“I’ve got no chance against these kids!”: Football legend Paul Gascoigne on FIFA and VR gaming

Esports Insider caught up with Paul Gascoigne, the most talented English soccer star of his generation, to get his views on the incredible progress of video games, as well as the latest developments in the world of soccer.

Despite being an iconic figure in the 1990s, Gascoigne never graced the cover of any of the annual FIFA releases. Instead, he released his own games called ‘Gazza’s Superstar Soccer’ on the ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64 and a host of other consoles. 

Nowadays he prefers to get involved in some VR headset action with the younger members of his household, who by his own admission, tend to teach him a thing or two!

Paul Gascoigne: I like playing with a VR headset. One time I walked a plank with a 5,000 ft drop on either side. I was shaking and everything and I was only standing on the ground! I like some of the games on there. These kids pick up the games so quickly now, I’ve got no chance!

Paul Gascoigne: Yeah it wasn’t FIFA but there was ‘Gazza’s Superstar Soccer’ which came out in like 1989! I’ve had a couple games with them, but I think the last time I played it was a long time ago. I was playing an 11-year-old and he battered me! It’s unbelievable how quick and good they are!

Paul Gascoigne: I just look at the front line and think to myself, who’s going to score the goals? Since Spurs sold Harry Kane, I think they’re relying a hell of a lot on Heung-Min Son. And I think Son will be feeling it. You want to show everyone what you can do and I think the pressure is showing when you follow in someone’s footsteps like Kane’s. But he’s doing well. I like Son as a player. He puts so much effort in and work rate.

Paul Gascoigne: Yeah I like him. He’s got some engine and I like when he’s playing, he’s also organising players and telling them where to go. It’s like having an extra manager, but he’s on the pitch! He scores some great goals and he really gets around the pitch.

Paul Gascoigne: I think so. I think he will be relying on that. He might have been told already to go and look for another club now because he might get the sack. So it’s not going well for him, bless him. I think some of the players have let him down. (Any in particular?) I just think the whole team in general. I think the whole team can hold their hands up, they’ve had a bad season.

Paul Gascoigne: I just can’t believe it. Even with Manchester United doing so badly. I’m just thinking wow. Now I really try not to watch much football these days because I still miss it so much. But when I look at the league tables I can’t believe they’re so close to the relegation zone. When I played and a team won the Premier League with five games to go, it’s a bit disheartening. It’s happened to me twice. When the season used to be coming to an end, I would book a holiday and be so excited. And then with two games to go I got injured. I spent my holiday in Princess Beach Hospital. Then you get some of your teammates who get shy of tackles. They won’t go in solidly in case they get injured. You get a lot of that, I’m telling you.

Paul Gascoigne: I couldn’t believe it, they played really well. Brilliant. You praise players for working hard and playing great, but in that second half, Man City were all over them and they couldn’t put the ball in the net. Crystal Palace defended like mad. The goalkeeper Dean Henderson, that penalty save was great and then again after that his reflexes were fantastic. I was pleased for Palace. It was great to see Mark Bright crying In the stands and Ian Wright jumping around as well.

Paul Gascoigne: I mean, maybe he’d dropped himself in it. He might be getting a move to Crystal Palace now. Do you think it looks like the end for him at Man City? Yeah, I think so. But these managers have got to be careful because if you are a Man City player and you want to leave, the last thing the club will let you do is join a rival club, as they don’t want to strengthen another squad. Do they want to let him go? Does he want to go himself?

Paul Gascoigne: Yeah you’ve got Rashford there. He seems to be enjoying it. I always say, if you want to bring great players in, say your squad’s crap or your team’s not very good. You want to bring good players in. Like when a club signed Ronaldo, automatically that brings in three players straight away. It was like me when Lazio wanted to sign me. I asked who was there and I was told Michael Laudrup and Hagi. I signed straight away. But f**k me, when I joined they left! But that would be a good move for Grealish, going back to Villa.

Paul Gascoigne: He winds everyone up! He gets on my nerves and drives me nuts. He must get paid for every word he says. An extra bit of bonus. He loves to talk. But he was like that in the dressing room too, he loves his football.

Paul Gascoigne: He didn’t turn up for a drink with us one night. And I went mad and I rang him up and said, ‘what time do the kids finish school?’ He said, ‘15:30, why?’ I said, ‘I’m just curious’. So it was 15:20. I went to a pet shop where we lived, and I bought two budgies in a cage. Two goldfish and then a rabbit and a rabbit hutch. I left them outside his door at 15:29. So he rings me up and called me a b**tard, I said ‘what’s wrong?’ He said his kids had rang him up and thanked him for the new pets!

Paul Gascoigne: It was my first ever substitute appearance for Newcastle. But it was horrendous. Because I kept on warming up and I was getting so much abuse and it was like, ‘wow, just get me on the pitch.’ And then all of a sudden, I was only 17. And every time one of our players got down, I was like, ‘get up, get up’. I didn’t want to go on, I was nervous as anything. I got so much abuse.

Paul Gascoigne: I caught the highlights last night. I was away on tour. It was nice seeing all the other Everton players from all through the years.

Paul Gascoigne: Since he took over, yeah. He’s done really well. I didn’t like the way he came to Everton when he was going to be manager and that’s why I left. He’s not played any top level football or managed any big team. We’ve got eighteen internationals from the likes of Wales, Scotland, myself. He just came in, he says, “I’m the manager. I’ve seen how you played on Saturday. Mess about with me and I’ll cut your f**king balls off!” Those were his first words and I went, well, I won’t be staying with him. He did ring us up and say, come back to the club. Give me a chance to work with you. But I’d made my position there. But he’s a good man. I think he’s mellowed a bit.

Paul Gascoigne: That’s good for him. I didn’t realize he looks completely different with his new haircut. Great player. Unbelievable. It’s a great thing for Liverpool as well, especially with Trent Alexander-Arnold going. They’re good fans in Liverpool, but they were booing Trent which was terrible. It’s not his fault. If he’s not playing every game, there’s an opportunity to move abroad. Why not take it. And they didn’t boo Steven Gerard, they didn’t boo Henderson.

Paul Gascoigne: No, not really as such, but I do know, when he was with us, that he knew he was going to get the job at Match of the Day. So probably three times a week, I think it was at 10 o’clock at night, he went to learn autocue. I thought maybe it could go to Gareth Southgate next because he’s not taken any manager’s jobs at the moment. I just texted Alan Shearer and went ‘Good look at the new job’ sort of thing. He just laughed. Shearer, he is good at presenting.

Paul Gascoigne: It could be that. But you know, if he’s loving his football like me. If it was between training and playing three games a week. I love that. You can say alright, you play on Saturday and see the gaffer’s giving you off Monday. You went around, come Tuesday, he runs his bo***cks off you because you’ve not trained for a couple of days.

But yeah, he’s been off it all season, but it can’t be right when you’ve had a great game, all of a sudden he’s subbed him off for a couple of games, just resting. All this resting thing is bo***cks. Now if you are young and you’re ready to go and you got like 50,000 behind you, you can run all day! Play as many as you can, manage the game. If that was me, I’d move on to another club. I heard Grealish had fallen out with Pep last season. I was speaking to his dad. He came to one of my venues.

Paul Gascoigne: They had that bad run as well. You know, sometimes you think, oh, we’re doing the same thing. You can get bored, you know? Doing the same thing and training. You listen to the same team talk and stuff like that. That can have an effect on you. You think okay, you have to go again and all the same site.

Paul Gascoigne: I did try it once. I think it was the 1998 World Cup when I was dropped. It was so funny because I thought, right, it’s the first time I’ve done this. And then I get my script and there was Bobby Robson at the back, Terry Venables there, Ally McCoist is there.

So I’ve written it down, how the first half went, where I’m going to say everything. They say Gazza, you are going to start. So he said in three. One-two… And Bobby Robson put his hand across for f**k’s sake. He got hold of my sheet and said, ‘I’ll have a bit of that’. It was a good pass by Rio Ferdinand. That fricking didn’t go down too well.

So they just went over, we need some extra money. Forget about the interviews. Why don’t we just join in with the crowds? So I went the next year. I’m in the middle of Piccadilly on one of them lines, singing England and all that. The police were watching how it was.

Paul Gascoigne: That bit of trickery Harry did in the corner flag for Manchester United in the Europa semi-final was class. So I thought, that’s good play by him. I was in Leicester when Harry was playing for them. He was outstanding, I thought. So I shook his hand and I said, you are going to go places you, and it was the move to United. So Kenny called us in Texas, won’t you say hello to Harry Maguire. And so I text him and I went, well done mate, keep up the good work. That was there but of class that he did in the corner.

I texted him and said one day I’ll show you how to do the Cruyff turn and then he came back straight away laughing. He said, I’ll do that in the next game. Because he had it tough when he first went. You’re going from a club like Leicester to a club like Man Utd. You look at the defenders they used to have there, but he pulled them out of the mud twice, didn’t he?