Daily Mail - 17.08.2019

119

Daily Mail, Saturday, August 17, 2019

Football

DANGEROUS

DRIVING

@ianherbs

by IAN

HERBERT

Deputy Chief

Sports Writer

As violent gangs target players on the

move, they live in a world of SAS soldiers,

blacked-out cars and night-vision cameras

F

OR the footballer’s

wife in Cheshire who

was confronted by

assailants on three

mopeds, the details

of how Mesut Ozil and Sead

Kolasinac were carjacked in
broad daylight in north

London will have been

terrifyingly real.
She was driving a top-of-the-
range vehicle a few months ago
when the first moped took up a
position in front of her and slowed.
In her rear view mirror, she saw a
second. The driver of the third
then arrived at her side window,
assessing what there was to steal.
On any given day, there could
have been £200,000 worth of jewel-
lery in the car, though she was wear-
ing neither rings nor a watch on this
occasion. The three drove off.
There was a time when security
advice for footballers simply
entailed how to make sure their
cars were securely parked. Sir Alex
Ferguson’s players were not the
sharpest in that respect. Their
routine was to park at the Four
Seasons Hotel near Junction 6 of
the M56 at Hale Barns, Cheshire,
where the team coach would pick
them up for away trips.
Liverpudlian robbers, who did
not need optimum intelligence to
spy the opportunity, broke into
Roy Keane’s Golf VR6 while he
was playing in United’s 3-3 draw at
Anfield in April 1994 but Greater
Manchester Police (GMP) were a
step ahead.
‘We chased them in his car all the
way back to Liverpool,’ says a
former GMP officer. United’s play-
ers did not learn. Mark Hughes’
Sierra Cosworth was one of a
number stolen from the same car
park and was found abandoned in
Benchill, Wythenshawe.

W

ITH a near- military
level of secu-
rity at many
Premier
League players’ houses,
criminals are increasingly
targeting them in their cars,
says Paul Hughes, manag-
ing director of Benchmark
Security Group, a leading
protection firm.
Four people have recently
been attacked while travel-
ling in the triangle of villages
— Alderley Edge, Hale and
Prestbury — which has more
millionaires per square mile
than anywhere in Europe,
many of them footballers. In
the latest attack, assailants
watched from their car as
their target entered Costa
Coffee in Hale and, armed
with machetes, pounced in
broad daylight when he
emerged.
Hughes, who cannot dis-
cuss specific football cli-
ents, employs former police
and Royal security drivers
to train his clients in the art of
‘defensive driving’.In a two-hour
session, they learn how to avoid
being ‘boxed in’ — as Ozil and
Kolasinac were — when approach-
ing traffic lights. Techniques
include never taking up a position
in the middle lane, avoiding the
outside lane if there is a central
barrier, and always maintaining
sight of the tyres of the vehicle in
front when you slow.
‘If you can see the tyres you will

always have room to manoeuvre

right or left of the car in front, at

speed, without hitting it,’

Hughes says.

His staff are increasingly being

asked to escort clients in their

fleet of vehicles, which includes

two blacked-out Land Rovers. The

firm has recently acquired a Dark-

fighter Dome — a night-vision

camera which is mounted on to

the roof of its security vehicles —

allowing them to see would-be

assailants in the dark. Escorted

school runs have also become a

part of the protection they offer.

Former special forces and SAS

soldiers are employed as personal

protection officers by some firms.

The security challenge is greater

because criminals monitor foot-

ballers’ social media to develop a

sense of where they are and where

they will be.

Sportsmail columnist Peter

Crouch, targeted by burglars in

2006 and 2011, and his wife Abbey

try to remove any hint of their

location from their Instagram

posts, as he discusses in these

pages. ‘Social media enhances the

security problem,’ says one former

Premier League player-liaison

officer.

A screen at Benchmark’s under-

ground headquarters, at anony-

mous premises in Manchester,

reveals the fortresses that players’

houses have become after attacks

such as those on Manchester Unit-

ed’s Angel di Maria and Wayne

Rooney, Blackburn Rovers’ Roque

Santa Cruz, Liverpool’s Steven

Gerrard and Crouch. Some even

have subterranean safe rooms.

The huge screen dominates the

Benchmark bunker, showing live

feeds from the gardens of man-

sions which are criss-crossed by

infra-red beams. An alarm is trig-

gered in the control room if any-

one not approved through face

recognition software is picked up

by up to 18 pan, tilt and zoom

cameras at a property.

Loudspeakers, operated from the

control room, warn off intruders. A

team of 51 security staff is never

more than six minutes away. A

patrol is on the scene of an alert,

usually within 90 seconds.

The alternative to that level of

cover is revealed in chilling recent

security camera footage from Hale

of a gang of four, armed with

machetes, loitering at the front of

a property before marching around

the side of the house in single file

and smashing their way in. The

trend of players investing in patrol

dogs, which can cost up to £20,000

each, has receded as many players

have young children and security

firms have their own dogs.

The first coordinated series of

attacks on footballers’ houses took

place on Merseyside more than 10

years ago, when Liverpool’s Sami

Hyypia, living on the Wirral, and

Rangers’ David Weir were among

many players hit. The gang, who

were arrested and convicted,

struck when they thought the

players would be away, although

Weir’s house was raided by masked

men with machetes clearly sur-

prised to find the player at home.

‘This was an exceptionally nasty

group of criminals,’ a former senior

detective tells Sportsmail.

Cheshire Police called in Everton

and Liverpool at that time and

though players pay for their own

personal security, many clubs try

to advise on who they use. ‘That’s

not always been easy,’ says the

player-liaison officer. ‘The players

have a huge entourage: so-called

experts who want a seat at the

table and think they know best.’

B

ENCHMARK is one of

Britain’s most trusted

operators — industry-

accredited, with former

senior police officers on its staff.

But this is also a world in which

some unsavoury individuals are

looking to extract gain. Sportsmail

is aware that a number of current

players are paying protection

money to ensure they remain safe

and are not venturing out socially

without having done so.

Criminals have sought to extract

a living from the game for years.

Tommy Adams, a member of the

notorious ‘Adams family’ London

syndicate crime, was a fixer for a

number of agents and became

well-known to Kenny Dalglish and

Graeme Souness.

Kolasinic, who fought off his

attackers, was not the first player

to do so. Everton’s Duncan Fergu-

son put an assailant in hospital

when he tried to burgle his home

at Ormskirk, Lancashire, in

January 2001.

But the assailants in the Ozil and

Kolasinac attack are thought to be

a part of eastern European gangs

who, security sources say, are not

to be messed with. ‘The criminal

demographic has changed,’ says a

former senior detective. ‘We are

now talking about gangs who lack

the slightest compunction about

taking a life.’

Horror: thugs attack

Kolasinac and Ozil

(inset with police)

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