Taiwo - I Don't Want To Leave Loftus Road

Exclusive: Defender Taiwo is desperate to guide club through difficult run-in to ensure his Loftus Road love affair continues.

Getting stuck in: Taye Taiwo’s battling qualities will be crucial to QPR as they face Tottenham, Chelsea and Manchester City in the closing weeks

Queens Park Rangers
Julian Bennetts
20 April 2012

Taye Taiwo has spent his life fighting and isn’t going to give up now. From his youth on the streets of Lagos, where he was told he was too poor to play football, to his time as a reserve at AC Milan, the 27-year-old’s character has shone through.

Now comes a test as tough as any of those he has overcome — the battle to keep Queens Park Rangers in the* Premier League.

With four games left, Mark Hughes’s side are two points above the trapdoor. The snag, and it is rather a large one, is that three of those games are against Tottenham, Chelsea and Manchester City. A tougher run-in is scarcely imaginable but Rangers are a club that rarely do things the easy way.

Indeed, it could be argued that games against sides in the upper echelons are preferable, considering that Arsenal and Liverpool have both lost at Loftus Road in the past four weeks.

Taiwo has as much incentive to avoid the dreaded drop as anyone in the home dressing room.

If Rangers are relegated he will return to the San Siro, where he feels unwelcome and unwanted. Survive and a permanent £3.5million move to the club he says he has fallen in love with will be finalised.

Taiwo makes it clear he is not yet ready to leave England. The idea of plying his trade in the Premier League was planted by Harry Redknapp, now in charge of tomorrow’s opponents, Tottenham, when the England manager in waiting attempted to buy him for Portsmouth.

It continued when Hughes tried to lure him to Manchester City in 2008. Now, finally, he is here — and he is determined this chapter of his life won’t end just yet.

“It has been a long time coming for me to play in England,” he said.

“The deals have never quite been done. Harry Redknapp, a great man, tried to buy me for Portsmouth when Kanu was there. He looked at me for a long time.

“Then so did Mark Hughes at Manchester City. But Marseille (the club he was at for six years before joining Milan last summer) always said ‘no’.

“Now I feel at home here. Everyone has welcomed me and I enjoy playing here. I know I haven’t been here a long time but if I am here next season then I will be very happy.

“I don’t want to go back to Milan. I pray that QPR will stay up as we have an agreement that I will stay if they do and that would be fantastic for me.”

Rangers paid for failing to take their chances as they were beaten at West Brom last weekend but Taiwo knows Rangers will survive only if they play without fear.

“Gareth Bale and Aaron Lennon — oh my God,” he laughs, pretending to fan his face in mock horror at the prospect that awaits his side at Loftus Road tomorrow.

“But I can defend, I certainly know that. I will say to them at the start of the game, ‘Boy, today you are going nowhere. Nowhere! I’m going to stick with you and stop you — maybe even sit with you at half-time in your dressing room!’

“It’s about commitment now. Tottenham lost very badly against Chelsea but it will be a new game and they have fantastic players and a great manager.

“For us the important thing is not to be scared. Sometimes you think ‘if I shoot maybe it will go wrong’. No. We cannot be scared of nobody or no one.

“Each player in our team has great talents and we have to pull together. We also have a great manager, a wonderful man, and we know what he expects from us — to be 500 per cent committed and give everything. This is the biggest game of our season.”

ThaT Taiwo is so relaxed about this weekend is perhaps due to his upbringing. Desperate to play football in Lagos, he and his friends were told they could not afford the entry fee for the local five-a-side tournament. His easy smile and infectious laugh eventually helped persuade the organisers to relent and there began his astonishing journey.

“We won everything, man, everything!” he said. “We would finish school, drop our bags and play to enjoy ourselves. I was asked if I wanted to join a club but I said no as I wanted to go out, play with my friends and have a good time. I thought a club wouldn’t let me have fun.

“But my family gave me confidence I could make it in football so eventually I said yes and I made my debut for the Nigerian national team against South Africa in 2004.

“That night I was in my hotel room and I got a phone call from the president of Marseille — he wanted to sign me. I didn’t think he was serious.

“I had seen them on TV and they had players such as Didier Drogba — I thought I could never play with them.

“But I flew to France and they thought I was a good player so I stayed there for six years. It was amazing.”

And from there, via the San Siro, Taiwo has found a second home at Loftus Road.

Now the challenge is to extend both his and QPR’s stay in the top flight.

 

‘Boy, today you are going nowhere. Nowhere! I’m going to stick with you and stop you — maybe even sit with you at half-time in your dressing room!’

Taye Taiwo to Bale and Lennon. I love that comment. Try saying it in a Nigerian accent.

 

Touché mon Oslo.