Steven Caldwell takes the road less travelled

But now it’s over. And in a city that pulsates to professional sports, Steven Caldwell is no longer a professional sportsman. These are heady days in Toronto. The city’s baseball team, the Blue Jays, are on the verge of ending a drought of biblical proportions by making it to the play-offs. They could well go all the way. Toronto FC, the club he was captain of until his final day, look similarly primed to keep things interesting past the regular season.

Never one to take a backward step on the field, Caldwell is striding forward off it. But not how most would expect. Younger brother Gary retired four months before him and took the well-travelled route – straight to the dug-out as Wigan Athletic manager. Steven, however, is taking a less worn path – to head office.

Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment own Toronto FC, they also own the NBA’s Raptors and the NHL’s Maple Leafs, both of whom play in the sprawling Air Canada Centre in the heart of downtown in Canada’s biggest city. That’s where you find Caldwell now, his desk on the fifth floor, high above the arena. His suit is as sharp as some strikers will claim his studs used to be. His business card declares him “Director of Corporate Development” and he is revelling in the next phase of his life.

“I’m working across all sports. I guess 70 per cent of my work is global partnerships, for now specifically TFC, but listening in and learning,” Caldwell said.

“I obviously expected to finish up and become a coach. It’s the only real path where you can move immediately into. So for them to think of me as capable of this role and capable of moving straight into it, it meant a lot. It surprised me a bit, because, look, I’ve no formal education in business. I left school reasonably young. It’s very very different to anything I’m used to.”

He only pitched up here on the shores of Lake Ontario two years ago, initially on loan – but Toronto and Caldwell have got each other from the get-go. They have been good to one another. He hopes they are only getting started.

“Pretty much from day one, it just happened for me. Toronto happened for me,” he says of the May 2013 switch from Birmingham City, when then manager Ryan Nelson persuaded him to postpone summer holidays and take a sampler taste of the place. “I consider it my home now and have absolutely no intention of leaving. My wife [Angela] loves it here and my two boys [Will, 8 and Robbie, 7] do too. The way of life and the quality of life here is incredible. I was lucky with Toronto.”

Not always lucky, however. Injuries nipped in and out of the picture as he settled into North America’s unique soccer scene before they finally brought the curtain down in March. A journey that began as a Stirling schoolboy, spent largely in the north-east, west and middle of England, ended in the less familiar surrounds of Columbus, Ohio. The second game of the Major League Soccer season would be his last.

Ironically, Caldwell had had an “unbelievable” pre-season. But taking part in collective contract negotiations on the eve of the campaign interrupted things. He rushed through the first game on a plastic pitch in Vancouver when he should have sat it out. No half-measures, remember.

“I felt like it was just maybe tendonitis in my achilles. So down to Columbus, played the first half and was sore at half time,” he explains. “Went to go out for the second half, never even made it. Jogged towards the pitch and pulled up. A sore one, you could say. Very sore. I had a scan and I had three tears in my calf, two good tears and a rupture.”

This injury felt different though. When the achilles went a few weeks later, it was all very different.

Ironically, Caldwell had had an “unbelievable” pre-season. But taking part in collective contract negotiations on the eve of the campaign interrupted things. He rushed through the first game on a plastic pitch in Vancouver when he should have sat it out. No half-measures, remember.

“I felt like it was just maybe tendonitis in my achilles. So down to Columbus, played the first half and was sore at half time,” he explains. “Went to go out for the second half, never even made it. Jogged towards the pitch and pulled up. A sore one, you could say. Very sore. I had a scan and I had three tears in my calf, two good tears and a rupture.”

This injury felt different though. When the achilles went a few weeks later, it was all very different.

“In my opinion people retire because they can’t make the mental sacrifices to be on the park,” he says. “Your legs obviously go but your legs go because upstairs you don’t make the sacrifices to keep your legs going.

“At 25, you might have done the same things and got away with it but at 35 you basically need to live like a monk. I felt like I was at a point in my life where I was thinking about the future, how I could stay in Canada first and foremost. I wanted what was best for my kids.

“Something that I had never done before in my career was take the needs of my family into consideration. That makes me sound pretty horrendous but it’s the reality. Now I did. And bang, that’s that five per cent gone. You won’t get it back. That five per cent is everything.”

A career that ended at half time also began there. Way back when. It was September 2000 and Bobby Robson, a manager no longer with us, summoned him into the dressing-rooms at Maine Road, a stadium no longer there. He had turned 20 but would be facing one of his teen idols as Newcastle United took on Manchester City.

“I remember it like yesterday. I know people say that but...it was incredible,” he says. “We’re at Maine Road. I’m on the bench. George Weah is playing for City, albeit not in the form that he had been when we all watched him on Sundays on Channel 4, running the length of Italian pitches and scoring wonder goals that maybe only [Lionel] Messi scores now. But it was still George bloody Weah.”

He bloody well shut him out. Alan Shearer grabbed a winner and he was off and running. He started the following Wednesday and scored in a League Cup victory over Bradford. St James’ Park took to him. Robson didn’t.

“It was an incredible team to make your way in football with,” he recalls. “To have Shay [Given] or Steve Harper behind me, Rob Lee, Gary Speed, Alan Shearer, Kevin Gallagher, Warren Barton. To learn off those guys and to see what it took.

“I never saw eye-to-eye with Bobby. I wanted to play every minute of every game. I felt like I could have had a better opportunity but football is a game of opinions. I was less secure in those days. I probably looked like a very confident lad outwards, but, and my mum and dad would still say I’m the same, I like when a manager understands me and loves me. Everyone wants that.”

He did play, intermittently. The following year Champions League duty brought him up against Christian Vieri, Hernan Crespo and Inter Milan’s weaponry. “Ridiculous” is how he recalls their talents. It brought him to the Nou Camp too. Memories aplenty. Games? Not so much. Intermittent play was not what he was after. Loan deals never sated him.

IN 2005, he swapped Bobby for Mick, Tyne for Wear. McCarthy steered Sunderland to a league championship with Caldwell a rock alongside Gary Breen in defence. “That season was one of my favourites,” he says. “To play in front of the fans when things are good, there’s no better area to play your football. We had a great group of 18 to 20 guys there. There was just some real men, nae bullshit, let’s tell it like it is and get on with winning.”

The top flight wasn’t so smooth and a year or so later, he was far from the first man to fall out with Roy Keane. He pitched up at Turf Moor and had a different reaction to most.

“When I first went to Burnley I just got a sense. A feeling. It’s not a place, with all due respect to it, where many people might say they arrive and get a good feeling but we were going somewhere,” recalls Caldwell.

“The sense of achievement of taking a team like that to the Premier League was like nothing else. Sunderland was amazing but it was like, yeah, we should be there. But Burnley? Our slogan that year was dare to dream and it really was so apt. The next season we beat Manchester United, we beat Chelsea, we beat Arsenal in the cup. If anyone turned up at Turf Moor and weren’t ready for a battle, they were done.”

Lots of highs. But there were lows too. There is no such joy in the tavern as upon the road thereto, says a wise man in Cormac McCarthy’s timeless classic, The Blood Meridian. Caldwell’s joys were found on the road to the Premier League. Once there – with Newcastle, Sunderland, Burnley, Wigan – he never quite stuck.

It doesn’t really bother him though. All part of the journey. Nor does the lack of international recognition that came his direction down the years. Twelve caps is a paltry total for a period when Scotland were not gifted with solid defenders.

“I think I was unlucky at times with Scotland. I think there was a certain snobbery about playing in Scotland at the time. Guys who played with Scottish clubs got caps that I was better than. I sit here and I’m bloody proud of those 12 caps I won,” says Caldwell, for whom a certain clutch of matches truly stand out.

“I think I was unlucky at times with Scotland. I think there was a certain snobbery about playing in Scotland at the time. Guys who played with Scottish clubs got caps that I was better than. I sit here and I’m bloody proud of those 12 caps I won,” says Caldwell, for whom a certain clutch of matches truly stand out.

“I’m especially proud and will be forever proud of the three or four I played with my brother,” Caldwell said. “I can’t ever really get across what that feels like, what that means for me, for him, for the two of us. It’s one of my greatest achievements in football.

“I got two late Scotland caps when I was playing for Wigan and I’m really, really proud of those. I felt like it was the start of this era that we’re in now. We had these young guys coming through – Steven Naismith, James Morrison, [James] McArthur. Kenny [Miller] was captain in that last game [against Northern Ireland in Dublin in 2011] and as he went off, he gave me the armband. It was another honour. Whatever the game, to have worn the Scottish armband, that was an incredible feeling.”

An honour to go with the rest. Steven Caldwell’s footballing life may have ended. But a new one is just beginning. He plans to live it to the fullest too. It would be wise not to expect any half measures.