12 April 3, 2022The Sunday TimesFootball
bonus at Christmas. I had Ian Good-
ison and Ronnie Moore. The actual
manager. And you had to polish them,
not just clean them. It was the old boot
polish, dubbin, make sure they’re
shiny. With the players you can get
away with it, but not the gaffer. He was
old school. Each day it was a killer, the
time I spent on them but I was too
scared [to do otherwise].
“Little things like that, it’s a shame
they are no longer part of football.
Certainly the higher you go, the more
is done for you — we’re in a lucky, priv-
ileged position. In the lower leagues
lads still clean their boots, but I think
it should be at every level.”
Cresswell is also unusual for having
represented England after starting in
Sunday League football. Either side of
two years at Liverpool’s academy he
played for Wood Lane in the Belle Vale
& District League.
When back home, he still watches
his mates play Sunday League. “Some
of the tackles they get away with, I’m
like, what the hell is going on?”
When he watched Moyes beasting
Stubbs and co, Everton were based
across town. The training ground they
were about to build at Finch Farm wasH
e has told David Moyes the
story and, of course, it is
funny how things work out.
Aaron Cresswell laughs as
he remembers being 14 and
knocking about on Camp
Hill, on the southern edge of
Liverpool, a short BMX ride
from their council estate in Halewood
for Cresswell and his mates.
“The next moment the whole Ever-
ton squad turned up,” Cresswell says,
smiling. “I was, ‘Oh my god, it’s Ever-
ton.’ Moyes was the manager, and this
was the era of Alan Stubbs and Lee
Carsley, Kevin Kilbane and big Dun-
can Ferguson.”
Camp Hill is an ancient wooded
park with rough trails and some steep
grassy slopes that are murder to walk,
never mind sprint up — but that’s what
Moyes ordered from his players. “I
just watched them and he was stand-
ing there, screaming as they were run-
ning round. I was thinking, even at
that age, I wouldn’t fancy doing that.”
Yet here is Cresswell, now a family
man of 32, himself clocking in every
day to run around for Moyes. That
said, “I think the gaffer would like to
say he’s mellowed out,” and Cresswell
agrees that he has. Well, a bit. Players
returning unfit still “get absolutely
roasted for the whole six weeks of pre-
season” but it’s nothing “compared to
what he apparently used to do”.
Cresswell, with Declan Rice, has
made the joint most appearances (117)
of any West Ham player across
Moyes’s two spells at the club and
says: “This manager has been brilliant
for me, since he walked in the door.”
Graft is something that he is quite pre-
pared to embrace. Both his parents
were taxi drivers, several of his uncles
too, with all the long and unsociable
hours that cab work can bring. He
grew up wanting to be a PE teacher
but admits he may have ended up fol-
lowing the family profession himself
had he not been able to bounce back
from being released by Liverpool toTHE FOOTBALL
INTERVIEW
WITH JONATHAN NORTHCROFT
‘In the lower leagues
the lads still clean
their boots, but I
think it should be
at every level.’ON TV TODAY
West Ham v Everton
1pm Sky Sports , Kick-off 2pmtwo minutes from Cresswell’s house
on Torrington Drive. Though he, his
dad and uncle Kenny support Liver-
pool, most of his family and friends
are Evertonians, which always makes
games against the Blues piquant.
“We played Everton in the FA Cup
[in 2015] and my mates, who sit in the
Gwladys Street End, changed their
seats to sit on the side, at the front,
and for the first 45 minutes I could just
hear them abusing me. Every time I
went to take a throw-in. I clocked
them two minutes in and just knew
what was coming. To this day they still
bring it up and hammer me about it.”
Moore was not his only traditional-
style gaffer. Cresswell has played for
Sam Allardyce, Mick McCarthy “and
Paul Jewell”, he interrupts. “He’s a
proper old school. Oh, when he gotangry... Jesus Christ.” He likes those
tough-love coaches and says Moyes is
similarly-minded — “I think some of
the foreign boys are shocked some-
times, when the gaffer loses his cool
and they realise what it’s all about” —
but talks about the skilful way he has
built the culture at West Ham.
“This group is grounded. You walk
into the canteen and speak to any one
of the lads and get a feeling of togeth-
erness straight away. This is the best
dressing room we’ve had and it comes
from the manager, the tone he sets,
the way he wants to work,” he says.
“But it also comes from the lads
we’ve got. It’s fun but as soon as we
cross that white line it’s work time and
time to go, and if someone’s not
pulling their weight they’ll definitely
be told.
“We know we can’t compete, real-
istically, with Liverpool and Manches-
ter City, the players they’ve got and
money they’ve spent. Hopefully we
can get there but that’s going to take
some time. But competitiveness is
something we’ve got as a group and if
someone is having a bad game the lads
will get each other through. It’s a real
bond we’ve created.”
He contrasts this to squads where
the ethos is wrong. “I’ve seen it here.
You know, years back you had a few
players who deep down didn’t
really want to be here but they’ve
signed a three-year contract, and have
made it difficult in the dressing room
at times.”
Cresswell is one of the three wise/
grumpy old men always found at the
same table, and at the centre of every-
thing, in the training ground canteen.
There’s him, Mark Noble and David
Martin, the reserve goalkeeper, and
they sit with their espressos and mac-
chiatos chewing the fat “about every-
thing in general”.
Having joined from Ipswich in 2014
he will become West Ham’s longest-
serving player when Noble retires this
summer. Five games in the next 14
days will define West Ham’s season
and Thursday’s Europa League
quarter-final first leg, at home to
Lyons, is the biggest occasion of a club
career spanning exactly 500 matches.
“I’ve won absolutely zero. So I’d
love a trophy. And I think to go to that
next level as a club we need to win
something, or really compete to.” He
dreams of the Europa League final. “I
think of Nobes — to win a European
trophy in his final year, or do some-
thing great in the competition, would
be really special.” With Barcelona
possible semi-final opponents, reach-
ing the final would take quite some
graft — but Cresswell is up for that.Tottenham H v Newcastle Utd
Ben Davies should be fit for
Tottenham Hotspur, while
Newcastle United have Martin
Dubravka, Fabian Schar and Jonjo
Shelvey available. Spurs have won
only two of their past seven home
league games against Newcastle.
Harry Kane has scored five goals
in his past four league games
against today’s opponents.
6 Sky Sports Premier League,
kick-off 4.30pmDAVIES FIT FOR SPURS
West Ham’s long-serving left
back Aaron Cresswell on Moyes,
graft and the grumpy old men
I’d love a
trophy’
44
Games West
Ham have
already played
this season –
with five to
come in the
next 14 daysturn pro with Tranmere Rovers. “My
football career in general? I’m forever
grateful for it,” Cresswell says.
He is certainly the first Premier
League footballer I’ve interviewed
who still cleans his own boots. “I do it
on a Friday, or the day before a game. I
have to do it.”
Out of superstition or to stay
grounded? “A bit of both. I get stick off
the kit man. I turn up and he’s [mock-
ing voice], ‘Oh it’s Friday, you here to
do your boots?’ But I’ll come in and
give them a little wipe — the pitches
here are good, it’s not like they’re
clogged with mud or whatever.
“Cleaning the boots at Tranmere
was part of our routine as young play-
ers and if the boots were good, that’s
where it stems from, I think. You
cleaned for two [senior] players and if
the boots were good you got a littleILLUSTRATION: PETE BAKER. CHLOE KNOTT/GETTY IMAGES‘I’ve won
absolutely zero.