Returning pundit Cottee lays to rest 15-year-old remarks

The Asian fans had waited almost 15 years for an apology from the former Premier League star. And this week, ex-West Ham and Everton striker Tony Cottee finally laid to rest the controversy that had been brewing since he became the Malaysian League's biggest signing in 1996.

Cottee put many noses out of joint with his less-than-complimentary observations about the level of the sport's professionalism in Southeast Asia. He wasn't happy that he had to clean his own boots, that he saw mushrooms growing on some of the pitches he played on and that his Muslim roommate's morning prayers regularly woke him at 5am.

Malaysian fans were still grumbling about the oft-quoted comments when Cottee made a return to Kuala Lumpur this week to work as a TV pundit. He says that while his infamous remarks aren't inaccurate, they were taken out of context, isolated from the positive statements he made about his Asian sojourn.

'Was I misquoted? Yes. Of course I was,' he said. 'I apologise ... I should have known better. But that's how newspapers work, not just in Malaysia. In England, it's even worse.

'The last thing I am is a prima donna but I was just used to a higher standard of football and a higher standard of professionalism. When you go to another country and when you question the other guys, that is perhaps why I was pictured the wrong way.'

Cottee stunned the sporting world when he went from the Premier League with West Ham United under Harry Redknapp to Selangor, near Kuala Lumpur, for a fee of ?750,000 in October 1996. Aged 31 at the time, he had scored 182 league goals over 14 seasons with the Hammers and Everton.

'More mushrooms than magic', was how one humourist described Cottee's 10-month spell with the Red Giants, but his stats are more than respectable: 14 goals in 24 league matches and two trophies, the Malaysia and FA Cups. At the time, it was the first significant silverware he'd ever won.