Sometimes we meet people we really respect. Our parents, maybe a couple of teachers and lecturers along the way, or perhaps someone at work. When around these people we’re always on our best behaviour, trying to make the right impression and trying to learn from them and the way they are.
These are people we admire, and, to an extent, want to be like. I used to work for one of the country’s largest market research agencies, and the deputy MD sat in our area. He was a nice man, a bright man, and a man who set a good example in any way you wanted to look. He did the right thing.
There was one year when I’d had a rough time at work, 2001 I think. My boss had noticed a few things I didn’t do very well. These were all legitimate issues and in the end I benefitted from her bringing them to my attention, but equally, being new in the industry, I felt she could’ve been a bit more constructive sometimes. It felt like a constant belittling and my confidence, never high in the first place, just disappeared.
It was a frighteningly low ebb: I stopped listening to music on the way to work because I thought maybe it was affecting my brain somehow; for the same reason I even stopped reading on my commute. In retrospect this seems mad, but I was making lots of mistakes (or was being told I was), they weren’t being tolerated, I and couldn’t understand why all this was happening. I thought maybe my brain was being messed up by all the other things I was interested in, that somehow there wasn’t enough room in there for these and for work. Stupid, yeah, but I didn’t know any better.
I remember that year my appraisal came around and I’d expected something terrible, but the deputy MD had contributed and said something to the effect of “Richard’s a bright lad and shouldn’t be so hard on himself”. That was it. Doesn’t sound like much, but given my extraordinary crisis of confidence it was probably the best thing I could’ve heard, doubly so because it came from the one person in the company I really respected. Suddenly I had a bit of belief. I respected my boss for what she could do at work, but there was nothing in her personality that I wanted in mine. The deputy MD though… I really wanted to be like him.
You get the impression that Brian McBride is the sort of person who could make a difference to younger players, to his teammates. Someone who just gets it, who does the right thing under all circumstances, who treats people well, and who is respected by anyone he’s ever played with. You hear anecdotes: Jimmy Bullard said that he’d play a practical joke on anyone but McBride; just last week we heard on TiFF that a young player had decided to come to Fulham (despite other choices) because of how welcome McBride had made him feel when he visited; countless fans have bumped into McBride and all are glowing in their praise; he’s class.
On the pitch he brought that presence to our forward line. He was a leader. You didn’t see McBride talking to the referee much, and if he did you knew he was probably right. And he was greater than the sum of his parts: he wasn’t quick but he was generally where he had to be; if a ball was there to be won he won it, or gave everything trying; he scored goals, good ones too.
How important he must have been to the squad during that precarious escape. Roy Hodgson must’ve been delighted to have such a man out there fighting for his team. Now he’s leaving. It’s tempting to wish we had a 25 year old McBride here, to wonder how good he might have been given a different footballing education, but each of us is what we are because of the roads we’ve travelled, and McBride became McBride by taking the route he did. We are very lucky that this journey included Fulham, and wish him well in whatever’s next. A great Fulham player.
