Did that really happen? West Brom players steal a taxi in Barcelona

June 17, 2024

They were the bizarre stories which, even years after they first played out, make you ask the question: did that really happen?

From the Madagascan top-flight fixture settled with 149 own goals and the craze for footballers ‘curing’ themselves with horse placenta, The Athletic will recall some of the most bizarre stories in recent soccer history.

In the seventh of our 10-part series, Steve Madeley recalls how a team-bonding trip to Barcelona plunged West Bromwich Albion’s chaotic season into pure farce, thanks to a commandeered cab.

The winter of 2018 was bleak for West Bromwich Albion.

On January 14, Cyrille Regis — one of the greatest strikers in the club’s illustrious history, and beloved throughout the game — died suddenly, plunging the club and the wider West Midlands, where he spent the vast majority of his career, into a period of mourning.

Just under a month later, chaos in the boardroom finally erupted into the public domain when chairman John Williams and CEO Martin Goodman were deposed by Albion’s Chinese ownership and former chief executive Mark Jenkins returned for a second spell in charge.

Then, two days later on February 15, four Albion players stole a taxi from a McDonald’s car park in Barcelona.

No, really.

The incident became a symbol of one of the worst seasons in Albion history, sufficiently infamous to earn the ‘gate’ suffix. Sure enough, ‘Taxigate’ will forever live in infamy as the moment which summed up a club in disarray.

Years on, those involved with the club at the time sound faintly incredulous when asked to recall what happened.

“Me and Brunty (midfielder Chris Brunt) went down for breakfast and ‘Daws’ (defender Craig Dawson) was there and said, ‘Look out the window’,” Gareth McAuley, the former West Brom centre-back, told The Athletic.

“We looked out of the window and said, ‘Woah, what is going on?’. The police were there and they wanted to take everyone in for questioning.”

The reality of Taxigate was, those who were on the trip insist, more farcical than scandalous.

Indeed, the motivations behind the midwinter break to Catalonia were innocent enough. The players were due to depart the day after a Premier League game at Chelsea on Monday, February 12 and were supposed to stay in Barcelona for more than a week. The trip would be a mixture of training and socialising, the chance for the squad to bond with manager Alan Pardew, who had only taken charge at the end of November, and lift spirits which had been deflated by a run of form which had left them rooted to the bottom of the table.

The complication came when West Brom defeated Liverpool in the fourth round of the FA Cup at Anfield on January 28. Sources who wished to remain anonymous to protect relationships with those involved revealed Pardew had expected to lose that match and therefore have a clear weekend on February 17-18 (when the fifth round was due to take place), allowing time for an extended trip to Spain.

West Brom win at Liverpool (Photo: Alex Livesey/Getty Images)

Beating Liverpool meant Albion had to be back for an FA Cup fifth round tie against Southampton and cut the trip to just four days, meaning it became more of a whistle-stop lads’ holiday than a worthwhile training exercise

“The trip should never have happened because of the position we were in in the league,” Brunt told The Athletic. “I think Alan had done something similar at Newcastle, when they went to Dubai and played a bit of golf, did a bit of training and had some nights out.

“We played at Chelsea on Monday and went to Barcelona on Tuesday. We had a night out, did a bit of training on Wednesday, which wasn’t great, and then he said, ‘The night is yours — don’t be doing anything daft’. Whenever you go away in that situation, something daft happens.”

On arrival in Spain, Pardew duly sanctioned a night out for the squad. Most headed to a sports bar to watch Real Madrid beat Paris Saint-Germain and Liverpool triumph at Porto in the Champions League before calling it a night.

However, four players — Jake Livermore, Jonny Evans, Gareth Barry and Boaz Myhill — who had hopped in a taxi to return to the team hotel decided en route to stop off at a branch of McDonald’s near the port area of the city.

The quartet handed cash to the driver and persuaded him to enter the restaurant to collect some food on their behalf, as they were worried about being recognised.

When a fellow motorist began hooting his horn to protest that the taxi was blocking his way, the players attempted to move it. Somehow, they managed to turn out of the car park and onto a busy dual carriageway, their unexpected detour ultimately leading them back to the hotel at around 5.30am.

The cab was returned to the irate driver less than three hours later, but that was not enough to stop a complaint being made to police, with officers arriving at the hotel to question members of the squad. Pardew’s popular assistant John Carver convened an impromptu team meeting in the breakfast room.

“He said ‘If anyone has anything they want to come forward about, now is the time to do it’,” said McAuley. “And the lads did.”

Alan Pardew (left) with John Carver (Photo: Matthew Lewis/Getty Images)

The four players, who gave statements to officers, were placed under investigation but no criminal case was brought, with a magistrate choosing to archive the case due to a lack of evidence. But the incident was reported to Spanish newspapers and the news soon filtered back to the UK. By the time Albion’s scheduled flight home landed in Birmingham later on Thursday morning, the players were walking into a scandal.

A few hours later, speculation was rife about the identity of the players involved and those squad members who had kept their noses clean were complaining to club officials that they were being tarnished unfairly by association.

A larger group of players had been photographed on social media earlier on the night in question enjoying a meal, prompting angry fans to guess at the ones who had overstepped the mark.

After initially attempting to keep the identity of the guilty players secret, the club decided they would have to be ‘outed’; at the same time, Barry, Evans, Myhill and Livermore confessed to senior officials, having reached the same conclusion.

The quartet issued an apologetic statement, but Pardew found it impossible to hide his fury at a press conference held on the Thursday afternoon. “This is obviously not ideal,” he said. “They broke the curfew and that’s unacceptable and I feel a bit let down by that.”

Evans and Barry played against Southampton two days later and were roundly booed by home supporters who clearly felt let down. Unused substitute Myhill suffered the same treatment when he warmed up while the injured Livermore was not involved. To compound matters in a miserable week, Albion lost 2-1 against Southampton; three months later, they were relegated.

Gareth Barry (left) and Jonny Evans (Photo: ADRIAN DENNIS/AFP via Getty Images)

The incident became the most memorable moment in the ill-fated Pardew regime, during which the former West Ham and Crystal Palace manager alienated much of the squad with an approach designed to lift the pressure on the team but which players regarded as flippant.

Senior officials considered sacking Pardew immediately after the return from Barcelona but, with no obvious caretaker replacement lined up and pressure from China to give him more time, they held off, only to finally make a change in early April with relegation all but confirmed.

“Alan’s record suggested he does usually get a bounce,” said McAuley. “He just never got it here, and if you don’t get that you’ve got to find another way of getting a result. We didn’t do that.”

None of the players in the taxi have ever spoken publicly about the incident. Pardew had never talked in detail, either, although he did round on the players during a recent appearance on Talksport.

“I felt I was let down at West Brom.” 😩

“It was very difficult. I didn’t enjoy it.”

⚪️ Alan Pardew opens up on his departure from #WBA and the infamous taxi incident. pic.twitter.com/8NoEkMib5s

— talkSPORT (@talkSPORT) June 27, 2023

“It was how we dealt with it in the changing room that I wasn’t happy with,” he said. “I didn’t think we dealt with it very well. The group got fragmented, part of the squad was over here and over there and I could not bring it together, and therefore you’re not going to win games.”

Yet whether he likes it or not, Taxigate will always be remembered by Albion fans as evidence of a shambolic period with him at the helm.

(Top photo: Nick Potts/PA Images via Getty Images; StarpStock/iStock; design: Sean Reilly)

To read other pieces in our ‘Did That Really Happen?’ series, click on the links below

ncG1vNJzZmismJqutbTLnquim16YvK57k29wb2xgaXxzfJFsZmlvX2d%2FcMPErKtmmqKkum7AwLGgZpqRp7CmuM6nmGg%3D