'Against Brazil we were in business' - Heskey on England's golden generation, Liverpool and being underappreciated

Emile Heskey has a confession to make. “I always preferred athletics to football,” says the former England striker. “When I was younger, that was what I cared about. Football was secondary.”

He was good as well. He represented his district as a sprinter, and shone as a long jumper too. At junior school, his teachers felt he had what it took to pursue a career in track and field. Football, though, won the argument.

Heskey was nine years old when he was spotted playing for his school, and invited for a trial at Leicester’s Centre of Excellence. The die had been cast. “Football gradually took over,” he tells Goal. “Athletics is more seasonal, isn’t it? With football, I could play all day, every day. It was easier to go down that path.”

How glad he is that he did. When he retired as a player in 2016, Heskey’s career had spanned 22 years and almost 800 senior club games. He scored more than 150 goals, won eight major honours and picked up 62 caps for his country.

“Yeah, I did OK I suppose!” he says, with trademark modesty. He is remembered fondly; by home-town club Leicester, where he won two League Cups and became the Foxes’ youngest Premier League debutant as a 17-year-old, by Liverpool, where he was part of Gerard Houllier’s treble-winning side of 2000-01, and in his subsequent career, which took in stints at Birmingham, Wigan, Aston Villa and Bolton, as well as two years in Australia with Newcastle Jets.