In life as in football, there are no guarantees.
But when Newcastle United take on Manchester United at St James’ Park tomorrow evening, you can just about guarantee one thing.
At some point during the 90 minutes, all the way from the dizzy heights of the away end in Level 7, a familiar chorus will echo around the stadium.
“Cheer up Alan Shearer, oh what can it mean, to a sad Geordie b******, and a s*** football te-eeam.”
It’s almost exactly twenty years since Alan Shearer last kicked a football as a professional. It’s almost twenty years to the day since he last played against Man United, with his final outing at Old Trafford coming in a 2-0 defeat on March 12th, 2006.
Yet despite the ever-growing passage of time, despite everything Man United have won, despite the hordes of world-class players who have graced Old Trafford, it seems Man U fans can’t seem to get over ‘the one that got away’.
I’m coming home, Newcastle.
Shearer joined Newcastle United in the summer of 1996 for a world record fee of £15 million.
The Gosforth-born striker was at the peak of his powers, winning the Premier League title with Blackburn Rovers a year earlier, and finishing as top scorer at Euro 96 just weeks before joining the Magpies.
But Shearer’s dream move home almost didn’t happen, as Man United boss Alex Ferguson looked to lure the Geordie star to Old Trafford.
The two met at David Platt’s house in Cheshire, with the Scot eager to tempt Shearer to Manchester, having failed to do so several years prior.
The Red Devils had just won their third Premier League title in four seasons, and the prospect of Shearer joining a side already containing the likes of Andy Cole, Roy Keane, and the famed ‘class of 92’ would surely have made United – Manchester that is, even more unstoppable.
Unfortunately for Fergie, Shearer had already met with Kevin Keegan earlier that morning.
Keegan wasn’t just Newcastle manager; he was Alan Shearer’s boyhood hero, a fact that Ferguson was seemingly aware of.
“I remember Sir Alex coming in the afternoon, and his first words to me were: ‘Am I seeing you first or have you seen Kevin this morning?’ And I went: ‘I spoke to Kevin this morning’, and he goes ‘that’s me f****d!’ – Shearer recalled years later
“Those were his first words to me. But anyway, talks went really, really well, and I thought at one stage I was going to go, and I even went house hunting around Manchester for a day. I got another call from Kevin a few days later, saying, ‘Can I have another half an hour with you?’ And I had half an hour with him, and I just thought: ‘What am I waiting for? I’ve got to go back home.
£15M Big Al was unveiled to a rapturous Toon Army in 1996
“But he won nothing”
There’s no need to bore you with what happened next; this is a Newcastle site after all, but for the uninitiated, Shearer came in, stayed for ten years, scored a boatload of goals, and won nothing.
And here lies the difference between the two sets of ‘United’ fans.
Man United supporters never miss a chance to remind Newcastle fans that Shearer won nothing in black and white, and that his only major honour came as a Blackburn Rovers player.
Newcastle United aren’t a club that wins a lot of silverware. There have been four English league titles, but the most recent one was ninety-nine years ago. There was a string of FA Cup successes in the 1950’s, but none since. The Carabao Cup success of last season was our first and only major cup win in fifty-six years.
Man United, on the other hand, win everything, or they used to. They certainly did during the years that Shearer was Newcastle’s number 9, picking up five Premier League titles, a Champions League, three FA cups, and a League Cup between 1996-97 and 2005-06.
But what our friends from Manchester fail to realise is that us Geordie’s simply don’t care.
Not every club can be a Man United or a Liverpool, and when your club doesn’t win much, you learn to look for the joy in the little things. A 3-2 vs Barcelona here, a 5-1 vs Sunderland there. Kevin Keegan returning, Bobby Robson coming home, Alan Shearer coming home.
Newcastle is a one-club city; Newcastle United are the only ticket in town. There’s no cricket here, not really, nor are our regional motorways littered with Rugby League powerhouses as you’ll find along the M62. We’ve got a Rugby Union side and a Basketball team, but nothing unites the city or gets it talking like Newcastle United does. Unlike the bigger clubs in the North West, who have sometimes been labelled ‘tourist clubs’ owing to the amount of supporters that jet in to Anfield and Old Trafford from around the globe, ours is a fanbase made up primarily of local support.
Newcastle upon Tyne, the other four boroughs of Tyne & Wear, as well as the neighbouring counties of Northumberland and County Durham, are home to approximately 2.6 million people, the vast majority of whom are of a black and white persuasion when it comes to football.
Newcastle United might not be a successful club, but in terms of fanbase, they are a big club, and don’t let anybody tell you differently.
You really have to be a young fan at St James’ Park watching your heroes in black and white to fully understand it, to feel it, and that’s exactly what Shearer was. He was one of us. Perhaps the earliest public image of Alan Shearer was of him standing next to Kevin Keegan, having served as a ballboy at Keegan’s Newcastle testimonial in 1984.
Shearer didn’t need to understand what it meant to play for Newcastle United because it was inherent in him from the very beginning. He grew up barely three miles from the stadium and stood in the Gallowgate End as a boy. Why else would you turn down the chance of guaranteed trophies?
“But he didn’t win anything” we are often reminded.
We know. It doesn’t matter. Football is a game of winning, but it’s also a game that elicits a huge emotional connection between club and supporter, something that begins as a child and remains long after a trophy has been lifted.
Malcolm McDonald never won anything at Newcastle either, nor did Kevin Keegan, Peter Beardsley, Les Ferdinand, Rob Lee, or Shay Given.
And yet they are still welcomed back to St James’ Park with open arms, receiving hero’s ovations, because of the performances they gave in Black and White (or in Given’s case, rhubarb and custard)
Few, if any, gave more than Shearer. 405 games, 206 goals. Captain. Record goalscorer. Symbol. The arrival of the world’s most expensive player, just as the Premier League was going global, did more to put Newcastle United on the world football stage than anyone before or since.
Alan Shearer was world-class. When he joined Newcastle in 1996, he was one of the world’s best centre-forwards, perhaps eclipsed only by Ronaldo. He could have gone anywhere, Barcelona, Juventus, Man United, and won the lot. But he came home and achieved near-mythical status in his hometown.
“It was a dream come true“, Shearer said of his decision to pick black and white over red. Man United fans still don’t get it, that’s fine. We do.
