I gravitated towards the couple of foreign lads at the club in my first spell at Chelsea and was called a homosexual. I gravitated towards the foreign lads at the club in my second spell and was called cosmopolitan. The funny thing about my life in football is that, later on, the game began to move towards me. I wasn’t an outsider any more. Old-schoolers like Chelsea captains Peter Nicholas and Graham Roberts, who had regarded me as a dork, a swot or a pretentious weirdo, didn’t hold sway any more. The men who ruled by intimidation and bullying were marginalised, and a culture that rewarded professionalism took hold.

When I arrived at Chelsea, there was nothing sophisticated about the place. It was staffed by tough, unyielding men who played hard, drank hard and then came to training. These guys did not eat pasta salads and florets of broccoli. They were not Kings Road dandies like Alan Hudson, Peter Osgood and the playboys of a previous generation. I was scared witless of them. Actually, it amazed me that they were professional footballers at all. Their work fitted into their lifestyle rather than the other way around. A centre half called John McNaught would arrive in the morning hungover and ragged or turn up late for reserve games. You could tell he had been out.

Anything went. The management did not solve the problems, either. Once, in training, we were sitting round in a circle talking something through as a team and I made a comment that angered Bobby Campbell, the manager. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. “You’re just the product of a German rape.” He didn’t know that my mother had died when I was 13, so he couldn’t know how deeply that hurt me. Roberts was captain at the time and it was his job to hand out players’ complimentary tickets before each match. The rule was that we each got five for friends and relatives. He only gave me two so I asked him about the rest and he said that he was taking them. I said I had people coming to watch because it was my debut and I needed all of them. He ushered me into the boot-room at Stamford Bridge. He said he was going to knock my block off. I said I still wanted my tickets. He gave them to me grudgingly and kicked lumps out of me in training.

But when I returned in 1997, his type had gone. There was no venom, nobody arriving at training half-pissed. Instead of Roberts or Nicholas, Gianfranco Zola was at the core of our team spirit. He was a very affectionate person and that affection was reciprocated. It was typical of Chelsea, though, that while we had sublime players like Franco we also had a dilapidated training ground at Harlington, with its London University groundsman and temperamental showers. Anyone could wander in and often did. One day, someone waltzed into the changing-rooms and nicked £25,000 in cash and watches.

Why Batty and I came to blows

In the latest extract from his autobiography, Graeme Le Saux reveals his embarrassment at an incident that left him ‘wanting to die’

BACKGROUND

• How slurs almost wrecked my career

• Le Saux: Beckham called me a poof

• Sinners to saints – how Chelsea changed

• Saux brave

• TheGame - Graeme Le Saux

Related Internet Links

• Read more book extracts

Later, when Claudio Ranieri had taken over and we were on the team coach on a long journey back from Old Trafford, we had all got so disillusioned with the state of the training ground that we talked about what could be done to improve things. It had got to the point where you had to turn the bath taps on just to lower the temperature below scalding in the showers. The pitches were rutted and it took five or six of us to lug the iron-framed goalposts out each day. So we started making suggestions.

Franco had already bought a defensive wall out of his own pocket so he could practise his free kicks at the end of training. He was saying now that he also wanted to buy some lightweight aluminium goals so we didn’t have to go through the daily weightlifting ritual. I said that squad members should chip in £100 each because it wasn’t fair that Franco footed the whole bill and then people started weighing in with other proposals. Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink, who had just joined, suggested we should pay a groundsman’s salary for a year so that we had a guy to look after our pitches. He said if we all put in £1,000, it should cover it. Someone else said that if we put an extra £500 up, we could get the showers retiled because people had started to cut their feet on the jagged edges. Marcel Desailly added that if we put in another few hundred quid we could get a jacuzzi. Then Eidur Gudjohnsen piped up.

“F*** it,” he said, “why don’t we put in £100,000 each and buy Ronaldo.” I used to tease Franco about his image, the White Knight of Stamford Bridge, adored by all.

People could not imagine him being anything other than honest and truthful and the epitome of good sportsmanship, but I knew different. One day in training, we were all-square in a five-a-side game and Franco and I were running for a ball that went out of play. I turned around to shout something to one of my teammates and when I looked back, Franco had retrieved the ball and was curling in the winner. He was adamant that the ball was live and when I disputed it, the guys looked at me as if I was questioning the word of a saint.

“Franco,” I said, “you’re a cheating, low-down Sardinian git. When I write my book, I’m going to tell the truth about you and let everyone know what a sneaky, horrible little man you are.” “That’s fine,” Franco said. “When I write my book, I’m going to say that you look at me in the showers.”