Francis Benali looks over the Solent from the sixth floor of the swish Harbour Hotel, his book in his hands as he scans the coast from the cruise liners to the Itchen Bridge obscuring St Mary’s Stadium.
In 48 hours, he has a date with the Princess Royal to receive an MBE and still has to collect his tailcoat suit but is rewinding his mind back 30 years to his playing days and the curious case of the kidnapped Christmas tree.
‘An element of the Southampton supporters weren’t happy with me at the time,’ recalls Benali. ‘They wanted me out of the team or sold. It did take me a while to win them over.
Southampton legend Francis Benali decided to retire at 34 rather than play for another club
‘Anyway, one day, somebody burst into the reception area at the Dell, picked up the tree and ran off. A day later, so the story goes, a letter arrived at the club. It was like a ransom note saying, “Drop Franny or you’ll never see the tree again”.’
It is a classic Benali tale: self-deprecating and understated, delivered without fuss in his soft Hampshire burr, and he points out that he is not sure if it is true because he never saw the note.
Not that this matters because it is ensconced in Saints folklore and Benali became not only a club legend but a darling of the city in which he was born, adopted at birth and raised in a broken home.
His difficult upbringing goes some way to explaining the ferocious competitive spirit, loyalty and dedication that defined his football career. There were 11 red cards in Southampton colours and plenty more scrapes, including some among team-mates in training.
Benali is sad to see Harry Kane agitating a way out of Spurs and Jack Grealish joining Man City
Gordon Strachan said that until he became Southampton boss he used to think there was ‘something wrong’ with him. ‘He never smiled, he just stared at you,’ said Strachan, who arrived at Saints in 2001 and addressed the first team with a speech detailing a Benali clash which bruised him from the base of his spine to his shoulder blades.
Benali sinks deeper into his seat, aware of the tackle in question. ‘I didn’t go in for pleasantries,’ he admits. ‘It all fitted the style of football I played in an era when you could play like that.
‘I was ultra-competitive because I was always fighting in some sense. If I wasn’t fighting against an opponent I was fighting to remain in the team or get back in the team, or to impress the manager or the supporters. I was fighting for the right reasons, to win and do well for my family.’
He still admires defenders who play on the edge and he admits to a pang of admiration for the cynical way Giorgio Chiellini yanked back Bukayo Saka by his collar at the expense of a yellow card in the Euro 2020 final. ‘There’s a time and a place, and that was probably it,’ says Benali. ‘You do what’s required.
‘An element of controlled aggression belongs in sport. I played that way and supporters want contact to be part of the game. A non-contact culture has crept in with VAR and referees need to up their game because we saw in the Euros how it can work really well.’
The former Southampton defender with Sportsmail’s Matt Barlow at the Harbour Hotel
He laughed it off when the Southern Daily Echo printed posters for readers to stick in their windows, featuring Benali’s face with the warning, ‘Beware, I live here’ but he did not fully embrace his hard-man image. Partly because it is so at odds with his personality. As a teetotal family man and devoted husband to Karen, he would apologise to his children Luke and Kenzie if he had been sent off. ‘The last thing I wanted was for people to feel ashamed by my actions on the pitch,’ says Benali. ‘That wasn’t the real me. I did care what people thought of me.’
His friend and Southampton team-mate Matt Le Tissier likened his on-off field persona to the Incredible Hulk, and it went some way towards making him a cult hero among Saints fans.
Like Le Tissier, he stayed loyal to the club, making almost 400 appearances before retiring aged 34 after the 2003 FA Cup final defeat by Arsenal because he did not want to play for another club.
‘As a boy born in the city, I felt I was representing myself and my family and every supporter of the club and person from the city,’ says Benali. ‘It was a duty to do all I could to try to bring success. I wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea —we had players like Le Tissier in the team — but I wanted to make them proud and I had to do that through effort.
Francis Benali (left) and his friend Matt Le Tissier (right) stayed loyal to Southampton
It saddens Benali to see Harry Kane agitating a way out of Spurs and Jack Grealish moving to Manchester City. ‘I understand the financial appeal. But with salaries at that level footballers can end their careers with a huge bank balance. Why not be a one-club legend? I’ve experienced it and I’ve seen it with Matt. You cannot put a price on the love and respect he has been repaid.’
Benali banished any lingering misconceptions about his character when he set out on his ultra-endurance challenges in 2014, driving his mind and body through extremes as he raised £1million for Cancer Research UK.
He ran to all 20 Premier League stadiums, nearly 40 miles a day for three weeks. He ran and cycled to all 44 clubs in the top two tiers of English football, covering more than 1,400 miles in a fortnight. And in 2019, he tried to complete seven Iron Man triathlons in seven days. He missed two because he was in hospital with doctors fearing he was causing himself lasting damage. His MBE was awarded for services to cancer patients.
‘I am immensely proud of representing Southampton for all those years,’ says Benali, 52. ‘But I feel a bigger sense of achievement about the challenges. From a personal perspective, they pushed me beyond what I had to overcome in football and I wish I’d started them sooner… that’s not to say I’m drawing a line under it.’
FRANCIS BENALI: THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY by Francis Benali with Matt Barlow, published by Bloomsbury on August 19 at £20. To order for £17.80 go to: mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3308 9193.
The 52-year-old received an MBE from Princess Royal after raising £1.2m for a cancer charity