices of Erin and best friend/agent Graham Barrett provide a revealing, contrasting perspective.
There it talk about death threats, petrol bombs, The Two Martins (McGuinness and O’Neill), doping in the Premier League, body dysphoria, a United Ireland and his love of Manchester United.
Wigan and Wrexham bring an element of joy to his latter days in the EFL yet, as it so often does in football, the ending can be painful for different reasons.
A return to Derry offered hope, but even that is quickly extinguished and in this fast-paced yet considered piece of work, you are stopped in your tracks again near the end when McClean states bluntly that “I hate having to deal with people more than ever… that’s why we need to get our house sorted so I never have to leave it.”
It feels like he is trapped and he probably doesn’t think that is a bad thing right now.
James McClean book 'The Walls' makes you worry about the man trapped inside
IF YOU WERE going off isolated screenshots and incorrect AI summaries of quotes James McClean made about therapy in his interview with the Sunday Independent at the weekend you might expect his autobiography to be a kind of macho manifesto.
Sorry to disappoint you.
By the end of The Walls, written with Daniel McDonnell, you will have as much a sense of despair for the Republic of Ireland centurion’s future without football as some of those people closest to him whose voices add an important layer of context to where he is at in this current point in his life.
The Walls is out now and encapsulates so many elements of this troubled, determined, angry, vulnerable and generous man.
He will soon be a former professional footballer.
He may well become a novelty boxer.
And yet it’s in the chapter ‘Who Am I?’ that McClean opens up on who he thought he was as a younger man. He had a different surname for the first eight years of his life. He also lived with his grandmother away from his mother.
As he got older and returned to Creggan with his family he had other kids and adults shouting at him on the street that the man who was raising him – Waxy – was not his biological father.
His mother had been in a previous relationship, one that was violent. McClean’s dad left for Belfast and when he returned to Derry he was one of the local alcoholics. When he questioned his mother about it he was told to pay no attention.
The truth eventually came out but it was not discussed much more than that.
He would see the man, who he refused to acknowledge, prone on the streets, laying against shutters in a stupor. McClean felt nothing. It was the same after he died.
The family was split on developing relationships with the other side of this family. McClean wasn’t going to engage. The loyalty to the man who raised him and his mother was, and is, powerful.
His willingness to open up about vulnerabilities extends from revealing he could not use a knife and fork when he joined Northern Ireland for U-19 duty, to a poignant reflection that he was not a late developer in football, it was his personality that was late to develop and that social situations intimidated him.
That would remain with him and an autism diagnosis later in life would provide more clarity.
This is a book that ticks so many boxes for any football autobiography yet doesn’t feel like its doing so with a quick flick of the pen. You get everything from McClean, or at least as much as he’s able to give.
There is deep-rooted trauma and emotions that remain buried. Or at least those closest to him believe so. McClean’s comments to the Sunday Independent that seeking therapy is a sign of weakness for a man are stronger and more unpalatable than any reflections on the matter in the book.
But when you don’t take them in isolation and judge them in the context of his life they don’t feel anywhere near as resentful. Instead you feel a degree of empathy.
He went to anger management as a player in England and spoke to a sports psychologist on Ireland duty. He insisted he couldn’t see the benefits. “If it’s not broke don’t fix it,” he says at one point. Only for his wife, Erin, to reply “but you are broken.”
That passage knocks you for six towards the end, when it also becomes clear that McClean might just be happy never to leave his home again. He speaks about how the controversy regarding the poppy which followed him for almost all of his time in British football change him completely as a person.
You at least get to see both of these people. This is a football book that will more than adequately satisfy the salacious desires of the fan who wants to know how much money he earned and how much money he spent throughout his career.
Some of the figures are jaw dropping. Some of the purchases, like a Harley-Davidson that became an ornament in a conservatory, hilarious.
At one stage at Sunderland he was taking home over £30,000 per week yet had no heating in his house and filled his bath with dirty football boots. The place was called “The Cave.”
He takes aim at those who he feels deserve it, not to mention those he just happens to come across scrolling online. Former Stoke City boss Michael O’Neill is one casualty, so too Stephen Kenny from their time with Ireland, although the voices of Erin and best friend/agent Graham Barrett provide a revealing, contrasting perspective.
There it talk about death threats, petrol bombs, The Two Martins (McGuinness and O’Neill), doping in the Premier League, body dysphoria, a United Ireland and his love of Manchester United.
Wigan and Wrexham bring an element of joy to his latter days in the EFL yet, as it so often does in football, the ending can be painful for different reasons.
A return to Derry offered hope, but even that is quickly extinguished and in this fast-paced yet considered piece of work, you are stopped in your tracks again near the end when McClean states bluntly that “I hate having to deal with people more than ever… that’s why we need to get our house sorted so I never have to leave it.”
It feels like he is trapped and he probably doesn’t think that is a bad thing right now.
The Walls is out now.
James McClean October Review Soccer