Former Newcastle United defender Gary Caldwell says that in the personality clash between Alan Shearer and Ruud Gullit, the former England captain was always going to win.
The Netherlands legend took over at Newcastle in August 1998 and lasted a little over a year before being sacked five games into the 1999/2000 season.
Newcastle reached the 1999 FA Cup final under the Dutchman, but they struggled for consistency and his relationship with club captain and star striker Shearer was tumultuous.
Caldwell, who worked under Gullit, admits that Shearer did not take kindly to the Dutchman’s nature in training, which involved a lot of specific instructions.
He pointed towards a specific incident when the then Newcastle boss wanted the then England captain to do something specific and Shearer did not like being told what to do as a striker.
The former defender admits there was no surprise Gullit lost his job at Newcastle.
Caldwell told Open Goal when talking about breaking into the Newcastle side: “That is when Ruud Gullit came in as manager after Kenny Dalglish.
“He played a lot of 11v11 games, he was very tactical in how he wanted to set the team up and work a lot in 11v11.
“So the reserves or the younger players would come up and play against [the first team] and I was marking Shearer and [Duncan] Ferguson on most days and that was great for us as an education.
“But it wasn’t great for Shearer probably because him and Gullit were not the best of friends.”
He continued: “There was one day on the training pitch he wanted Alan to do something specific, told and showed him [what to do] and I was standing next to him. I could tell he wasn’t really impressed with how he showed him what to do.
“He was the England captain, the best striker in the world and in the next play the exact same thing happened – Shearer didn’t move and just kind of looked over to him.
“It was a clash of two big personalities and there was only going to be one winner.
“And ultimately the manager was sacked.”
