By Myles Palmer
I never gave up hope that Sol Campbell would sign for Arsenal, even after Inter Milan claimed last Saturday that he was theirs.
Sol, 26, has signed a four-year contract.He is the first player Arsenal have signed on a Bosman and he could become England’s captain in the 2002 World Cup.
Signing Sol on a free is a much bigger coup than Leeds buying Rio Ferdinand for £18 million.
I always thought Sol wanted to stay in London. I always thought he didn’t have the bottle to play abroad.
Sol peaked in Le Tournoi in 1997 when he played a blinder against Ronaldo of Brazil, when Ronaldo was awesomely fast and strong.
One on one, Sol can be a magnificent gladiator, a superb athlete. Reading the game, he sometimes struggles.
But he can improve hugely and quickly under Arsene Wenger’s guidance.He has never played for a serious,well-organised, positive, competitive,deeply ambitious, passionate football club, so that will raise his game overnight.
Wenger’s intense, fast, stopwatch-driven training routines will sharpen Sol up and burn a few kilos off him.
Sol’s other big quality, after his athleticism, is his calm temperament.He will need that if Spurs nutters aim flak at him.
He lives in an apartment at London Bridge, I’m told.Let’s hope he has good security, just in case some idiot takes a pop at him.
Sol should watch himself for the next couple of months, because a few Spurs fans might be very, very silly about this.
When George Graham took over at Spurs his son Danny was having a quiet game of pool when some nutter came in and banged him over the head with a pool cue.
Sol should settle in quickly.He already knows Seaman, Adams and Keown. He knows Bergkamp because he has kicked him, and been kicked by him, often enough. He has a lot in common wih Ashley Cole.
He knows Thierry Henry because he watched the Bayern -Valencia final with him in a London hotel.Thierry is an easy-going character, as is Robert Pires, so they will get on well.
It’s an exciting time for him, after four years of being in the doldrums, playing for a club that was going nowhere.For the past four years Sol Campbell has been a piano-shifter, carrying the team on his back week after week.
By joining Arsenal he has shown that is taking his career seriously again. Good luck to him. He will not regret this move for a minute.
If Richard Wright signs this week that will be three English players Wenger has signed this summer, plus an English-speaking Dutchman who has played in Scotland for three years.
Jeffers, Van Bronckhorst,Campbell and Wright should all be able to acclimatise easily to life at Shenley and Highbury.
Crucially, Wright and Campbell are spinal players.That is overdue because most of Wenger’s signings have been wingers, full backs, inside forwards.
In five years before this week only Vieira has been a spinal signing. It’s the spinal players that make the difference, like Hyypia did at Liverpool.
There are three or four spinal players in every great team : the keeper, the centreback, the anchorman and, sometimes, the centre forward.Players that the rest of the skelton hangs on.
I wonder what Alex Ferguson thinks of Arsenal’s capture of Sol Campbell, a player he almost signed two years ago for £17 million.
Alex might be fizzing mad today.Let’s hope so!
3rd July 2001.