Craig Bellamy - Biography
Craig Bellamy was born in Cardiff, Wales on July 13th, 1979. Craig Bellamy was a keen football player in his youth, and showcased a desire to make it to the top level. Overall, he attended 3 schools including Rumney High School, by which time he was destined to join the world of football. The Welsh international came from a football loving family, his father was manager for Caer Castell F.C and this was one of Craig Bellamy’s first youth clubs. Caer Castell gave him the opportunity to showcase his skills along with providing him with the basic footballing knowledge and understanding. Craig Bellamy spent his time at two other academies for footballers’ though. The first, was at Bristol Rovers, where he impressed at a trial at age nine. However after two years there, he moved on to Norwich’s academy. By this time, he was eleven years old and living in England. He was also at Bradford Park Avenune for a short time, a team who play in the lower leagues in England. He even had a trial at Bradford City, but failed to impress. Craig Bellamy had to learn how to take rejection at a young age, however this made him a stronger and a tougher person. On the 15th of March 1997, Craig Bellamy made his full debut for Norwich against Crystal Palace.
Craig Bellamy spent five years playing professionally for Norwich in the Championship (what was then known as Division one) before being transferred to Premiership side Coventry City. He played 34 times for Coventry in a single season, scoring 8 goals for them. His time at Coventry was short lived though, it was more of a stepping stone for him, as Newcastle came in with a transfer bid to secure his services in 2001. A year later, Craig Bellamy won the PFA young player of the year award, for his overall goal and team contributions. In five successful years as a Newastle United striker, playing at the highest level in England he scored an impressive total of 43 goals. However, he was then deemed surplus to requirements after a row with manager Souness and consequently went on loan to Celtic Football Club in 2005. Craig Bellamy was very successful at Celtic and helped them on their way to winning the Scottish FA Cup. It was this successful loan period, which convinced Mark Hughes (Blackburn Manager) to make a formal bid for the striker of £5million pounds. By this time, Bellamy was certainly a very established football player, with many international caps under his belt, it seemed like Blackburn were getting a bargain.
He was only at Blackburn for one year, before Blackburn doubled their money on him. After just one highly impressive season of Bellamy scoring 13 goals, Liverpool offered £10m for the striker and this was accepted. Finally, the pacey striker was given a chance to play at one of the best clubs in the world and really prove his worth. However, this move did not really work out for Craig Bellamy. Despite being given a handful of Champions League caps and scoring 7 goals for Liverpool, it wasn’t quite what Benitez wanted. He was then transferred, again. This time to West Ham United for a fee of £11million, just after he had won the Welsh Player of the Year award. Craig Bellamy has yet to make a real impact at West Ham, after suffering some unfortunate injuries in his first season. Still though, Curblishley seems more than optimistic about the future of Craig Bellamy at Upton Park.
Bellamy is also a husband and a father of three and one of his most generous actions was giving £650,00 of his own money to a footballing foundation in Sierra Leone. There has been questions raised over Bellamy’s attitude prior to this, however, this really confirms what a great guy Bellamy really is. He’ll also hope to be scoring goals in a West Ham shirt in the near future, along with helping the Welsh national side.
