FSOM: Sol Campbell’s skin colour didn’t cost him the England captaincy. It’s the thickness of it.

Sulzeer Jeremiah Campbell has always seen himself as different and set apart from the rest.

In a vast herd of wildebeest, he would the one with a hatstand instead of horns and a zebra’s stripey coat.

While the rest of the sardine shoal is allowing itself to drift with the current, he would be the one battling against it, little fins and tail waggling like billy-o as he heads for the Tiger Shark’s gaping maw.

There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with wanting to be different. In fact, it would be a boring old world if we were all the same.

That’s especially true in professional sport, and even more so in football, where most players seem to be the product of a vast mill churning out sporting clones, incapable of much in the way of individual thought other than to decide which colour Bentley to drive on a particular day.

So perhaps we should applaud those who dare to be different.

The danger with wanting to be different is that it can mark you down as an outsider, especially when your desire to be different manifests itself in the style of Sulzeer Jeremiah Campbell, who has been a self-imposed exile most of his life, almost form the day he decided to change his forename to Sol.

This is a man who dared to be different at half-time in an Arsenal game, and refused to go back out to play in the second half.

The trigger for this act of difference? As Campbell trudged off at the interval after an indifferent first half, his eyes spotted a fan making handgun gestures with his fingers, and aiming his imaginary gat at Campbell.

Not only did Campbell not go out in the second half, he disappeared and took himself off to Paris where it needed a female friend to sort his head out.

That wasn’t the first time he packed his kit bag and left.

Campbell walked out of West Ham’s academy at what he perceived to be an insulting slight by a coaching staff member  who told him to cheer up as “You’re two-one up, the West Indies are beating us in the Test series.”

It wasn’t the remark itself that sparked Campbell’s exit, but who made it.

“He was a mixed race guy and it almost made me feel like he’d forgotten who he was,” recalls Campbell. “Maybe he wants to be white, but he’s not, he’s mixed race. He’s basically white and I’m black and I’m from the Caribbean and I’m not English.”

And with that, the 16-year-old Campbell packed his kit, left the ground and never returned.

Even within his own family, he saw himself as different and set himself apart.

He was the 11th and last born to Sewell and Wilhelmina Campbell and his description of being “more forward thinking and mentally different” than his brothers and sisters could be interpreted as condescending.

When his mum bought a cake for his birthday, he shut himself away, cut it into slices, stuck a candle in one slice and sang Happy Birthday to himself before locking the rest away. He shared the cake with his mother and made it last three days, with not a crumb going to his siblings.

This is a man whose first thoughts, on being told he had fathered a child in a little village just outside of wedlock, were how it would affect him.

There was little regard for the mother, who would be bringing the child up single-handedly, sustained by the fat weekly envelope Campbell would provide, almost as a form of vendetta-style blood money payoff.

Like some misguided medieval religious apologist, the impression Campbell gives out is that he is the earth around which the sun, the planets and all the others stars in the universe revolve.

Campbell isn’t the first – and certainly won’t be the last – footballer to think that.

It’s part of the narcissistic culture surrounding top flight football, but his view of the Sol-ar universe has an uncomfortable air about it.

Campbell built a protective wall of privacy around himself. His steadfast refusal to have anything to do with the media was predicated on the grounds that as the media already had their set preconceptions about him, there was little point in having any dialogue with them.

There was no danger of the thought ever entering his head that perhaps the best way to banish these preconceptions would have been to speak to the media.

You see, the only problem with setting yourself up as an outsider, is that you cannot then expect to be welcome as one of the group.

By all means row your own boat, but when you jump into one with seven other crew members, don’t expect them to row to your rhythm.

In days when footballers are as homogenised as pints of milk perhaps we should applaud Campbell’s attempts at daring to be different.

As Dylan Thomas says in his anthem to non-conformity before popping your clogs, ‘Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night;’  “Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, Do not go gentle into that good night.”

So do we celebrate his desire to jump ship at Tottenham at the height of his powers, unhappy with their trophy prospects, to join arch-rivals Arsenal as that of a man unafraid to go against the grain in order to fulfil his destiny?

Or do we view it as another self-centred, self-serving act of self-regard, with no thought for others?

It’s all very well for Campbell to claim he would have been captain of England more, but for the colour of his skin, but those claims only carry weight if they are made from a position of strength.

Captains are supposed to be leaders, role-models, rallying points.

Would you metaphorically follow somebody over the top who ran away to Paris because somebody pointed a threatening finger at him?

How can a role model be created from somebody who refuses to fulfil part of that role by a policy of not sharing something of himself from those who would follow him?

If you want a role model black captain, look no further than Walter Tull.

Like Campbell, he played for Spurs as a highly-rated forward, but as only the second black professional footballer, endured dog’s abuse in far less enlightened times at the start of the 20th century.

He didn’t run off to Paris, but continued to bear it with dignity, even after Spurs’ board bottled it and decided it would be easier to ship him off to Northampton as a problem they did have to deal with.

When the Great War broke out, Tull had no hesitation in joining up and despite unbelievable prejudice, rose through the ranks to be the first-ever Black officer in the British Army, despite The King’s Regulations army manual forbidding it.

He did make a trip to France, but unlike Campbell who returned after having his ego massaged like a toddler coaxed from the cupboard under the stairs with sweets, Tull’s trip was one-way.

He was killed in March 1918. This was one black captain whose men did follow him over the top. And he faced more than a fan with a pointy finger.

Tull’s men disproved the Army manuals view that British Tommies would not respect and follow orders from a black man and tried their hardest to recover his body from No-Man’s Land.

They failed with the result that Tull has no grave, and is remembered on a wall in a cemetery in northern France, along with memorials at Northampton’s Sixfields stadium.

It’s no coincidence that the man once described as the most private professional sportsman in the country is suddenly all over the media like a nasty nettle rash.

Campbell, who made ultimate recluse JD Salinger look as about as shy and retiring as Tess Daly has emerged from his self-imposed exile to puff his book.

Suddenly, he’s shooting off at the mouth faster and louder than the love child of Russell Brand and Danny Baker and his targets include the FA and the England captaincy.

If Sol Campbell prided himself on being different, he would not be indulging in the shameless act of punting himself around to flog his book. The different way to do it would be to tell his publishers to stick copies of it in bookshops, and let it sell on its merits.

Sorry Sol, as you discovered as a kid, you can’t have your cake and eat it, not even if you cut it into slices and refuse to share it with your brothers and sisters.

If you want to be different, fine. We’ll all applaud that, as long as you are consistent in celebrating your difference. Nonconformist mavericks like Alex Higgins, Ian Botham and George Best kicked against the bricks throughout their careers, but accepted they would have to take their lumps as a result.

By pointedly standing outside to be different, you forfeit a place as part of the mainstream establishment. You can’t stick a foot in both camps, and that is especially true in the ritualistic and cabalistic world of football, which, perversely, demands its leaders be strong, but also possess the humility necessary to confirm and fit in.

That was never going to be Sol Campbell’s strong point.

Ultimately, it’s not the colour of Sol Campbell’s skin that cost him the England captaincy. It’s the thickness of it.

By John May

Follow @maisy68

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