Goal oriented
Former England footballer Ian Walker, one of a number of international players to join big-spending Chinese Super League club Shanghai Shenhua, talks to Simon Parry about tackling life in the East
It was the day he found himself munching on a frog in the training ground canteen that former Tottenham Hotspur and England goalkeeper Ian Walker realised how shockingly different life with a Chinese football team might be.
"I didn't know what it was at first, so I had a bite," he says. "Then I asked, 'What's this?' and they said, 'Frog', and I said, 'Frog's legs?', and they said, 'No, whole frog.' I said, 'Right, I'm not having that.' I wasn't too pleased."
Of all the foreign stars to sign for big-spending Shanghai Shenhua, Walker - who left behind a sun lounger in Spain's Costa del Sol to become the team's goalkeeping coach in April - is arguably the most unlikely. A torchbearer for Britain's 1990s "lad culture", the 40-year-old Essex native had a glittering 13-year playing career, married a Page Three model (those who bare their breasts in British tabloid The Sun), drove a 7-Series BMW and lived in a £2.5 million (HK$30 million) mock-Tudor mansion in Cobham, Surrey.
Seemingly determined to live out every cliché of the working-class footballer millionaire, he was once linked to a television soap star then left his wife and daughter for another attractive young blonde, Samantha Thurman, who he met on a trip to Las Vegas.
So, after a roller-coaster life of glamour in London, Miami, where Thurman is from, and, most recently, Estepona in Spain, it is hardly surprising that Walker is suffering a touch of culture shock after moving to China - especially when it comes to sustenance.
"The worst thing is the food," he grimaces. "I haven't been served any dog yet. They tell me they don't do that anymore - but I did have a very suspicious burger once. One day, I was having a stroll around one of the shopping centres and I was hungry so I went into a restaurant for lunch. The special was chicken soup, and it was basically a chicken with its head sticking out of a pan of clear soup. It wasn't even cut up. It was just sitting there, looking up at me."
A few months after he was invited to take up the job by Shanghai Shenhua striker and former Bolton Wanderers teammate Nicolas Anelka, Walker's easy-going good humour has been tested by aspects of Chinese living other than the curious cuisine.