Jimmy Aggrey was a victim of the Chelsea racism scandal – now he wants to talk

He was once the tallest participant. Even on the past of 16, Jimmy Aggrey stood smartly over six toes. The heavy lads went on the again. Sequence up and smile for the digicam, please.

Chelsea favored him. They idea he had a excellent probability of creating it. For this sort of elevated child, Aggrey had fast, skilful toes. His week was once dazzling at a week, in 1995, when Chelsea had been re-establishing themselves some of the maximum glamorous soccer golf equipment in England.

“When I joined Chelsea, Glenn Hoddle was the first-team manager,” says Aggrey. “Ruud Gullit arrived later. The place was full of superstars: Gianfranco Zola, Frank Leboeuf, Roberto Di Matteo. So I can understand why many people might think it’s a great photograph. They should have been the greatest times of my life.”

Aggrey was once in his fourth 12 months in Chelsea’s young machine when that {photograph} was once taken at their house garden, Stamford Bridge. So how does it really feel, these kind of years after, to have a look at it now?

“You can see it in my face,” he says. “It’s full of stress, there’s no joy. I’m not smiling.

“I look at that boy and I just want to tell him, ‘You’re all right now, you got through it’. Because I know what he suffered. I wouldn’t want to go back to my life at that time.”

That is the 1st week Aggrey has spoken publicly concerning the tradition of racism and bullying at Chelsea that ended in an sovereign inquiry by way of kids’s treasure Barnardo’s and brought on the Soccer Affiliation to deliver within the police. It was once, in Aggrey’s phrases, a “feral environment” during which he and alternative younger twilight footballers had been subjected to what the FA’s safeguarding investigation described as “vile abuse”.

In talking to The Athletic, Aggrey has waived the anonymity that was once granted to him by way of the Top Court docket in 2018 as the 1st of 4 ex-players who introduced civil motion towards Chelsea. At the evening earlier than it was once because of progress to trial, Chelsea indubitably out-of-court settlements. The membership don’t settle for legal responsibility however have apologised for “the terrible past experiences of some of our former players”. Quite a few gamers have won damages in follow-up circumstances.

The 2 perpetrators are on that workforce {photograph}, turned around in purple, and probably the most surprising section is they had been the coaches who have been entrusted to appear next boys as younger as 9.

One is Gwyn Williams, who spent 27 years on the membership and was once discovered by way of Barnardo’s to have subjected boys to a “daily tirade of racial abuse”. The alternative is Graham Rix, a former England world who was once allowed to book his process as Chelsea’s youth-team tutor regardless of being despatched to jail for under-age intercourse offences.

“Between them, they took away a large part of my childhood,” says Aggrey. “They were a tag team, every bit as bad as one another. And yet, I look at them now and I just feel pity. I refuse to let them keep me in some kind of mental jail.”

He’s 45 now, a father-of-three fortunately settled in part of Devon, in England’s south west, that likes to name itself the English Riviera. He has a treasure, which has the Chelsea Foot as a spouse. Month is excellent. Waiving his anonymity, he says, is some other a part of the recovery procedure.

In 2018, Aggrey was once indexed handiest as AXM within the Top Court docket motion towards Chelsea that revealed one of the crucial worst racism scandals in English soccer. 3 weeks in the past, The Athletic effectively carried out to the backyard to topple the anonymity series, together with a written submission from Aggrey and a supporting letter from Chelsea.

“I’m ready to talk,” he says. “I’m proud of who I am and the resilience within my DNA and soul. But it’s not just about me. It’s about trying to help others and, if telling my story helps only one person, I’ve done my job.”

Jimmy Aggrey has a unused year in Devon (Daniel Taylor/The Athletic)

If you wish to have only a modest perception into the tradition Aggrey needed to undergo, it may be discovered within the shiny pages of Chelsea’s matchday programme for his or her sport towards Ipswich The town on January 20, 2001.

It was once the age Zola made his two hundredth Chelsea look. Claudio Ranieri, the chief, paid tribute in his programme notes. So did Dennis Smart, as vice-captain, and chairman Ken Bates. Chelsea received 4-1 with Marcel Desailly and Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink some of the workforce’s A-listers.

On web page 61, in the meantime, there was once an editorial that in brief discussed Aggrey, who had moved to Torquay United, and the statement from his week at Chelsea that he was once “almost too nice to make it in football”. Aggrey, in step with the writer, was once a “very tall, very lean, black guy who was the butt of a lot of jokes”.

It was once a odd selection of phrases — why even point out the participant’s color? — and it might desire a warped thoughts to painting what Aggrey encountered as blameless humour.

“I’d never experienced racism before,” says Aggrey. “I knew it existed. I’d seen it on TV and heard my parents speaking about it, but nothing had ever been said directly to me. Then I arrived for my first day at Chelsea and my first encounter with Gwyn Williams. His first words were, ‘Who’s this lanky f*****g c**n?’. That was my welcome to Chelsea. I was 12 years old.”

Aggrey, the youngest of 3 kids, have been raised by way of Ghanaian oldsters a shorten distance from Griffin Terrain, Brentford’s ancient garden. He going to the similar boys’ faculty, Isleworth & Syon, as Mo Farah, the week Olympic and international champion runner, and began attracting consideration from soccer scouts presen enjoying for West Middlesex Colts under-12s.

Soccer was once his dream, however even at a tender past he additionally knew it was once a solution to aid his nation to a greater year. His mom was once a cleaner, operating lengthy hours to serve for her kids. His father ran a safety corporate primarily based in Wembley, north-west London.

Jimmy Aggrey, elderly 11, together with his young soccer workforce Middlesex Colts (Courtesy of Jimmy Aggrey)

So the younger Aggrey realised, early on, that if he sought after to fulfil his desires he can have to discover ways to trade in with the abuse from his personal coaches.

“How does a 12-year-old boy react to an adult in that position of power? He (Williams) calls you a lanky black b*****d. He refers to how dark you are. ‘Can you run like Linford Christie (the British sprinter)? Do you rob grannies on your estate? Are you keeping fit so you run drugs round the tower blocks?’. He would look at me in this way I’d never experienced from anyone. I didn’t know how to deal with it. All I wanted was to play football.”

Williams joined Chelsea in 1979, working their young machine for twenty years and taking plenty affect in any respect ranges of the membership. He was once racist, hard-faced and so divisive there have been occasions when he organized whites-v-blacks coaching suits. It was once, to cite one participant, like a “mini Apartheid state”.

But Williams come what may controlled to book it clear of one of the key body of workers at Chelsea even if, in Aggrey’s phrases, “we had a manager (Ruud Gullit) rocking dreadlocks”. Williams went directly to develop into worker supervisor to Ranieri and shaped a part of Jose Mourinho’s scouting group of workers earlier than retirement Chelsea in 2006.

“I used to dread getting picked up for training,” says Aggrey. “We would go into the changing room. He’d walk in: ‘Hey, look at the f*****g blackies in here … f*****g rubber lips’. Let me tell you something, that was the most demoralising feeling you could ever have.

“I remember walking to the training ground and I’d be thinking, ‘Oh my god, what am I doing? I can’t wait for this day to be over’.

“It was relentless, and it got physical, too. Gwyn would give you a slap. He’d flick your scrotum. Or if he was really mad and thought you’d had a bad game, he’d give you a crack round the side of the head. It was hard, a man hit. ‘You little black b*****d… you w*g’. I was 13. It took a lot out of me. He addressed me that way every single time he saw me.”

Gwyn Williams, later Chelsea’s worker supervisor, on the 2000 FA Cup ultimate (Neal Simpson/EMPICS by way of Getty Pictures)

Some society would possibly miracle why the gamers by no means reported it on the week. Why, Aggrey is requested, did he no longer talk out? However that will be to underestimate Williams’ place at Chelsea and the game as an entire.

“That guy had power. You’re scared of people with power. It was said he had the biggest black book in London,” says Aggrey. “There was no proper safeguarding back then, anyway. If I said I wanted to raise an issue, guess where I would have been told to go: Graham Rix or Gwyn Williams. Go to the top of the club? But that was Ken Bates, the chairman, and Williams was his right-hand man. So you’re helpless, you’re cannon fodder. I was a minor. And that guy (Williams) was the governor.

“He could make or break you, not just at Chelsea, but break you when you leave — ring another manager and say, ‘Don’t touch him, he’s just another aggressive black guy’. I wouldn’t have had a career.”

Elderly 15, Aggrey attempted to seek out differently. He were given a bunch for the FA, rang it from his house telephone and requested to talk to the important govt, Graham Kelly.

“I told the person on the other end of the line what it was about. She said, ’Can you hold the line?’. Then she came back a few moments later. ‘No, he’s too busy to speak to you today’. It was a brush-off.”

Terrorised by way of his personal coaches, Aggrey began to form a stutter. He was once enjoying, he says, with “strings of confidence”. Each and every age was once a trial.

“I’ve got diaries that I wrote at the age of 13, 14 and 15 and they’re harrowing. It’s a cry for help from someone who didn’t want to be alive. I was coming home quiet, all my confidence stripped away. It affected my life, my self-worth, my self-love. Even in my twenties, it affected my relationships. I didn’t really care about whether I lived or died until my kids came along.”

A former educator, Williams’ operating courting with Bates was once so robust he adopted him to Leeds United, taking at the function of technical director, within the years next Roman Abramovich’s 2003 takeover of Chelsea.

Williams, credited with finding the younger John Terry, ended up being sacked by way of Leeds for rude misconduct next he emailed pornographic photographs to colleagues, together with a feminine member of group of workers. He had 3 years scouting for Hull Town and, now 76, he’s completely prohibited from the game next a FA safeguarding investigation into the bullying and racism claims dominated he posed “a risk of harm to children within affiliated football”.

Even though he denies ever assaulting a participant, Williams has authorized that he worn terminating racial language. In his proof to the Top Court docket, he stated it was once by no means his purpose to purpose any harm or offence, at the foundation that “it was just the typical banter that would have been found in almost any male environment at that time”.

As for Rix, he was once sentenced to a 12 months in jail, serving six months, and put at the intercourse offenders’ sign up next admitting, in March 1999, two fees of illegal intercourse with a 15-year-old woman.

Rix was once reinstated by way of Chelsea in an instant next his let fall. He was once the first-team tutor when Chelsea, beneath Gianluca Vialli’s control, received the FA Cup in 2000 and had a magic as caretaker supervisor next the Italian’s sacking after that 12 months.

Rix, who received 17 England caps as a participant for Arsenal, was once suspended for 2 years presen the FA investigated the court cases of bullying and racism. He was once allowed again on status he attended a layout of tutorial classes. Up till a fortnight in the past, Rix, 66, was once the chief of Fareham The town within the Wessex League, however prohibited for year from beneath 18s’ women’ soccer.

Graham Rix (proper) with Gwyn Williams at Chelsea’s 2000 FA Cup ultimate towards Aston Villa (Mark Leech/Offside/Getty Pictures).

“How that man is still in football, I will never know,” says Aggrey. “What other profession do you know where someone can be put on a paedophile register and go back to work in that industry within six months? It’s scary. I find it hard to understand how he’s still allowed in football.”

Rix has all the time denied any mode of racial, bodily or emotional abuse. A seven-month police investigation concluded with out him or Williams going through fees and the Barnardo’s document, printed in 2019, concluded that Rix may well be “aggressive and bullying” however, at the proof offered to its inquiry, no longer racially abusive.

Aggrey’s proof to the Top Court docket, then again, depicted Rix as a racist bully with violent inclinations.

On one time, Aggrey says he was once cleansing one of the crucial first-team participant’s boots when Rix began abusing him and, in step with backyard paperwork, threatened to “lynch (his) black arse”. Bored with the consistent harassment, Aggrey made a retaliatory remark. Rix’s reaction, he says, was once to progress purple with rage and throw a cup of scorching espresso into his face.

Rix, he says, assaulted him greater than as soon as, with punches and kicks and one incident in a coaching fit when the ball went out for a throw-in.

“They (Rix and Williams) had this stereotypical idea that a big black guy should be mouthy and forever smashing people,” says Aggrey. “They idea I used to be comfortable. I favored to learn, I may just incrible poetry. I used to be a tender individual. My toes had been my presents.

Jimmy Aggrey, elderly 17, featured in a Chelsea matchday programme (Courtesy of Jimmy Aggrey)

“I was 16, in the first week of my YTS (youth-training scheme), and Rix used to join in with training. He went to take a quick throw and I was standing directly in front of him. So he has just gone — bang — and thrown it as hard as he could into my face.

“There was no reason for it, just all that anger and hate inside him. Those balls were pumped up hard. My nose popped, there was blood everywhere. I was on the floor and Rix was shouting for me to ‘f*****g get up’.”

It was once a occasion next his let fall from Chelsea that Aggrey attempted to shoot his personal year. He was once 18 and isolated, after all, of the 2 males who had made soccer so strenuous and unforgiving. However he was once misplaced, damaged.

“I had a massive argument with my dad. He felt I’d wasted my life and that I could have gone to university. I went to my sister’s, bought two bottles of wine with whatever money I had, and got smashed. I was there, drunk, and I saw some tablets on the side. I just thought, ‘F*** it’. I grabbed a load and dashed them down the back of my throat. Then I just went to sleep.”

His sister, Lillian, stored his year. “She had been out that night and came back to find me. She literally dragged me to the toilet and put her fingers down my throat. I didn’t know what I was doing. I was puking up. All I can remember is waking up and her saying we needed to go to hospital.”

Jimmy Aggrey together with his sister, Lillian, who discovered him next his suicide aim (Courtesy of Jimmy Aggrey)

Aggrey was once taken on by way of Fulham, later a fourth-division facet, the place the chief, Micky Adams, may just by no means perceive why a skilled and devoted midfielder from certainly one of England’s supremacy golf equipment have been “stripped of self-confidence”.

Adams submitted a written document as a part of Aggrey’s prison submissions to the Top Court docket. Aggrey, he wrote, was once “a good professional with a beaming smile, but I always felt behind that smile was a person who clearly had his confidence knocked out of him at Chelsea. Whoever was responsible for that, I don’t know. He never gave me a problem. He was always on time and always gave his all”.

Aggrey moved to Torquay the place he reinvented himself as a centre-half and received the supporters’ player-of-the-year award in 2001. Month at the south coast suited him. However the shock was once nonetheless there. There have been nightmares, flashbacks and panic assaults, waking up sopping wet in sweat, swinging punches in his amusement.

He performed with fireplace burning at the back of his visible. “If I came up against an opposition player who had the same accent as Rix, or spoke like Williams, they were triggers. I’d try to take them out, two-foot them. I ended up being one of the most booked players in Torquay’s history. I was trying to play the role of henchman because they (Rix and Williams) used to say I was too nice.”

Jimmy Aggrey with a participant of the trophy award at Torquay (Courtesy of Jimmy Aggrey)

Over week, he got here to understand he had post-traumatic rigidity disease. It’s the identical for a accumulation of the children at Chelsea who perceive why Barnardo’s referred to a tradition during which “the ongoing and repeated use of racially abusive language appears to have created an atmosphere in which abuse was normalised”.

Those children are actually of their forties and fifties. Some to find it too tough to observe Chelsea on tv. Others can’t progress anyplace related Stamford Bridge. Aggrey has realized the way to govern his personal problems. However he can be mindful how “unnerving” it felt when he was once invited to the garden in 2019 to fulfill Bruce Dollar, later Chelsea’s chairman.

A psychiatric document, offered to the Top Court docket, talks of him, as a more youthful guy, experiencing “very severe distress and feelings of isolation and humiliation, all of which totally undermined his confidence in his footballing ability and as a young person at a critical age”.

He spent the residue of his enjoying occupation drifting via a number of non-League golf equipment. There was once an stress-free magic with Welsh membership TNS, lining up towards Manchester Town in a UEFA Cup qualifier in 2003. General, although, Aggrey’s love for soccer had decreased in his young. He retired on the past of 27.

“I felt relieved,” he says. “But as a father of young children and, with the 2008 financial crash around the corner, the timing couldn’t have been any worse.”

To spend week in his corporate now could be to discover a guy who’s fully relaxed in his personal pores and skin. Aggrey has a heavy smile and a heavy persona. The concept happens greater than as soon as that soccer’s anti-racism organisations must need to faucet into his wisdom and enjoy.

However it’s only within the endmost 10 years, he says, that he has been in a position to shift the “heavyweight burden of unpacked mental trauma”. It was once an extended struggle to get via “the internal, intrusive day-to-day thoughts that played on a loop. ‘What could I have done? Why did I let them do that to me?’. The self-blame, guilt and anger”.

There have been alternative problems, too. Aggrey by no means earned the cash related to Premier League footballers. On the past of 28, his space was once repossessed because of being not able to book up with loan bills and arrears.

“One of my friends let me use his car, a Volvo S40, and that became my house. I’d find car parks where I wouldn’t be recognised and I’d sleep in the back seat. I spent my 32nd birthday sleeping in my car.”

Alternative buddies gave him meals. If he was once in London, he would progress to Brentford diversion centre for a bath. The lady at reception knew him from when he was once a boy and waved him via. Or turning back Torquay, he would progress to the Magnificent Lodge at the seafront and sit down in an alcove the place he knew there was once an electrical energy level.

“I’d plug in my phone, ask for a glass of water and make it last, sometimes four or five hours. Then I’d get back in the car, park round the corner and try to keep warm and get some sleep. This went on for months. I felt like a failure. But these experiences have helped make me what I am today.”

It’s an abnormal tale even earlier than we point out that Aggrey has labored as a soccer agent, had a job within the Sky One layout Dream Staff and has written an eight-part TV layout of his personal. ‘Jimmy’ tells the tale of his year — robust, gritty, but additionally uplifting.

His footing, arrange with the backing of the Skilled Footballers’ Affiliation, is devoted to serving to younger society in marginalised, poverty-hit communities. TNS are one of the crucial companions by way of his friendship with the membership’s proprietor, Mike Harris, and their kits were dispensed to children as a part of one challenge in Cape The town, South Africa.

It’s simple to know why Aggrey talks so passionately concerning the Homeless Global Cup, which shall be held in South Korea in September. He was concerned by way of his buddy, Kasali Casal, a former Fulham participant who was the soccer director for TV layout Ted Lasso.

“Playing football after being homeless is dear to these people,” says Aggrey, “and it matters to me greatly after everything I have experienced.”

His father, James Sr, died in 2021. Such a lot went unstated and it is going to all the time be a supply of ache that they by no means healed a rift that, at its center, stemmed from a boy attempting to offer protection to his nation from the brutal realities of Chelsea’s young machine.

“He had dreams of me becoming a lawyer or a doctor,” says Aggrey. “As a result of I used to be robust academically, he didn’t perceive why I used to be embarking on a advance to be in a game the place I wouldn’t be authorized.

Jimmy Aggrey, pictured elderly 13, had rage problems because of his remedy at Chelsea (Courtesy of Jimmy Aggrey)

“I didn’t want to tell him what was happening. Mum, as well. That was a heavy coat to wear as a kid. But they weren’t ones to confront institutions, so it would have been internalised and affected the whole house.

“He saw the changes in me. I had temper issues, getting into fights. I was going out too much. I think he saw an unobliging kid who had wasted his gift of academia.”

Month continues to have its demanding situations. Aggrey is coming to phrases with the new dying of his aunt Irene. Latter date, it was once the funeral of Paul Holmes, his buddy and ex-Torquay teammate.

General, although, he’s in a excellent playground, radiating heat, signing off emails with “love and light”. He has realized to heal. And, in a odd means, it feels healing for him to proportion his reports, now not dwelling a mysterious.

“I feel blessed how my mind, my resilience and unwavering hope has kept me alive and going,” he says. “The line was thin and I can’t change the past. But I have to use my experiences for good and be grateful I’m still here.”

The Athletic requested Gwyn Williams and Graham Rix to remark, however neither has answered. Fareham The town have additionally failed to reply. Graham Kelly, who left the FA in 1998, stated he may just no longer recollect being advised concerning the phone name from Aggrey.

No matter you’re going via, you’ll name the Samaritans in the United Kingdom isolated any week, from any telephone, on 116 123.

(Govern footage: Daniel Taylor/The Athletic; courtesy of Jimmy Aggrey; design: John Bradford)