A ONE-CAP England star has been made the guest of honour for England’s clash with Greece on Thursday.
The now 43-year-old made his one and only cap for the Three Lions at the age of 25 as a second half substitute in a 4-0 friendly win against Greece in August 2006.
However, Chris Kirkland – once the most expensive goalkeeper in Britain after a £6million transfer to Liverpool – oddly never received the traditional cap commemorating his appearance.
This oversight was only brought to the attention of the FA in recent months, who, following a flurry of apologies, promised to rectify the situation.
And 18 years after Kirkland’s debut, he will now receive that cap as England once again play Greece.
That appearance made good on a famous bet made by his father, Eddie, and some family friends for him to play for the national team.
The 100/1 bet of £98.10 bagged the group £10,000 each.
Reflecting on that bet, Kirkland told The Athletic: “If I’d gone into the bookies’ with my dad, and they’d seen me, I’m sure he would have got a lot better odds than 100/1.
“I was very gangly. I wasn’t in the best shape. I must have done OK.
“My dad must have seen something. I went from playing my first game in goal at nearly 14 to making my Premier League debut (for Coventry City) at 18. It was a rapid rise.”
Kirkland starred in the top flight of English football from 2000 to 2011, starring for Coventry, Liverpool, West Brom and Wigan, before later turning out for Leicester, Doncaster, Sheffield Wednesday and Preston in the Championship.
However, Kirkland was plagued with injuries throughout his career, with a back problem proving the most detrimental.
After signing for The Owls in 2012, a back spasm two days before their opening game of the season prompted him to desperately rely on painkilling tablet Tramadol as anxiety over his past knocks haunted him.
He said: “I started leaving at 5:45am and getting to the training ground hours before everyone else.
“I got really anxious about it, so I started taking more tablets for the anxiety. I was on a slippery slope.
“Tramadol is meant to be a maximum of 400mg a day. I got to the point where I was taking 2,500mg a day.
“I was taking them out onto the pitch in my goalie bag. It wasn’t for the pain. It was because I was addicted.
“They were the first thing I thought about when I woke up and the last thing I thought about at night.”
Tramadol was placed on the banned substance list of the World Anti-Doping Agency nine months ago.
Kirkland opened up on his struggles with addiction to the substance, which went so far to making him not want to play football.
He said: “I was well into the addiction. I couldn’t reverse my mindset, couldn’t reverse my addiction.
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“I got worse and worse. I didn’t want to do anything when I got home, didn’t want to socialise, didn’t want to go out. Eventually, I didn’t want to play football.”
The Covid-19 pandemic set Kirkland back on his road to kicking his addiction before he went to rehab in early 2022.
Kirkland, who has proudly been clean for two and a half years, has revealed that players have privately contacted him asking for help to wean themselves off painkillers.
He added: “I’m not saying it’s every other player, but it’s more than you would think.
“It’s on the banned list now, but I wouldn’t be surprised if someone gets caught with them.
“They’re not performance-enhancing. They’re not going to turn you into Superman or make you save every shot that comes in.
“They’re dangerous. That’s the issue. I was fainting, heart palpitations, hallucinations, violently ill. They can kill you. They should have killed me. They nearly did.”
Since hanging up his gloves, Kirkland moved into coaching.
He started out at Port Vale in 2017, before moving to Liverpool as a women’s team coach before becoming caretaker manager.
Kirkland reverted back to goalkeeper coach and assistant manager before leaving the club in 2019 to focus on the Chris Kirkland goalkeeper academy which he had founded in 2017.
In June 2020 he was appointed goalkeeping coach at Colne.
He has also embarked on charitable work by going on a series of fundraising walks alongside the LFC Foundation, PFA and various other bodies.
If you are affected by any of the issues raised in this article, please call the Samaritans for free on 116123.
