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Goal oriented

Former England footballer Ian Walker, one of a number of international players to join big-spending Chinese Super League club Shanghai Shenhua, talks to Simon Parry about tackling life in the East

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Walker with girlfriend Samantha Thurman and their son, Jaxson, in Spain earlier this year. Photo: Red Door News, Hong Kong

It was the day he found himself munching on a frog in the training ground canteen that former Tottenham Hotspur and England goalkeeper Ian Walker realised how shockingly different life with a Chinese football team might be.

"I didn't know what it was at first, so I had a bite," he says. "Then I asked, 'What's this?' and they said, 'Frog', and I said, 'Frog's legs?', and they said, 'No, whole frog.' I said, 'Right, I'm not having that.' I wasn't too pleased."

Of all the foreign stars to sign for big-spending Shanghai Shenhua, Walker - who left behind a sun lounger in Spain's Costa del Sol to become the team's goalkeeping coach in April - is arguably the most unlikely. A torchbearer for Britain's 1990s "lad culture", the 40-year-old Essex native had a glittering 13-year playing career, married a Page Three model (those who bare their breasts in British tabloid The Sun), drove a 7-Series BMW and lived in a £2.5 million (HK$30 million) mock-Tudor mansion in Cobham, Surrey.

Seemingly determined to live out every cliché of the working-class footballer millionaire, he was once linked to a television soap star then left his wife and daughter for another attractive young blonde, Samantha Thurman, who he met on a trip to Las Vegas.

So, after a roller-coaster life of glamour in London, Miami, where Thurman is from, and, most recently, Estepona in Spain, it is hardly surprising that Walker is suffering a touch of culture shock after moving to China - especially when it comes to sustenance.

"The worst thing is the food," he grimaces. "I haven't been served any dog yet. They tell me they don't do that anymore - but I did have a very suspicious burger once. One day, I was having a stroll around one of the shopping centres and I was hungry so I went into a restaurant for lunch. The special was chicken soup, and it was basically a chicken with its head sticking out of a pan of clear soup. It wasn't even cut up. It was just sitting there, looking up at me."

A few months after he was invited to take up the job by Shanghai Shenhua striker and former Bolton Wanderers teammate Nicolas Anelka, Walker's easy-going good humour has been tested by aspects of Chinese living other than the curious cuisine.

Simon Parry has been a newspaper journalist for more than 30 years and writes stories and features from Asia for newspapers and magazines around the world. He is based in Hong Kong and has reported from more than 25 countries and territories including North Korea, Pakistan, India, Cambodia, Vietnam, China, Indonesia, Australia, and Papua New Guinea.
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