An interview with Lee Trundle: The Soccer AM cult hero aiming to play till he's 50
When you ask ChatGPT to name the most skilful footballers ever to play the game, household names like Ronaldinho, Lionel Messi, Neymar and Pele are mentioned by the service.
But away from AI, only real ones know about Lee Trundle and the sheer absurdity he was producing on a weekly basis in the lower leagues of English football.
As a youngster, I, like many others, would watch Soccer AM every Saturday and tune in for the iconic 'Showboat' segment - a recap of the best skills and tricks from the previous week.
The very best in European football were featured but it was Trundle, playing for Swansea City, who caught the eye with his sheer flair and audacity with the ball at his feet.
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In his prime years at Swansea, whom he joined from Wrexham, showman Trundle scored 92 goals and was named in the PFA Team of the Year on three occasions.
Regular watchers of League One and League Two knew what he was all about, but Soccer AM opened him up to a whole new audience.
"For me and the show, we probably worked really well for each other because there wasn't loads of people doing the showboating stuff," Trundle told SPORTbible in an exclusive interview, thanks to Bet442.
“You'd see Ronaldinho, Ronaldo, myself, so I'm in with these massive stars doing tricks. I think that raised my profile as well. But that's the way I've always played football. I still do it now. I love playing that way.
“I love expressing myself. And for me, I think that's the way football should be played.”
Trundle's dribbling and juggling exploits came before the social media-heavy era, where clips could be seen by millions after being posted. Unlike You've Been Framed, he didn't have access to the footage himself.
But as his stock continued to rise, the EFL legend would send texts to John 'Fenners' Fendley to let me know what brilliance he'd served up.
Years before he became a presenter on the Saturday morning football show, Fendley worked behind the scenes and his role involved going through an endless amount of videos for different parts of the show.
He would receive messages from a keen Trundle who told him the exact minutes where he'd performed his elasticos, nutmegs and fancy flicks after checking the scoreboard in-game.
Trundle explained: “He said to me, ‘Listen, Lee, when you're doing things in games, could you then just give me a little rough idea of when it was, so I don't have to sit through a full tape, I can just fast forward it to around that time'.
“So then I'd be going out and playing, and I'd find myself doing a trick, and then I'd have a little look up at the scoreboard to see what the time was.
"And I would do that through the game. So then it was at the end of the match, I'd text him, ‘Hello Fenners, hope you're well, 12, 32, 68, 59 (seconds)’. And I would give him the times like that and then he would then go and have a look and get them on.
“People ask me, ‘Was you doing the tricks just to get on?’ But if you look at a lot of my tricks as well, it's to lead to a shot or to a goal or if I'm in a tight area to get myself out.
“Probably the only one that was more of a showboat type was the one where I rolled it around my shoulders in the centre of the pitch.I didn't need to do that. I could have just brought it down.
“But I was playing really well that day and it was just there and it's something that I do every day in training when I'm juggling. But apart from that, every other trick is to get some space for a shot or a pass.”
Before playing for Wrexham, Trundle had turned out for a number of Non-League sides, including Burscough, Chorley, Stalybridge Celtic, Southport and Bamber Bridge.
It was his displays for Rhyl in the Welsh Premier League, where he scored 15 goals in 18 games, that led to his move to Wrexham - many years before Hollywood owners Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney purchased the club.
Reflecting on his journey into the professional game and the step up, Trundle said: "When I went into professional football, that was probably my biggest change where I felt more honoured to be there. Every game that I went out, I really enjoyed it.
"I think the Non-League game gave me a good grounding as well. Because, I realised the amount of players when you're playing Non-League that have been at academies all their life and then you come out and they're in Non-League and they end up staying in Non-League, a lot of them.
“Once I was in professional football, I wanted to really work hard and stay there.”
Trundle went on to make more than 500 professional appearances and his tricks and puzzles even caught the eye of one of the Premier League's greatest ever players.
He recalled: “I went to the PFA Awards and Patrick Vieira walked past and I said, ‘Patrick, can we have a photo please?’ And he said yeah. So it was me and I brought three of my mates from Liverpool.
“A lot of the Swansea players wouldn't go so I'd get their tickets and I was in Team of the Year so I'd always be there.
"So then Vieira got his picture taken with us and then he said, ‘Oh, by the way, I think you're an excellent player’.
‘So I said, ‘Thank you’ and then he walks off and everyone's going, ‘Oh, Vieira knows who you are! Vieira knows!
“And I was buzzing with that because these are massive stars and for someone to even have seen you play, it was a big honour."
If we're talking about players who shone in the lower echelons of English football, cult heroes like Adebayo Akinfenwa and Jamie Cureton come to mind.
It's worth noting that the likes of Antoine Semenyo, Jarrod Bowen, Ollie Watkins, Ivan Toney and Michail Antonio also learned their trade lower down the pyramid before playing in the Premier League.
But Trundle is the original trailblazer. You only have to watch compilations of him on YouTube.
There's a reason Baller League asked him to come and play in a creators versus legends game in their final event at the O2 alongside Mario Balotelli, Jay-Jay Okocha, Mousa Dembele, John Arne Riise and Ravel Morrison and the annual TST $1 million seven-a-side 'soccer' tournament in the United States have christened him the 'Shaq' of the event.
After all, back in 2005 he was the first player in England outside the Premier League to sign an image rights contract.
It meant maverick Trundle, who was the subject of a £750,000 bid from Sheffield Wednesday, would benefit from merchandise sales linked to his likeness.
"In the club shop, I think 87% of stuff sold was with my name on," Trundle explained.
“My agent and the chairman got together, and I think it was more of a loyalty thing as well. They got together and came up with an image rights contract, which was the first image rights contract outside the Premier League.
“So it was big news, and it was brilliant for me and it was nice that the club recognised that I wanted to stay with them and try and get promoted with Swansea.
“It was brilliant and especially, you don't really hear of it in League One.
“But I think it showed the type of player I was as well and the buzz around it. Soccer AM was probably the biggest part of that because that opened me up to the wider audience as well rather than just Wales.”
Trundle's first spell at Swansea came to an end in 2007 when he signed for Bristol City in a £1 million deal, making the step up to the Championship for the first time.
He scored a stunning extra-time strike in the play-off semi-final win over Crystal Palace in his first season and played in front of 86,000 at Wembley in the final as the Robins lost out on promotion to Hull City.
Even with his mercurial talents, that was the closest Trundle came to playing in the English top flight. He does still have regrets that he never became a Premier League player because of lifestyle choices he made, a lack of application towards fitness and a trio of no-shows.
Trundle said: "I just lived my life as a normal lad. I always said I wanted to be a footballer but I did everything wrong against it.
“I'd go out too much with my mates. I wouldn't really focus on the fitness side of training. And if someone offered a game of football, five a side, I'd go and play any game of football.
“But I hated going for a run, going and doing shuttles. I needed a ball. That's how I enjoyed football. So it wasn't until you get older and you get into the professional levels that you realise those other things are your base, what you've got to work off.
“So for me, that would always be my biggest regret the way I acted in those years."
He continued: “Because there were clubs that would still come in and ask to take me on trial. David Moyes was the assistant manager of Preston. He picked at my house in Huyton in Liverpool for a reserve game.
“I went and played, scored two and did well. He said to me, ‘We’re off now Wednesday, come in on Thursday, get the train up and we'll sort your expenses and all that'.
“And then Thursday came and I just couldn't be bothered getting the train up.
“So just stupid, stupid things like that where I'd done it to Charlton, done it to Bolton, where they're waiting at the train station and I never turned up and stuff like that.
“So luckily enough for me, the penny dropped a bit later on and I did end up turning pro.”
At one point, there were rumours that his boyhood club were keeping tabs and exploring a possible move.
Trundle remembered: "Moyes was in the crowd watching a few games but then nothing come of that. But obviously, me being an Everton fan, that would have been my dream come true to go and play for the Blues.”
Trundle has played the game in his own way for more than two decades, doing so with a level of freedom and expression that is not always seen in modern football.
He admires Lamine Yamal, Eberechi Eze and Jeremy Doku for always wanting to take players on but believes the game is now less expressive and creative, with an obsession on retaining possession and a fear to try something.
“I think now we're so hung up on possession where I think players are scared to lose the ball and try something," he stated.
"You've got every stat that you want. If you go in the dressing room after a game, you've got how many passes you made, how many forward passes, how many of them were completed, how many times you lost the ball, how many tackles.
"And I think that's where we're going with it now where players are really caught up on numbers rather than playing with that freedom and to go and entertain the crowd as well.
"But as for tricks and stuff, no one does the tricks anymore. They're not tricks. It's more a change of direction and chopping and going past people."
Even with the game's evolution not quite fitting into his idea of entertaining, Trundle still loves playing.
Preston North End were his last club in the EFL back in 2013 but he has been playing regularly in Non-League and the semi-pro system in Wales for more than a decade.
Aged 49, he plays on Saturdays for Pure Swansea and then represents Llanelli Vets on a Sunday, flip-flopping between their over 40's and over 45's.
He works as an ambassador for his beloved Swansea and was recently rubbing shoulders with rap legend Snoop Dogg, minority owner alongside Martha Stewart and Luka Modric, after he attended his first ever game against Preston.
But above all, he still loves nothing more than lacing up his boots and putting one in the top corner with his left peg - and intends to still be playing when he celebrates a half century later this year.
“I've never stopped right the way through even when I left professional football I went and signed for my local team were called Page Celtic just in the local Liverpool County Comp League.
"One of my best mates was the manager and he always said, ‘When you finish would you come and play?’
“I spent two years with him playing for him and then I went back up to the Welsh League and played there.
“I've never ever stopped playing even when I've come out of professional football and I think that's helped me because I've kept my fitness up and my sharpness.
“My aim is to go 50 in the Welsh League. That will be this October which I think, touch wood, I'll do and then I'll look at it from there and see if I'll retire from playing.
“Then hopefully I can go over and help with the youngsters at Swansea on the staff with the academy and then see where that takes me.”
There is however, a new passion for Trundle. Next month, he will compete in his third white collar boxing bout in his hometown of Liverpool as part of Pro Project Promotions - a platform put on by former Arsenal goalkeeper Graham Stack.
The catch is that those competing are strictly ex footballers, who find a new purpose through training and discipline. Trundle gave up drinking and got into the best shape of his life ahead of his debut.
The event on 17 April, the same weekend as the Merseyside derby, is backed by Liverpool legend Jamie Carragher and boxers Liam Smith and Natasha Jonas.
Ross McCormack, Matt Kilgallon and Carl Ikeme are among the other former pros competing on the card.
Trundle suffered a narrow defeat to former Spurs' 6ft 5 giant Anthony Gardner and with some of his sessions put on by former WBC cruiserweight champion Tony Bellow, he is hoping to bounce back with a bout against former Scotland international Chris Iwelumo - who also has a significant size advantage.
"At the end of the day, you're going into a fight and they say that you don't play boxing," Trundle said on his transition from the pitch to the squared circle.
"Boxing's not a game. I've got friends who have been professional boxers and others who have been amateurs, so I knew the training was hard, but just didn't realise how hard it can get when you're in there. It’s very tough.
“Especially coming from football, where you're in a team sport, you go to boxing and then all of a sudden, you're just on your own and that's it.
“It's a different feeling, but it was a feeling that I really enjoyed. I really enjoyed the training side of it.
“I got myself into brilliant shape and that was a reason why I wanted to carry it on as well.
“The last one is obviously my first fight and I've just went in and tried to land every single shot for like a knockout shot. My fitness was really good, but it's just mad if you don't pace yourself how fast you can blow yourself out. So that was one thing that I learned.
“But since then I've had another one in December where I was a lot more calm and boxed a lot more because in the first one I just didn't box at all.
"You’ll have two strong fighters in there and I'm really looking forward to sharing the ring with Chris because he's a good lad as well.”
Topics: Bristol City, Swansea City, Spotlight
Josh Lawless