JOSH PARKER’S story is so nuts, the fact he went from playing for Red Star Belgrade to working in a coffee shop two years later is not the most bonkers part of it.
The winger, now at Gillingham, blazed a trail by becoming the only English-born footballer to play in Slovenia and then Serbia.
But the latter move turned into a nightmare which involved a legal fight over breach of contract.
During that time Parker claims he:
- Secretly recorded his manager contradicting club chiefs to build a case against Red Star.
- Missed out on a megabucks move to China because the mother of his son refused to travel there prior to a long-standing custody battle.
- Was forced to train on his own in the DARK for three months without even being allowed to kick a football.
- Snubbed doctor’s advice to take antidepressants after climbing the walls with boredom in a ramshackle Belgrade hotel which was “worse than prison”.
6Parker, who has also appeared on TV show Come Dine With Me, said: “Many people have told me that my story would make a good book.”
The 28-year-old began his career at QPR where he was given his debut by Neil Warnock, who he comes face-to-face with today when Gills host Cardiff in the FA Cup third round.
But due to what Parker labels “the politics of football”, his career in England stalled as he was released by Oxford in 2013.
It left him unemployed, relying on loans from his mum and looking after his baby son.
He found a way back into the game by joining Domzale in Slovenia, despite having never heard of the country before his 2013 move.
There he fell out with “crazy” boss Stevan Mojsilovic, whose madcap training ideas included tying players’ hands together with rope for shuttle runs and doing hurdles and 40-minute sprints at 9am on the day of night games.
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Mojsilovic was axed and Parker shone under his replacement, earning interest from Red Star, Swiss side Grasshoppers and Sturm Graz of Austria.
He says he also had an offer from Beijing worth £360,000 a year after tax, but was forced to turn it down when son Cairo’s mum refused to travel there due to a court fight over visiting rights.
Instead, Parker opted for Serbian giants Red Star in 2015. But he was caught cold by the intense scrutiny, starting with 30 paparazzi snapping him at the airport, and by fans who hammered him when he failed to score.
His form dipped and tensions rose when the club refused to allow Parker to travel home after his nan died.
Following a short loan spell at Aberdeen, he returned to Belgrade but refused to cut short the 2½ years left on his deal without a pay-off, so Red Star left him to rot.
Parker claimed: “They said, ‘We can make things really hard for you, we’ll make you suffer’. From that point on, for three months, I didn’t touch a football.
“They made me come in every day but I wasn’t allowed to socialise or train with the team.
“We’d train at night but I was on a separate pitch on my own, where the floodlights were off, with no balls, no equipment and no coach. I’d run around in circles in the dark.”
The Slough-born wideman roomed alone in the antiquated hotel the club used, with no internet and no TV.
For entertainment he would walk to a nearby shopping centre but not buy anything as his wages were often several months late.
He explained: “It was the hardest time of my life. I lost loads of weight, I started going through anxiety and depression. I’d nothing to stimulate me.
“It was worse than prison. I was without my family and the friends I did have I wasn’t allowed to talk to.”
He started keeping a video diary of his isolated existence before secretly recording his coach — using a phone hidden in a football boot — claiming he could not pick him due to the club’s hierarchy.
Parker used the recordings, plus hundreds of documents he kept, for a case he took to Fifa claiming breach of contract after terminating his deal.
Red Star counter-sued for a whopping £1.8million.
The 1991 Champions League winners would not release his international transfer papers, meaning he was forced out of the game between June 2016 and February 2017.
Parker, who received online death threats at the time, added: “I was in a bad way. I went to the doctors and they were trying to prescribe me medication for depression and anxiety and even asking me if I’d thought about suicide.
“I didn’t take the medicine as I’m a vegan and don’t believe in it. I was thinking, ‘How am I going to pay back two million euros? You might as well dig my grave now and put me in it’.”
During his eight-month hiatus he worked at a hip hop-styled cafe his old youth coach Tony Thompson set up in Willesden Green, west London.
He would open up at 6am and serve the same coffee, no matter whether the order was for a latte or a flat white, just in different sized cups.
Eventually he began training for non-league Wealdstone, when his transfer papers came through, and soon after he joined Gills.
On December 1, 2017, he got news he had won his case against Red Star and was due six-figure compensation.
The Antigua and Barbuda captain wanted to weep with joy.
Yet he claims he is still to see a penny, suggesting this crazy story is not quite over.
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