Ginola lets his feet do the talking

The ability to shake off defenders comes easily to David Ginola. A sway of the hips and a twinkling of feet can take one of world's naturally gifted players past most of the yeoman sentries who guard the penalty areas of England. If only it were so easy for David Ginola to shake off his image.

For many hardened observers of the national game, Ginola is that arrogant Frenchman with long hair, a poser who plays for himself not the team.

For other people, however, Ginola is nothing of the sort. These are the people who know him. "It is to do with perception," says Ginola. "Most people don't really know me but everybody tries to think how I am and sometimes they think too much in the wrong direction."

Ginola's image has trailed him throughout his career with the doggedness of a man-marker. As Tottenham Hotspurs' season went downhill faster than Nigel Mansell's Bentley, the first person out of the door was predicted to be the "ambitious Ginola".

When Christian Gross took over as head coach at Tottenham, stories warning of work-camp conditions included forecasts that the "work-shy Ginola" would be the first player off-loaded. But the poser is still in Gross's team. And doing rather well. Even the Spurs fans are warming to him.

"My first pleasure in this club," he says, "is when the fans say, `David you work hard for us.' Never before have people told me that." For many Spurs fans pining unrealistically for glory-glory football, praising hard work is heresy. But seeing commitment is often the only way fans can tell that a player cares. It has long been a problem for Ginola.

"People think I don't work hard because the way I play football looks so easy," he says. "When I get the ball I'm not like the guy who on the first touch has to run two yards to get the ball back.

"But people always try to find the wrong things on your side. It has happened a lot in my career."

This misconception carries over into his private life. "There are a lot of problems being famous," he says. "Everybody looks at you with a feeling. They think I'm this or that. People can't believe that you can be a great player and good looking but also be gentle and honest. So if you stay home it is better."

Ginola is rarely out on the town anyway. "I am quite shy," he says surprisingly. "I don't like to be too much with a lot of people."

This demure image contrasts starkly with his record in the posing stakes where he has held a modelling contract and now stars in a glossy advert for shampoo.

He admits that his film-star looks have hampered his crusade to be taken seriously as a footballer, but pleads: "In the end I am an ordinary person. I don't like people being reverential to me. Just because I do some modelling and adverts and play football I am not different. I don't like the difference."

So why foster it? Presumably he finds it difficult to resist the money and the flattery which accompany the offers he receives. But perhaps, too, his detractors are showing a typically British macho attitude to an admittedly ego-tinged demeanour which on the continent is more readily accepted as just the way humans are.

Ginola does not see himself as arrogant. "Big-headed? Never," he says. "I know where I came from, a simple, loving family and I know I have to say thank you to football for everything I have in my life now."

And despite Tottenham's position near the foot of the Premiership, he is enjoying his football as much as ever. At Paris St-Germain he played the Bergkamp role, and is now doing much the same at Spurs.

"I am enjoying that position more." he says. "At Newcastle I played very wide with always the line at my back. But I need space to run and play. The more ball I get, the more I am part of the game and the more I love it. If I don't get the ball for 10 or 15 minutes I get frustrated."

He dearly hopes that his form will catch the eye of the French coach who has not spoken to him since picking him for an international game against Azerbijan one and half years ago.

"You know," he says, "we have the biggest competition in the world in my country and I really want to play. I know what I can do and how much I can help my team in terms of experience, and helping other players.

"I don't understand really why I am not in the squad but perhaps this again is to do with perception. I tried to call the coach, but no answer. I will try again."

One cannot under-estimate Ginola's love of playing. As a child he would cry in his bedroom if a downpour wiped out a game. And he still admits with youthful glee that "my first thought when I wake up in the morning is playing football." To him the big business remains a game.

"I always try to remember that it is the same game I started playing with my friends, when I always enjoyed the ball, the ball, the ball, passing to my friends, sharing things together. And I just want the same now."

Though there has been little thought of bailing out of Spurs' titanic struggle, he does admit: "You can't imagine how many people have come to me and said you have chosen the wrong club. But I am 31 on Sunday and I just want to be settled and focused on bringing my club back to a good situation. I would prefer to be top of the league, but at the moment we are not, and just because we are in trouble doesn't mean I want to leave.

"I won plenty at Paris, and winning things is fantastic for everyone. But this season we are in a different position and our target is different: to stay up and hopefully win the FA Cup."

He refuses to speculate about whether his loyalty will stretch to a stint in the First Division, but he says that Gross is fostering a good enough spirit to be optimistic that the team can stay up.

Today, though, Spurs take on Barnsley in the fourth round of the competition which remains so synonymous with better times at White Hart Lane. And that is one image Ginola does not want to change.