Andy Carroll has admitted he never intended to leave Newcastle United and thought he would be at the club forever.
So Foot have an interview with the striker today in which he details his career and admits he had planned for it all to be spent with his boyhood club.
Carroll is currently playing for Bordeaux in the fourth tier of French football after stepping down a division in the summer to help the revival of the club.
He’s enjoying life at the French side and has been a regular in the press since the summer explaining why he made the move; how much he’s loving football again at 35-year-old and talking about his career to date.
That career has certainly been an interesting one so far, starting at Newcastle before moves to Liverpool, West Ham, Reading, West Bromwich Albion, Amiens and then Bordeaux.
He was a product of Newcastle’s youth set up and went on to star in the first team making 134 appearances for the club, scoring 34 goals and registering 26 assists in that time.
That came to an end in January 2011 when Liverpool paid €41m to sign him at the end of the winter transfer window following Fernando Torres’ departure to Chelsea.
It was a move that never worked out for the striker, and he admits he had never intended to leave the North East.
“When I first started at Newcastle, I remember living in my city, surrounded by my friends, my family, smiling, happy, enjoying football. For me, it was going to last forever. It was my life,” he said.
“Obviously, it didn’t happen like that. I ended up moving but now, being here, in Bordeaux, I feel that way again. I just feel good about myself, like I did back then.
“It’s something I had taken for granted a bit at the time. It was only after leaving Newcastle that I realised what professional football was really about… Of the rest of my career, I don’t remember much, to be honest.
“I was happy, I had just bought a house in Newcastle, and then suddenly my whole life changed. At the time, football was a game for me. After that day, it became a business, a job. Before, I played football, after, I went to the office. It’s not really the story I had dreamed of.”