Glamour long gone but Marinello keeps mellow

SOMETIMES it’s better to begin at the end. Peter Marinello is just leaving a coffee shop named Cafe Paris in a place called Southbourne. Since we are in a seaside town on the English south coast there is something about the place which speaks of regret. Prematurely-terminated holiday romances aren’t the only thing which linger half-realised in the tense winter silence.

"Tell the wee fellow good luck from me," says Marinello, half-disappearing out the door. It’s typical of the charming man who has just spent the best part of two hours giving a pretty good impersonation of someone whose footballing career has been a monument to misfortune and missed chances.

When a star for Hibs he was pushed into a move south before he was ready, and then at Arsenal his first run of top-team games was cruelly halted by a knee injury. His subsequent move to Portsmouth soured when the club became financially crippled, something not unconnected with the 100,000 they had shelled out for Marinello in the first place. Later he would buy a racehorse with Alan Ball called Go-Go-Gunner, one he ruefully reflects should have been named No-Go- Gunner. Yet there he goes: craving the best for Derek Riordan, the Hibs player who Mike Aitken in these pages on Monday hailed as the most exciting forward seen by supporters at Easter Road since another wiry local lad held them in thrall. Marinello once had it all to lose too.

"Excuse me, but what’s his name?" asks the waitress of the man she’s overheard talking football in this place before. That was Peter Marinello, and attention must be paid. "Peter what? Marinella?" No, Marinello. The O is important. How else could the Easter Road faithful who once adored him have been able to rhyme it with "mellow yellow", to the tune of Donovan’s late Sixties’ bliss-out single of the same name?

The miles between Edinburgh and a suburb of Bournemouth should not render any less resonant the warning sounded from a grey headed gentleman who can truly attest to having lived life as a contender. There is little in the way of bitterness in Marinello when he recounts how a move to Arsenal in early 1970 didn’t quite unfold the way it was supposed to. But how was it supposed to? He was hailed as the new George Best then. In many ways his life did mirror the Irish legend’s, although not always in the way expected. A harum-scarum business life took its toll in 1994, when Marinello was declared bankrupt, while his health has taken a hit. A hip replacement was carried out last November, treatment partly funded by the Professional Footballers’ Association, and the other is pending.

The arthritis that subtly swept into his joints can’t have helped, but Marinello never spared those hips, when either artfully evading defenders on the wing or attracting admiring glances beneath the glitter-ball. While dancing is no longer his thing, he only finished playing football two years ago, turning out for a team called Parkbury in the Bournemouth Amateur league alongside his eldest son, Paul. "I have been 15 years down here now," he explains. "It was enforced. I had some businesses which went bad [in Edinburgh]. One of my mates gave me a haven down here. And we’ve been here ever since. My son played in the same team as me. He works harder than I did - is a player’s player. He hasn’t got my ability though."

His other son, John, is more interested in catching waves: "He’s a bit more erratic. I suppose he takes after me when I was young."

The Marinello footballing legacy is being most faithfully tended to by his niece, Eve, a "tough-tackling full-back" who turns out for the Crammond Girls’ Club under-13 side, and, also in Edinburgh, by Riordan, who some are saying put them in mind of the young gun-slinger with the eye-catchingly stylish name who starred for Hibs between 1967 and 1970.

Marinello still keeps up with events at Hibs, though he makes a mental note to himself to send off a long promised fiver to the Former Players’ Association at Easter Road in order to become a fully-paid up member of the old boys’ network. "I get free tickets then, you see," he says. Even here, in a pine-fringed coastal resort on the very edge of England, the ripples of excitement that emanate from Easter Road can be felt.

"I like the look of Riordan," he says. "He’s got great feet, and is quite quick. If he trains hard and concentrates on his speed off the mark then I don’t think he’d have a problem in England. But money isn’t everything. He’s only 22. I got it too quick. He needs more games, and more experience. Hibs are the size of club who, if the money’s right, will sell him. But it’s got to be right for him as well. His manager, Tony Mowbray, seems to be a pleasant man. He should listen to him."

Perhaps it was the hair, which fell luxuriously over his ears, but Marinello didn’t heed such advice. It is why he is now permitted to deliver it. In Marinello life there is no unintentionally ironic where-did-it-all-go-wrong moment. There is no bell-boy’s hapless stumble into a hotel room to find Marinello’s bed heaped with money, girls and booze. At least none that has been recorded. There was always something a bit more innocent about Marinello, and perhaps more loveable. "They even wanted me to make a record," he gushes. "I did a demo, though I needed a few drinks first. Then they said: ‘Do you recite poetry?’ I told them to forget it."

Julie Burchill, the Brighton-based writer, and one of the many of her generation who once held a light for someone too beautiful to be the sixth Beatle, recounts in her paean to David Beckham, Burchill on Beckham: "I remember having a moderate crush on him [Marinello] when I was ten and he signed for Arsenal in 1970, at the age of 19. Within days the boy from an Edinburgh prefab was offered a guest appearance on Top of the Pops (a big deal back then), modelling contracts and newspaper columns."

No one is suggesting this might be Riordan’s fate should he decide to head south. He’s a pleasant enough lad, but this cross between Oor Wullie and a 19th century chimney sweep is unlikely to bring the King’s Road to a halt. Yet Marinello’s cautionary tale can still be regarded as relevant since Riordan has already displayed some evidence of wilful career self-destruction, with an arrest for breach of the peace last month and a dressing down from Scotland Under-21 manager Rainer Bonhof for breaking a curfew when on international duty. Marinello was a committed hell-raiser, but he knew reparations had to be paid the following morning, under the all-knowing eye of coach Don Howe.

"If we came in smelling of booze he would train us until we spewed," he recalls. One wonders what old-school Arsenal thought of this expensive purchase from Scotland, who only had to turn up at Highbury to sign for the Gunners in a mac to spark a trend for the coat. As often sighted on Top of the Pops as in the Arsenal double- winning side of 1970-71 - Marinello made two appearances for each - the pretty boy from the Lothians was viewed with a certain suspicion almost from the moment he signed: "When I went for my medical, I remember the doctor saying: f***king hell, we haven’t just paid 100,000 for you, have we?" he recalls. "There’s nothing of you." Arsenal put him on a special diet to build him up, the excuse he probably didn’t need to drain London bars of Guinness.

But the diet had immediate effect. He scored on his debut, against Manchester United at Old Trafford. It was perhaps the worst thing he could have done. Expectation swelled further, if that was possible. Marinello, remember, was still a teenager, unwillingly sprung from an enjoyable time at Hibs, where he said players just went out and played - "we didn’t worry about the other team". At Arsenal, although he says the team were initially inferior to the Hibs side he had left, the approach was more professional. "English football was a culture shock," he says. "At my first training session I thought there must be a plane coming in to land there were so many cones around."

But he enjoyed it there, and wishes he’d never left. A European Cup quarter-final against Ajax was perhaps the pinnacle. While he played well in the second leg at Highbury he also missed a chance that he says is still recalled in anguish by Arsenal fans he meets. "They never mention the own goal by George Graham which lost us the tie," he complains.

He left Arsenal the following year. "I pushed for a move," he explains. "They offered me another three year contract but I had agreed to join Portsmouth. I’d become a soccer mercenary. I chased the dollar. It was stupid. The Arsenal double-winning side was breaking up. George Graham had gone, Frank McLintock had left. It was a new era, and I was in-between. The Bradys were coming through, the Rixs, the Stapeltons and the O’Learys. I should have stayed. I still felt I had the ability. But Portsmouth were offering quite a bit of money.

"I played until I was 50, and I always loved the game," he continues. "But I got a wee bit cynical at that time. I think it actually all stems from Hibs. They had taken the dollar in the first place for me, after all."

Suddenly we’re back in the here and now, back in the life set in motion by that decision by Hibs to accept Arsenal’s offer of 100,000, which The Observer sports monthly, rather harshly including Marinello in a top ten of biggest wastes of money in football history, calculated was worth the equivalent of 9.4m today. It’s a life that has had its bumps but the spirit remains unshakeable. Marinello still coaches Parkbury, and has a 16 year-old he believes could make it with the right application. "But I think I want it more than he does," he says, with a wink.