Terry Dunfield was making coffee and it was humiliating. Terry Dunfield, the Vancouver kid who signed with Manchester City at 15. Who captained their academy teams and reserve team and was named their young player of the year. Who made his Premier League debut at 19 and played for England's under-21s.
Terry Dunfield, whose picture hangs on a wall at City's academy grounds, Platt Lane, right next to one of Shaun Wright-Phillips.
And now he was making coffee. Because he was told to.
Not that he was good at it. Four coffees. Mixed them up. Spilled on his dress shirt.
"What are you doing? Idiot!" his boss snapped that day in 2005 at Sigma 360, a wealth management firm in Cheshire, England, that handled professional soccer players' money.
One of those players, Kevin Nolan, a young Bolton stud at the time and the same age as Dunfield, was waiting on a coffee.
Shouldn't that have been Dunfield striding through the door at 23? Talking investments? Being asked if he wanted a drink?
"It was really degrading," Dunfield says, still squirming at the memory. "But I had to swallow my pride. I needed the money."
Five years before, in 2000, you'd have thought Dunfield was printing the stuff.
He was 18. Invincible. Had just signed a four-year extension with City, his first major contract. Lived in a great apartment. Had an Audi TT in the driveway. And a BMW. And a Jeep.
The Jeep was to tow the speedboat, which was docked out back on the Manchester canals.
"I thought I was in the [rock band] Stone Roses," says Dunfield, who lived with New Zealand international Chris Killen and Welshman Rhys Day at the time. "And the more people told me to slow down, to stop, the more I wanted not to stop."
Now he was stopped.
Lackey at a wealth management firm. Or chopping trees (seeing a coworker with three fingers, that scared him). Or getting fired from an administrative job. Or sweating in a warehouse while coworkers remarked, "Hey, Terry Dunfield! What are you doing here?"
He was doing whatever the temp agency could find for him, that's what.
"Two hundred quid a week," he says. "Fifty-hour weeks."
He'd sold the boat, the cars, everything. The girlfriends left on their own. But there was still a mortgage to pay. Bad decisions weighed on him and a bad knee made the load that much harder to bear.
"I was thinking: 'Geez, I was a professional footballer, I was at Manchester City, and I've p----d it away.'"
- - -
Terry Dunfield is sitting on a bench at Kitsilano Beach.
It's mid-August, a week after he turned down Scottish Premier League side Motherwell to sign with his hometown Vancouver Whitecaps, and the 28-year-old is looking the laid-back part. Blue button-down shirt. Shorts. Running shoes. Only the Prada shades hint at an extravagant past.
He answers questions thoughtfully, often pausing as if still trying to crystallize his feelings toward the younger him.
Regret? That's not what he feels. He touched a level that most soccer players only dream of. More like curiosity. How high could he have climbed?
It's hard not to wonder. Every weekend, Dunfield watches his former reserve teammates in Premier League action: Wright-Phillips at City, Joey Barton at Newcastle, Dickson Etuhu at Fulham, Stephen Ireland at Aston Villa. The list goes on. Dunfield was their captain.
"I'm buzzing for them," he says, "but there is a part of me that thinks, 'Maybe if things didn't happen so quickly, it might have been different.' Being patient is what was needed at the time."
But he wasn't patient. He wanted to play for the first team. Now.
He'd debuted against Chelsea under Joe Royle in 2001 but City was relegated and Royle was out. Kevin Keegan was in charge.
In 2001-02, Dunfield never played for the first team under Keegan. It was tough on his ego. City's move down a division should have played into his favour. Why was Keegan signing new central midfielders? Eyal Berkovic. Ali Benarbia.
Keegan praised Dunfield's touch, his vision and passing, but he wanted Dunfield to get stronger. Instead of spending more time in the gym, Dunfield adopted an "I'll show you attitude," toward Keegan. He just thought it would happen for him on the field.
"You start to believe all the hype and you stop working," says Dunfield. "As soon as you lose that -- you can have all the ability in the world -- you're finished."
Dunfield was loaned out to Manchester-based Bury, a third-division side. He got that buzz back. Playing. Starting. Being counted on -- at 20.
Then he had a crucial choice to make. Come back to City, said Keegan, fight for your spot and we'll add another year on your deal. Or, go back to Bury.
But Bury was a temptress. It was first-team football. Bury relied on Dunfield. The fans embraced him. Bury called daily.
Dunfield went into a meeting with Keegan and told the coach he was better than Berkovic. Better than Benarbia. He should be playing. Now.
"I told European Footballer of the Year Kevin Keegan he doesn't know what he's doing," Dunfield says, laughing at the sheer audacityofit .
"I never looked at the big picture. "It was a horrible decision. Not just leaving Manchester City, but surely there was somewhere between
- - -
Kim Dunfield picked up the phone in Vancouver. It was his son.
"Dad, I'm finished," Terry blurted out, bawling. "My knee is gone. I'm done."
It was early 2006. Dunfield had been on trial with fourth-division side Chester City. But four days in, walking with a limp, his knee swollen, devastated, Dunfield thought he'd have to hang up his boots.
"I can't imagine there being any sadder day than that," says Kim. "It was a long haul from 14 to that point."
The Bury experience had started well enough. They were winning. Made an F.A. Cup run past Stoke and Bolton. But by the following season, 2003-04, the youth movement was taking hold at City as Keegan's high-priced transfers flopped. Dunfield's former reserve teammates were playing, succeeding. The big picture was coming into sharp focus.
"I'm better than the third division," Dunfield thought. And he'd started to get his priorities straight.
Dunfield's deal was up at the end of 2004-05. He'd be on a free transfer. Figured he'd land in the second division. Then, in a January 2005 game against Leyton Orient, Dunfield caught his right boot in the ground, jolted his knee and was done for the year.
Injured and out of contract, the lifestyle was gone and the phone stopped ringing. Cue those dark days in warehouses and offices.
But those days also made him realize how much he loved the game. Reminded him of why he came over as a 15-year-old in the first place; reminded him of that boy who carried a soccer ball to class.
"He said, 'You know, Dad, I just miss everything about it,'" says Kim. "He missed training, rides home from away games. He really realized once it was taken away how important it was."
And he busted his butt to get it back. Dunfield was in the gym at 6 a.m. before work. After work, back in the gym. Just strengthen the muscles around your knee, the physiotherapists had told him after surgery. At Chester City, his knee told him otherwise.
As a last resort, Dunfield flew to see Dr. Robert McCormack in New Westminster. McCormack went in, found a bit of cartilage that had chipped off Dunfield's femur, cleaned it up and delivered the news.
"He woke me and said 'You'll play again in nine months,'" says Dunfield. "I broke down crying in the bed. It was the quickest nine months ever."
Nine months later, Dunfield signed on for the 2007-08 season with fourth-division Macclesfield Town in Cheshire. Asa Hartford, his old Manchester City reserves coach, was an assistant there.
"He was our best player," Hartford says. "He was much more dedicated. He'd grown up."
Playing for the first time in two-and-a-half years, every practice seemed like a cup final. Dunfield could barely contain his enthusiasm in games, racking up 14 bookings.
"All of a sudden, I was an animal," he says with a laugh. "I was a professional footballer again, and I loved it."
- - -
Ask Terry Dunfield what jumps out at him about Whitecaps coach Teitur Thordarson and he'll say it's Thordarson's uncompromising team-first attitude.
"He's not interested in prima donnas," says Dunfield. "And that's great."
Dunfield is a character -- "He's good to have around the team, especially if it's been a long week of training," says Whitecap Chris Williams -- but he's no prima donna. Not any more.
Vancouver excites him. Major League Soccer excites him. Playing for Canada, perhaps more than anything, excites him.
When Dunfield was called up for a May friendly in Venezuela, he said he'd swim to South America for his first cap. He might have done, too.
Dunfield missed his flight because his passport was only valid for six weeks. He rushed to the passport office, explained "I'm 28 and I'm never going to get another call-up," convinced someone to help and bought his own ticket to Venezuela.
Birmingham to New York. New York to Bogota. Bogota to Caracas. Caracas to Meridia. He met up with a team grumpy from its own travel delays and practice snafus, but Dunfield was bouncing off the walls.
"It was a disaster of a trip," says Canada's head coach, Stephen Hart, "and Terry took it all in stride. He was really, really good in Venezuela. He was excellent with the young players and, of course, eager to establish himself."
"The opportunity to play for Canada meant everything to me," Dunfield says.
That he's in Vancouver is more proof of that. Dunfield had another year left on his deal at fourth-division Shrewsbury Town but bought out his contract so he could seek out a higher level. He had to agree not to sign in England.
"I was probably the only footballer in Europe who paid money to be out of work," he says.
He didn't realize at the time that he was paying for an opportunity to return home, almost 14 years after the legendary Alan Ball took an interest in him at City.
An opportunity to revise his story. The one that reads: "Terry Dunfield was a Vancouver wunderkind who signed with Manchester City, rose up the ranks to start a Premier League game against Chelsea, and then dropped off the soccer map."
"I've definitely made the most of that one game," he says. "I need some new stories now."
mweber@theprovince.com
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