Soccer: United in admiration for a striker of Shear class

Alan Shearer has always been one of those characters who, while not saying much, makes a crowded room feel empty when he leaves it.

You can call it what you like - gravitas, a rough, largely unspoken integrity, the overriding sense of someone who knows who and where he is - but it comes down to the same thing: Shearer, even as a teenager of serious intent, has always been a man in what is so often made to seem like a game for boys.

Managerial material? It's a no-brainer - just for as long as he might be able to suffer so many of the egos and so much of the ignorance of those who command the heights of the game from club boardrooms and council chambers.

One of his greatest admirers - and a vital backer at a critical point in his career - is certainly not pained by the lack of any final fanfare in Shearer's farewell from the football field.

Indeed, former England coach Terry Venables deems it strangely appropriate.

"When I think of Shearer's career, it puts me in mind of those old days when you would go into a cinema when a film was already running," he said.

"You might pick it up halfway through and then leave the second show when you reached the bit where you came in. That never bothered you if the film was good.

"It's the same with Shearer; you could pick up the movie at any time and you would know you had something worth seeing. That's been true right to the end."

Prior to the 1996 European Championships, Venables was under heavy pressure to jettison the 25-year-old striker, who had gone 11 England games without a goal.

"I knew what I was investing in," recalled Venables. "He made a tremendous impact on me right from the start.

"I remember being told this 17-year-old had scored a hat-trick on his debut for Southampton against Arsenal. You just didn't score hat-tricks against that Arsenal defence. You had to know this was one strong kid."

When Shearer went into his scoring desert for England - despite a flood of goals for Premiership-winning Blackburn Rovers - Venables was required to keep his nerve.

"The technique is always there but sometimes the mentality of a scorer, which is so much of the story, can slip away, the confidence can erode. But I never sensed Shearer had stopped believing in himself."

Shearer, in spite of competition from Les Ferdinand and Robbie Fowler, was the top scorer at Euro 96 and won the Golden Boot with five goals.

Shearer, for all his relentless ambition, has always conveyed a sense of a wider world. His contempt and disbelief at talk of England players striking in support of a suspended Rio Ferdinand, after he missed a drugs test, was total.

When Shearer returned home to Newcastle, and shunned Manchester United for a second time, many said it was at best a quixotic decision. He pined for the glory which would have undoubtedly come at Old Trafford but for it to be ultimately meaningful, it had to come in the colours of Newcastle United.

Perhaps, in the end, it was enough to surpass the scoring record of Newcastle's other football god, Jackie Milburn. When he hit that 200-goal milestone, it was something to be placed with the 30 goals in 63 games for England.

He has been unscrupulous on the field and, some say, self-obsessed but then so have most of the great players, especially if they occupy that lonely terrain in front of goal.

He has never been slow to exert the weight of his prestige. It was commonly held he delivered an ultimatum to the FA before the 1998 World Cup finals. The belief was that Shearer had told the FA that if they disciplined him following his kicking of the Leicester player Neil Lennon, they could forget about his services in France. Shearer lets you know that if you want to take the best, you better live with the rest.

Perhaps he defined himself best when he moved to Blackburn for what seemed to many the staggering fee of £3.6 million.

He was asked about the pressure of such a price tag and looked bemused.

"What pressure?" he asked. "I didn't decide I'm worth that much. Someone else did that. What I do is go out and play to the best of my ability. No one can do more than that."

-INDEPENDENT