Carl Chinn sits down in conversation with Paul Masefield, a former professional English footballer and TV pundit, who grew up a few doors from Carl in Birmingham and has spent more than twenty years building a life in Asia.
Paul's football started with his dad Stuart, a fine semi professional centre forward whose career was cut short by injury, and with his grandad Frank, who drove him to games, brought a flask of hot coffee for the cold mornings and cleaned everybody's boots afterwards with his penknife. Paul played for the school, for the Cubs, for Dunlop Rovers, refused to sign schoolboy forms with anybody so that he could keep his options open, and eventually signed a two year apprenticeship at Birmingham City.
What follows is a story about reinvention. There are spells at Exeter, Stockport, Doncaster and Preston, a coaching badge earned at twenty-one, and then a phone call out of the blue that Paul was convinced was a wind up, which took him to Hong Kong and eventually to Singapore. Underneath all of it is a Brummie who still goes into the city centre every time he is home, because as he puts it, the love here is like nowhere else on earth.
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