Neil Etheridge: ‘I was About a Week Away from Going Back to the Philippines’

 Neil Etheridge has kept 19 clean sheets for Cardiff this season on Neil Warnock’s team’s march back to the Premier League. Photograph: James Williamson - AMA/Getty Images
Neil Etheridge has kept 19 clean sheets for Cardiff this season on Neil Warnock’s team’s march back to the Premier League. Photograph: James Williamson - AMA/Getty Images
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Neil Etheridge: ‘I was About a Week Away from Going Back to the Philippines’

 Neil Etheridge has kept 19 clean sheets for Cardiff this season on Neil Warnock’s team’s march back to the Premier League. Photograph: James Williamson - AMA/Getty Images
Neil Etheridge has kept 19 clean sheets for Cardiff this season on Neil Warnock’s team’s march back to the Premier League. Photograph: James Williamson - AMA/Getty Images

From turning out for non-league Leatherhead to being released by Fulham, sleeping on a friend’s couch at Oldham and dipping into his own pocket to train at Charlton Neil Etheridge’s journey to the Premier League has taken him on a roundabout route that also includes racking up thousands of air miles travelling back and forth to the Philippines, where his status as the country’s most famous footballer has just been rubber-stamped.

It is an inspirational story that Etheridge tells as he sits on a stage in Cardiff’s press room, still wearing his green goalkeeper’s shirt, basking in the glow of their promotion from the Championship while also reflecting on the day when he was ready to give up on the dream of carving out a career in the Football League. “I sold my house and I sold my cars and I was about a week away from going back to the Philippines,” says Etheridge, who was born in Enfield to an English father and a Filipino mother.

The year was 2014 and Etheridge had been out of work for five months after being released by Fulham, where he made only one appearance, in a Europa League game under Martin Jol, after joining the club as a teenager from Chelsea. Asked what he did during that time without a club, Etheridge replies: “Paid for myself to train at Charlton Athletic. I was close to the goalkeeping coach there, so I just trained as hard as I could and waited. That time is all in the past now but it will never leave me because it’s made me who I am today.”

In October of that year, with patience running out and his bags packed, Etheridge received a call from out of the blue that put his flight to the Philippines on hold. “I got offered a short-term contract at Oldham, to sit on the bench,” says Etheridge, whose only game for the club was in the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy against Preston North End. “I was living on my mate’s sofa while I was there. But that’s what you’ve got to do to get by.”

A few days after the Preston match, Charlton asked to take Etheridge on loan and he was back at the Valley, where he broke into the first-team in December but was unable to hold down the No 1 spot and was let go at the end of the season in what was starting to sound like a familiar tale. Etheridge was 25 and, when he signed for Walsall in the summer of 2015, he had far more international caps to his name than league appearances.

Yet that move to Walsall proved to be the making of him as he got to play regular first-team football, clocking up close to 100 games over the next two years and prompting Neil Warnock to sign him on a free transfer in the summer in what turned out to be another piece of astute business from the Cardiff manager.

“The manager brought in players that were hungry and had a point to prove,” Etheridge says. “And they are players who believe in his philosophy, which is a winning way. I think he’ll admit himself that we don’t always play the prettiest but we come out with results.”

With 19 clean sheets Etheridge has enjoyed an excellent season and won over those Cardiff supporters who wondered whether he was up to the job. “It wouldn’t be football unless you had critics. There are always going to be doubters and people that will question you as a player but you’ve just got to get through it. It’s been a fantastic season for me. I’m still learning and I’m definitely not the finished article yet.”

Etheridge makes a point of saying he feels a debt of gratitude to Warnock not only for signing him but also for “sticking by me throughout the season”, and he goes on to talk about how the manager “has got every player in the dressing room believing in him”. Even when Cardiff had a wobble over the festive period, losing four consecutive games, Etheridge says Warnock remained positive.

Warnock has already predicted, with a smile, that Cardiff will be favourites to be relegated once the fixtures come out, and it is a measure of how their prospects are viewed that the first question Etheridge was asked when he pulled up a chair after winning promotion was whether he is going to be the busiest goalkeeper in the Premier League next season. Not that Etheridge is bothered about any negative vibes on the back of what has been a landmark season for club and country, with Cardiff’s promotion following hot on the heels of the Philippines qualifying for the Asian Cup in March.

Asked whether he is now the most renowned footballer from the Philippines, which is a country that pays far greater attention to sports such as boxing, basketball and billiards than football, Etheridge laughs and says: “I’d like to think so, yeah. It’s creating history... I’m very proud of my national team, we’ve got to the Asian Cup for the first time and I’m the first south-east Asian player to get promoted and, hopefully, to play in the Premier League next season.”

The Guardian Sport



Champions League Returns with Liverpool-Real Madrid and Bayern-PSG Rematches of Recent Finals

22 November 2024, Bavaria, Munich: Bayern Munich's Harry Kane (C) celebrates scoring his side's second goal with Leroy Sane, during the German Bundesliga soccer match between Bayern Munich and FC Augsburg at the Allianz Arena. Photo: Tom Weller/dpa
22 November 2024, Bavaria, Munich: Bayern Munich's Harry Kane (C) celebrates scoring his side's second goal with Leroy Sane, during the German Bundesliga soccer match between Bayern Munich and FC Augsburg at the Allianz Arena. Photo: Tom Weller/dpa
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Champions League Returns with Liverpool-Real Madrid and Bayern-PSG Rematches of Recent Finals

22 November 2024, Bavaria, Munich: Bayern Munich's Harry Kane (C) celebrates scoring his side's second goal with Leroy Sane, during the German Bundesliga soccer match between Bayern Munich and FC Augsburg at the Allianz Arena. Photo: Tom Weller/dpa
22 November 2024, Bavaria, Munich: Bayern Munich's Harry Kane (C) celebrates scoring his side's second goal with Leroy Sane, during the German Bundesliga soccer match between Bayern Munich and FC Augsburg at the Allianz Arena. Photo: Tom Weller/dpa

Real Madrid playing Liverpool in the Champions League has twice in recent years been a final between arguably the two best teams in the competition.

Their next meeting, however, finds two storied powers in starkly different positions at the midway point of the 36-team single league standings format. One is in first place and the other a lowly 18th.

It is not defending champion Madrid on top despite adding Kylian Mbappé to the roster that won a record-extending 15th European title in May.

Madrid has lost two of four games in the eight-round opening phase — and against teams that are far from challenging for domestic league titles: Lille and AC Milan.

Liverpool, which will host Wednesday's game, is eight points clear atop the Premier League under new coach Arne Slot and the only team to win all four Champions League games so far.

Still, the six-time European champion cannot completely forget losing the 2018 and 2022 finals when Madrid lifted its 13th and 14th titles. Madrid also won 5-2 at Anfield, despite trailing by two goals after 14 minutes, on its last visit to Anfield in February 2023.

The 2020 finalists also will be reunited this week, when Bayern Munich hosts Paris Saint-Germain in the stadium that will stage the next final on May 31.

Bayern’s home will rock to a 75,000-capacity crowd Tuesday, even though it is surprisingly a clash of 17th vs. 25th in the standings. Only the top 24 at the end of January advance to the knockout round.

No fans were allowed in the Lisbon stadium in August 2020 when Kingsley Coman scored against his former club PSG to settle the post-lockdown final in the COVID-19 pandemic season.

Man City in crisis

Manchester City at home to Feyenoord had looked like a routine win when fixtures were drawn in August, but it arrives with the 2023 champion on a stunning five-game losing run.

Such a streak was previously unthinkable for any team coached by Pep Guardiola, but it ensures extra attention Tuesday on Manchester.

City went unbeaten through its Champions League title season, and did not lose any of 10 games last season when it was dethroned by Real Madrid on a penalty shootout after two tied games in the quarterfinals.

City’s unbeaten run was stopped at 26 games three weeks ago in a 4-1 loss to Sporting Lisbon.

Sporting rebuilds That rout was a farewell to Sporting in the Champions League for coach Rúben Amorim after he finalized his move to Manchester United.

Second to Liverpool in the Champions League standings, Sporting will be coached by João Pereira taking charge of just his second top-tier game when Arsenal visits on Tuesday.

Sporting still has European soccer’s hottest striker Viktor Gyökeres, who is being pursued by a slew of clubs reportedly including Arsenal. Gyökeres has four hat tricks this season for Sporting and Sweden including against Man City.

Tough tests for overachievers

Brest is in its first-ever UEFA competition and Aston Villa last played with the elite in the 1982-83 European Cup as the defending champion.

Remarkably, fourth-place Brest is two spots above Barcelona in the standings — having beaten opponents from Austria and the Czech Republic — before going to the five-time European champion on Tuesday. Villa in eighth place is looking down on Juventus in 11th.

Juventus plays at Villa Park on Wednesday for the first time since March 1983 when a team with the storied Platini-Boniek-Rossi attack eliminated the title holder in the quarterfinals. Villa has beaten Bayern and Bologna at home with shutout wins.

Zeroes to heroes?

Five teams are still on zero points and might need to go unbeaten to stay in the competition beyond January. Eight points is the projected tally to finish 24th.

They include Leipzig, whose tough fixture program continues with a trip to Inter Milan, the champion of Italy.

Inter and Atalanta are yet to concede a goal after four rounds, and Bologna is the only team yet to score.

Atalanta plays at Young Boys, one of the teams without a point, on Tuesday and Bologna hosts Lille on Wednesday.