April 12, 1982, and the 20-year-old Paul Canoville prepares to make his Chelsea debut as a late substitute at Selhurst Park. He warms up along the touchline in front of the visiting fans, who greet their new winger. “Sit down you black c**t! You f***ing wog!” A banana lands near him. He takes off his tracksuit, crosses the white line. “We don’t want the n****r, we don’t want the n****r, la la la laaa.”

When Canoville visits Stamford Bridge now, he is greeted warmly and thanked for being a pioneer: Chelsea’s first black player. The shift in attitude delights him, the respect is compensation for suffering that remains raw. Canoville had not realised it when he joined the club, but a section of their support had links to far-right organisations and racial tension was rife in the capital at large.

“I came in from Fulham Broadway station to games, walking up to the club and there is the National Front giving out leaflets, and that guy must be one of the boys blasting me when I’m on the pitch,” he said. When line-ups were announced and Canoville’s name was read out, he was booed. He would warm up at the last minute to reduce the venom. Chelsea’s players and staff were a blend of sympathy, ignorance and indifference.

“Most of the boys from London had mixed with ethnic minorities but the boys from the country hadn’t and they didn’t understand my culture at all,” Canoville said. “The questions they asked!” The things they said. “ ‘Black people can’t swim, they’re too heavy, they sink.’ Pardon me? I expected a bit more from Chelsea, to be honest. I don’t know, should I have complained, said something that made them react? Because I didn’t say anything they just left it as it is.”

Canoville’s debut forms the prologue of his memoir, Black and Blue. It was recently named Best Autobiography at the British Sports Book Awards and it is quite a read. “There’s always somebody worse off than you,” he said, looking healthy and relaxed in the bar of a London hotel. It’s good that he can think so.

Canoville in a nutshell: a turbulent upbringing in West London as the son of Caribbean immigrants, delinquency and a spell in solitary confinement in a borstal. Making it as a winger with Chelsea but enduring vicious racism, then a career-ending injury in his mid-twenties. Descent into crack-cocaine addiction. Theft to feed the habit. Homelessness. The death of a baby. Cancer — twice. Rehab, remission and rebirth as a youth worker. It’s a wonder he ever found the time to become a successful DJ on the London club scene and to have 11 children with nine different women in the space of 16 years.

It’s the story of a chaotic existence, a victim of callous environments, his own deficiencies and sheer bad luck. The book is full of remarkable episodes. Canoville joined Chelsea from Hillingdon Borough, where for a time he played semi-professionally while living in an abandoned car.

“Obviously when you haven’t washed, that odour . . . it was great to go training because I knew I’d get a shower,” he said. “Living in Southall was hardcore enough — it was a case of you didn’t walk alone because you were in danger of being attacked.”

Back from the edge, Canoville has found purpose and direction. A couple of years ago he discovered a talent for connecting with kids. He is a teaching assistant at a school in Westminster and has formed a company, Senkaa, to work with troubled youngsters.

“I tell them how important school is, about my life, to follow your dreams but that life’s not only about football,” he said. “And I’m getting to them, I really am. I just want to make a difference. To make them decide to stop the gun crime, the knife crime, the drugs and find work, take opportunities and enjoy a better life.”

And because he played for Chelsea, even long ago, they listen. That is the power and reach of football. Canoville’s path from Selhurst Park to inner-city schools is a journey that shows the game as a force for exclusion and community, spite and beauty, inhumanity and compassion.

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