“I’m never speaking to him again”: When Emile Heskey left Leicester City
Emile Heskey is a bona fide Leicester City legend, synonymous with the glorious O’Neill years. Here we take a look at his departure from the club, days after he helped Stan Collymore to a hat-trick in a tantalising glimpse of what might have been. Is it really 24 years ago?
Andrew Smith
The sale of Emile Heskey to Liverpool in March 2000 marked the end of the Martin O’Neill dream and the beginning of a terrifying decline for the club.
O’Neill created a team seemingly immune to Premier League relegation worries, secured two League Cup trophies and European football. Pretty much throughout his period in charge, the mercurial Irishman wanted a worthy strike partner to Emile Heskey. He made do with underrated veterans such as Ian Marshall, Steve Claridge and Tony Cottee. But he had no-one to match Heskey’s explosive talent.
As Leicester collected their second League Cup against Tranmere Rovers at Wembley, there were some speculative rumours that Heskey was to be sold to Liverpool. A Leicester habit of selling our best players, one that O’Neill had successfully begged the club to cease, couldn’t surely be back.
Enter Stan Collymore. The bad boy of football arrived to play under one of the strictest managers in the game. The footballing world was agog and suddenly the club was front page for drunken antics at a training camp in La Manga.
It was after La Manga and after the cup win that Collymore made his home debut against a decent Sunderland team (Phillips, Quinn, Kilbane). Paired with Heskey up front, the result was nothing less than sensational.
Heskey headed on a long ball which Collymore half-volleyed into the top corner from outside the box. Heskey used his lightning pace to score a second. Then Stan produced a bullet header from near the penalty spot before completing a hat-trick, tapping in a Heskey cross made after Emile once again outpaced the Mackems’ defence.
No club in their right mind would surrender the chance to see this strike partnership develop. Yet five days later Heskey was gone. Money once again speaking louder than footballing common sense.
Stan alone never looked as good again. An exasperated O’Neill left for Celtic at the end of the season. Peter Taylor replaced him and set about assembling one of the worst Premier League squads ever. Relegation. Administration, inevitably followed.
In truth, Heskey was never as good again either. Fame and England appearances followed, but the common misconception that a big striker can only be a back-to-goal target man was a gross misunderstanding of his skillset.
It was a huge privilege to have seen these massive talents tear Sunderland to pieces one Saturday afternoon in March 2000. But in truth, the club passed up a once-in-a-generation opportunity to take the club to another level. Sound familiar?
David Bevan
It was my first ever game in the Kop. I was 15 years old.
I’d been in practically every other part of Filbert Street before. Mainly the Double Decker but elsewhere too. It was different in those days. My dad got tickets where he could so we ended up all over the place.
In the old Main Stand, reading Mitty of the City while leaning against the white wall that ran the length of the pitch; then halfway up the Carling Stand, when Mark Morrison took his seat in the row behind dressed head to toe in white fur, surrounded by bodyguards; even in the corner of the North and East Stands, when Matt Le Tissier stuck his middle finger up in my direction.
But the Kop was something else. It’s where I’d wanted to be the whole time. My ticket was on the back row. Leicester City vs Sunderland.
These days, of course, if you could relive any home game you’d go for something like Sevilla. But for almost the entirety of the first decade of the 21st century, the answer would have been Sunderland.
Heskey and Collymore: it was a momentary glimpse of a completely different Leicester City. A completely unplayable Leicester City. And to watch it from the back row of the Kop was dreamlike.
The days I spent afterwards eagerly anticipating the next fixture, an away game against Wimbledon at Selhurst Park, stuck in my brain for what seemed like an eternity after that imagined future was taken away. I was devastated when Emile left.
I’ve never had any kind of proximity to any of our players. Met one or two very briefly - Neil Lennon, who was great; Muzzy Izzet, who was even better. I’ve never met Emile Heskey, but I have spoken to him once - eight years ago. I’d arranged through the media department at Bolton Wanderers to have a quick chat with him for The Unbelievables.
There was a tiny window that worked - Emile came off the training pitch at Bolton and straight onto the phone. I asked him about his debut at QPR, what he thought of Leicester’s 2016 side and, of course, about Sunderland at home.
“You always have that feeling that you might move on at some stage, especially if you carry on doing well,” he said. “That Sunderland game was special for me though because I got to play alongside Stan.”
“When I was younger I was told to watch Stan constantly. He was wonderful for Forest and Liverpool and to play alongside him was great. It was a big disappointment that we never got to play together for longer, but it was nice for that one game.”
Jack Holmes
I often think Heskey gets lost in the O'Neill era, but his sale began the end of the glory years. At his best he was an utterly sublime combination of pace and strength, a player who could hold off the most physical of centre-backs with his strength and then leave them chasing dust in an instant. O’Neill left in the summer just after and we all know the rest.
I found Emile's departure crushing.
5th March 2000 - my birthday and a day most famous for a stunning hat-trick from Stan Collymore. Finally we had a strike force that could really take us onto the next level. Emile ran the channels and did all the selfless work as he always did, but this time Collymore was there at his devastating best. It was a moment when I thought we might become something bigger.
5 days later, the unthinkable happens. Heskey joins Liverpool and it takes me by complete surprise. At the Sunderland game I sat alongside my dad, who enthused that the club might be going onto bigger and better things. Now he's at the centre of its demise and he hasn't told me a thing.
I was used to the interest in Emile. As his agent, my dad had a system at home. If the phone in his office rang after 6, I would answer it and relay the caller back to him. I'd fobbed off many a Premier League manager in my time, vividly remembering David O’Leary sounding particularly pissed off when I told him my dad wasn't in despite being a yard away. It had happened for years.
What I didn't anticipate was the lure of Liverpool, his boyhood club and the performance against Sunderland being the one that would make them offer up £11million.
Dad had been away for a few days and in the midst of the Easter holidays I spent my day productively... refreshing Teletext. Heskey joins Liverpool on page 301. I was distraught.
I would not stop crying. My mum didn't know what to do with me. Furious with my dad, I decided I'd had enough and announced I'd never speak to him again.
As I went downstairs, on my way to pastures new, my mum announced there was someone on the phone for me.
It was only bloody Emile.
Through the tears I listened as he told me this was his dream, he loved Leicester and he promised me he'd come back.
"All the best at Liverpool," I said.
What a player, what a bloke.
