We need to start with the new manager, who stands in front of the dugout telling a complicated and sometimes controversial story. His club made the decision not to allow him to play on the last day of the season. The AthleticUpon entering the stadium?
Michael McIndoe’s playing career took in more than 500 matches with 10 English clubs before he decided, at the age of 31, that he wanted to find new adventures away from football.
However, there are other reasons why a man with a history of previous clubs will always have some notoriety. Wolverhampton Wanderers, Bristol City, Derby County Coventry City.
McIndoe has been accused of being “the mastermind behind the biggest case of fraud to hit the British game” and, if that sounds dramatic, this is how his own autobiography describes the allegations that, by his own admission, have left a permanent stain on his reputation.
The man is currently trying to reinvent himself as Gretna 2008 FC’s fifth-tier manager.
Some lost huge amounts. Five players from Wolves alone were reportedly owed £2.6million before McIndoe was declared bankrupt in 2015 and the Metropolitan Police launched a fraud investigation through the specialist Falcon Unit at New Scotland Yard. Two years later, McIndoe declared bankruptcy.
McIndoe (left), in his Doncaster days. (Photo by Shaun Botterill/Getty Images).
McIndoe vanished for a time, but he’s back. McIndoe was never charged and was not even arrested. He has maintained that he never created a Ponzi or investment scheme that allowed participants to make huge profits.
McIndoe challenged his case, saying that the personal loans were personal loans. He was unable, however, to repay them all due to the gambling debts and failing business ventures. Some reports, challenged by McIndoe, have stated that more than 300 people were owed money, a Who’s Who of the football industry that included Robbie Keane, Jimmy Bullard, Gabby Agbonlahor and many others from the Premier LeagueTo the lower divisions.
“I humbly apologise,” McIndoe said in 2017, addressing the people who lost money, adding that he was usually “meticulous” about paying back debts.
McIndoe, now five years old, has taken up residence in Gretna. There, the former football club, which was liquidated 2008, went by “The Wedding Makers” because there were many couples who crossed the border from England to tie their knot.
McIndoe was appointed as Gretna’s sporting director in the summer and took over as manager last month after a dismal start to the season.
We are happy to announce the addition of Robbie Park and Michael McIndoe to our club’s management team.
Full statement on Facebook https://t.co/HTJqcN2spbOffical App and Instagram pic.twitter.com/OBKzf9sYjf
— Gretna FC 2008 (@GretnaFC2008) September 20, 2022
Gretna’s early-season struggles included a 7-0 defeat and were all part of a wider story of drift and dissatisfaction. They won just two of the 34 matches last season and conceded 109 goals. The previous year, when COVID-19 ended the season early, their own website ran an article that noted forlornly “the one good thing about Coronavirus being that it saved us from further misery”.
Then, something unexpected happened. Gretna won McIndoe’s first game. Their next win included the team’s first clean sheet for 14 months. They won the three following games. A five-game winning streak represented Gretna’s best run of form for eight years.
On Saturday, they reverted to type by crashing out of the Scottish Cup with a 4-1 home defeat to Drumchapel United but it has still been an encouraging start for Gretna with a new manager who is described by one former team-mate as “one of the most hated men in football”.
McIndoe is not going to talk about it. His story remains complex.
When he took the job, he made it clear to Gretna’s board of directors that he would not be doing any interviews whatsoever, even if the questions were purely about football and club matters. He wanted to keep media away as much as possible. He was firm in his stance and would not compromise it. The AthleticGretna decided to ban media outlets that want to cover the games as it was discovered at the weekend.
On Friday night, we got in touch with the club’s chairman, Alex Thomson, to confirm we would be at their game the following day and assure him that we understood and respected McIndoe’s position. Gretna knew for two weeks that we were coming. We wanted to find out if the chairman or anyone else at the club would be willing to share anything positive about the turnaround in the results. The chance to praise their new manager.
“We have decided we do not wish to answer any questions or give any interviews and, to be fair, we would not have time even had we wanted to,” he replied, via text message.
Soon after, we received a follow up message stating that we would be denied entry to the turnstiles. McIndoe didn’t want us there and neither did his staff.
“I have spoken to the board,” said Thomson. “They, and the management team, do not want you in the stadium.”
Who is Michael McIndoe the real Michael McIndoe, you ask?
Perhaps the best place to start is by delving a little deeper into McIndoe’s background rather than focussing everything on the missing millions and the five-year period for which he will always be synonymous.
It is a remarkable story, in many senses, and it is easy to understand why one newspaper review of his 2017 autobiography, Wildling, noted how “it makes Trainspotting read like Enid Blyton’s Famous Five”.
McIndoe was raised amid gang violence and drugs. At the tender age of 12, he had a knife in his hand. McIndoe was an avid drinker of alcohol. Violence, too. He was 14 when he was questioned by police about an armed robbery.
His mother raised him on The Calders, an estate made up of high-rise tower blocks and concrete that was built in the 1970s. McIndoe recounts a story about the first Asian family to move into the neighborhood. Their car was petrol bombed the day after they arrived. Their house was set ablaze the next day when petrol was poured through their mailbox.
McIndoe is seen in action for Coventry City. (Photo by Getty Images).
McIndoe is now 42 years old and still has a bald area on the back of McIndoe’s head from being struck with an object during a gang battle involving knives, golf clubs, and bats.
He was dealing drugs on another estate when the axe was thrown at him. After he ran up a large debt with a local psychopath, one of his friends had a crossbow tied to his head. After being sliced in half during a knife fight, another friend needed 52 stitches. McIndoe remembers McIndoe hearing the screams of another friend who was held to a wall by a lighter. “By 13, I’d grown up way beyond my years,” he writes in Wildling. “I’d seen things no child should see. Most people will never see in an entire lifetime the amount of violence I’d been exposed to.”
McIndoe took these risks: he was too high, he smoked weed, he got high, and he nearly jumped from his 11th-floor flat because he believed in his hallucinogenic state he could fly. He knew it was his only existence.
Then there is the story he tells about the time he went round to his father’s flat, where he would sometimes sleep on the floor, and was given an ultimatum.
His father, who was 6ft 5in (196cm) with a temper, pulled him off the sofa, dragged him across the floor and jammed his son’s foot on top of a coffee table. He placed his boot on his kneecap, and began to press down hard. His son was then asked to decide between football and the gang. “He threatened to break my leg if I chose the gang,” McIndoe recalls. “I could tell by his tone that he wasn’t bluffing.”
McIndoe had the chance to get out through football. His drinking and behavior was so out of control at Luton Town (his first club), that McIndoe spent Millennium eve at the Priory Hospital. He was 20 years old, spiralling into alcoholism, trying to work out how to raise £50,000 to pay off the loan sharks.
Paul Merson, an ex England international, was struggling with his own demons and paid him a visit. He became his mentor unofficially.
“I’d lost my job, my girlfriend, my driving licence and had huge gambling debts,” McIndoe said in an interview with The Times in 2005. “He sat me down and said, ‘Maybe you have a problem?’ When the doctor says, ‘You’ll be dead if you keep doing this for 10 years’, it also sways the mind.”
These are the experiences that can shape a man’s life. And McIndoe’s mates from The Calders were not so lucky. Two are dead. One is in long-term prison.
All of which makes his own life — or certainly parts of it — feel like a success story, of sorts, given that he had 13 years as a professional footballer, won Scotland B caps and would have played in the Premier League but for Bristol City losing to Hull CityIn the 2008 play-off final.
He may have to accept that there are many people around football who see the game differently and find it difficult to be excited about his return.
“I don’t know how he thinks he can operate in football,” says one former team-mate, speaking on the basis of anonymity, who saw the suffering it caused and lost out financially himself. “He abused the dressing-room code that there are certain things you just don’t do. For someone who wasn’t a top player, everyone in football knew about him. I would actually say he must be one of the most hated men in football.”
Some find it hard to forgive when the reputation of ‘Macca’ was as a party animal who blew his money on hard gambling, lavish holidays in exclusive resorts, and the nightclub, Stamp, that he opened in Oxford Street, London, and closed three months later.
McIndoe was flashy: sunglasses, designer labels and big houses. He carried large amounts of cash.
McIndoe’s briefcase was taken into the dressing room by McIndoe, who, after quitting alcohol, gave the impression that he was carrying important documents concerning property and investment. The other players opened it one day. There was also a pencil and calculator inside.
There is only one working turnstile among the whitewashed walls of Raydale Park, home of Gretna 2008 FC, and it is manned by the club’s chairman.
“I do the turnstile because it means I can meet every fan who comes through,” Thomson told The AthleticDuring an introductory call 10 Days ago. “I look at it like, ‘If anyone ever has a gripe and wants to speak to the chairman, I’m there’. The door’s always open.”
McIndoe began managing the side that won seven league matches over the three previous seasons.
Gretna knew that this appointment would split opinion. “People were a bit worried that we took him on,” said Thomson. “I’d tell them, ‘Nothing was proven’.”
At the same time, it is difficult to think Gretna could appoint somebody with McIndoe’s background and not understand that there will be media outlets who want to cover the story. He will get more attention if he does well.
When The Athletic made its first contact with Gretna two weeks ago, it took various calls, messages and emails before the club’s media contact, Iain Martin, eventually got back. His text was brief and straight to point. “Many thanks for your inquiry,” it read, “but we are not interested in your article.”
Thomson said that we would receive old-fashioned Scottish hospitality, so long as he was concerned. “We’re not going to ban you from coming to the ground,” he said. “You’re very welcome to come along.”
McIndoe, he explained, would not even give interviews with the club’s own media team. Robbie Park was the assistant manager and everything was handled instead.
“The thing is, Michael got scarred by the press,” said Thomson. “He won’t do interviews. We have tried, but I can’t force him. We want to be as public as possible. But I’ve got to respect Michael’s wishes.”
Attitudes hardened. Internal talks were held. McIndoe participated. On Friday, McIndoe was informed that entry had been blocked. “I cannot go against my board members and management,” Thomson explained. “I do not want to upset our manager and team when we have just turned a corner.”
McIndoe has built an internal wall around himself, making it hard to form an opinion on who he is in 2022. He is someone to avoid, or a bad guy. Are his claims that he is misunderstood and that there are many layers to his personality true?
People who lost money pointed out that McIndoe could have been seen as trying profit from his notoriety. He wrote an autobiography, and, despite being in the media, included a quote at the front of a Daily Record review.
Do you think he is afraid of being asked awkward questions in interviews? Is it protest over what he described as media distortion and exaggeration in the past? Maybe the truth is somewhere in-between.
However, there is another theory. He may keep a low profile as he knows that some of the people who suffered financial losses hold a grudge. Some of those people have kept in touch with one another since McIndoe returned to football. They have also shared photos of McIndoe from the touchline. There is bitterness.
All that can really be said for certain is that McIndoe remains one of football’s more controversial characters and, judging by the early evidence, it might be that he suits management more than his opponents would care to admit.
McIndoe was a player who also played at Yeovil Town and Hereford United. BarnsleyMilton Keynes Dons, has a changed appearance.
He has a new haircut. He has a beard. He moved to the United States from England. He is happy with his new look, and has no desire to remember what he was doing before.
(Top photo: Mike Egerton – PA Images via Getty Images)
