On the roof of his red mini sits a magnetic sign. “Carl Muggleton Driving School, the number one driving school.” The ‘number one’ bit is printed on a green goalkeeper shirt, the only hint to the instructor’s previous career.
“That was when we used to wear just green,” says Muggleton. “Then they became multi-coloured!”
Advertisem*nt
The 51-year-old wore the colours of 14 different clubs during his 22-year career and he is certainly a colourful character himself.
During his playing days he saved a penalty at Wembley in a play-off final, was the first Leicester goalkeeper to be sent off for a professional foul and even featured as an emergency outfield player for Sheffield United.
Since retiring Muggleton has worked in north Leicestershire as a driving instructor, helping hundreds of teenagers gain their driving licence. And ever since an inspirational meeting former England defender Mark Wright while playing for Liverpool in the Masters six-a-side tournament, he and wife Justine have helped other children as foster parents. He has also been supporting youngest son Samuel as he fights to save his playing career after a terrible injury while playing for Darlington, when he broke a femur and dislocated his knee.
He even finds time to look after the young goalkeepers with Northern Ireland Under-21s.
Muggleton clearly likes to keep busy, and above all he likes to help others, and he has the patience and the calmness to do so.
He has just sat patiently while I drove him around the picturesque local countryside so he can assess my driving, before we head to his house in Queniborough, which, like his choice of car, is understated.
They say goalkeepers have to be a little bit crazy, surely even more so to become a driving instructor as well and taking on the challenges and problems of children needing a new direction in life, but Muggleton’s sanity can’t be questioned — although he admits there have been some scary moments on the roads.
“We nearly took out a bus stop once,” he recalls. “I grabbed the steering wheel just in time, but the more experience you have you can see what is coming up and try to avoid it.
Advertisem*nt
“I was in the last year of my career, aged 39. My mate’s daughter was 17 and he didn’t want to take her out for lessons, so I said I’d help.
“I decided to do a course and qualify, and it has been good for me. I can be flexible and do more when I am out of work as a coach. It is so rewarding, because you are giving youngsters a chance in life and an opportunity for freedom to get out and about, and they get asked when applying for jobs if they have a driving licence.
“I was asked to give (Leicester player) Daniel Amartey some lessons to get used to driving here, booster lessons, but it didn’t work out because he wanted to drive an automatic, and I taught Tigers (Leicester’s pro rugby side) player Joe Heyes, who plays for England Under-21s. I know his dad, Darren Heyes, because he used to play keeper for Nottingham Forest.”
As we drive, we chat about his eventful playing career, interspersed with instructions like, ‘Take the next available right,’ and questions including, ‘Why did you indicate to overtake a parked car?’
Born in Syston on Leicester’s northern outskirts, Muggleton had two older brothers and inevitably when they played over the local park he was put in goal. But slowly he came to love the role and began playing for Syston Juniors, where he was one of the first crop to be sent to trials for the newly-formed Leicester City Centre of Excellence.
He was selected at age 10 and trained every week with his hometown club before being offered an apprenticeship, where he would clean the dressing rooms and the boots of several first-team players.
“I had to look after the boots of Ian Andrews, Gordon Banks briefly, Bob Hazell and Mark Bright,” Muggleton recalls. “Mark Bright was a top bloke, but a nightmare. He was sponsored by Nike, so the tick on his boots had to always be immaculately white every time he played. We used to use Tipp-Ex to white it up.
Advertisem*nt
“We were scared of them and you had to show respect. We would knock on the door before entering the home dressing room and wait to be invited in.
“We used to have to sweep out the dressing rooms and if it was a night game I would just make the last bus home. But one time we played Forest and we battered them. Brian Clough went absolutely mad at them and kept them in the changing rooms for two hours after the game. We weren’t allowed in and we were too scared to knock on the door. We had to clean up after them and missed the last bus. We had to get a taxi home.
“A guy called Jim Wright would train us on a Tuesday night. Gerry Armstrong, Jon Sammels would get involved as well. But Jim would sort the kit out and he would go around with a white glove, testing what we had cleaned.
“It is very different now. When I was at Gillingham, one of the lads had his eight-year-old at Chelsea and he would turn up and his boots were cleaned for him and all his training kit laid out for him. It is a completely different world.”
It was tough to break through at City but after loans at Chesterfield, Blackpool and Hartlepool, he made his debut in a 1-1 draw with West Bromwich Albion at The Hawthorns in 1989.
“Paul Cooper and Martin Hodge were the first team keepers and then Hodge got injured at the start of the season and Cooper was involved in a car accident, so I was called up,” says Muggleton.
“There were loads of Leicester fans there; mates, family, friends from school were all there. It was nerve-wracking sitting on the bus to the game. During the game I remember, I used to kick half-volleys but the nerves kicked in and it started going out of play or down the middle, where the gaffer didn’t want it to go. Ali Mauchlen came up to me and said to relax and don’t worry. From there on I made a few saves and it ended up being a good debut.”
Advertisem*nt
He played the next two games but lost his place in the team soon after. In 1990, there were loans to Stockport and then Liverpool. Although he never made a first-team appearance for the Reds, he would get to represent them in Masters football years later.
“I would have loved to have got a game for them,” says Muggleton, who has very few regrets about his career. “I played in the reserves and we beat Rotherham 11-0 and we had Barry Venison, Alan Hansen, Jan Molby, Peter Beardsley, Steve McManaman, Ronny Rosenthal and Steve Harkness playing.”
The Liverpool connection would later deal Muggleton one of his most embarrassing nights when he was playing against them for Stoke in a League Cup tie and ended up picking the ball out of his net eight times.
“It was just one of those nights where everything they did came off for them,” he adds. “I don’t remember anything going through my legs or through my hands, or any disastrous mistakes. It was just embarrassing when you came off.”
While at City, Muggleton also had the ignominy of being their first goalkeeper ever sent off in a senior game when he was dismissed under the new professional-foul instruction against Charlton in March 1991, although he had already had a taste of the early bath.
“Paul Danson did me in the Leicestershire Senior Cup final, just before Brian Little came into the club,” Muggleton recalls with some disgust. “I got banned for three games and it got carried over into the following season, so I lost my place. It was the same thing against Charlton. I came out and mistimed it, I suppose, and took the player’s feet. He has gone over the top of me and I was sent off.”
Muggleton also had the strange experience of coming on as a sub as an outfield player while on loan at Sheffield United in 1996.
“It was my second loan spell at United, and Howard Kendall was manager,” Muggleton says, smiling as he recalls the incident.
Advertisem*nt
“We were playing Reading away and it was the days of three subs — two outfield players and a goalkeeper. We had made the two subs and Chris Short went down injured after falling over the hoardings. He came off and I said to the kitman to get me a shirt, so I went on instead of us playing with 10 men.
“I played wide on the right, for the last 10 minutes. I got a touch and cleared a corner. Then we broke with Roger Nilsen down the wing and Andy Walker was running into the box with me and I called for it to be squared, which he did but Walker got there first and side-footed it in.
“It would have been great if that had come to me.”
There were two moments in his career that still fill him with pride — saving Mike Newell’s penalty in the 1992 Second Division Play-off Final and earning his solitary England Under-21 cap.
Muggleton was one of their star performers in the final as his saves kept City in a match they eventually lost 1-0 to Blackburn, courtesy of a controversial penalty award that Newell did convert.
“It was the first time we had been at Wembley for 30-odd years,” recalls Muggleton. “The crowd was unbelievable. I walked out to a sea of blue at the far end of the stadium. It was the hottest day of the year and there were no ball-boys so in the warm-up I had to run miles to get the balls back. It was roasting, but it was incredible.
“We went down a few days before the final and Brian Little had arranged for us to go to one of the other finals on the Saturday, we were playing on Monday, so we could soak up the atmosphere.
“Some family were at the hotel and I was sat chatting with them. Brian said he would give me a shout when it was time to leave, but after a while I had heard nothing and the bus had gone — they had gone without me.
“In the end, my friends took me to Wembley. The staff said they thought they had one missing. I got there just before the bus and we watched the game (Blackpool beating Sc*nthorpe on penalties after a 1-1 draw), but the atmosphere was nowhere near as good as our game.”
Advertisem*nt
David Speedie went down easily in the box under Steve Walsh’s challenge to give Newell the chance to open the scoring. Despite playing for City later in his career, Speedie was never really forgiven by City fans.
“There was minimal contact,” says Muggleton, with more than a sense of injustice 27 years later. “He has gone past Walshy and Walshy has just leant on him and he went down, but the ref gave the penalty. I knew Mike anyway because he had been at the club, and he scored that.
“We were still in the game and creating chances, then in the second half I came out and I gave the penalty away for the second one (challenging Mark Atkins). He went to my left the first time and he tried it to my left again and I got a touch on it to push it onto the post. We had some good chances, but it didn’t go for us on the day.
As for his England experience, typically, Muggleton heard the news while filling his time during the close-season working part-time for a friend’s window company.
“I only got one cap, against France — I went to the Toulon Tournament for the under-21s,” Muggleton says. “I remember I was working for a friend’s window company, Ace Windows, just to do something in the summer. I didn’t like down-time, so I did a couple of days playing golf and a few days a week working at his place.
“I got a phone call from the club, who didn’t know I was working there. They called my house and my mum gave them the number and said I was there. They told me I had to go and pick up my passport, which the club always kept.
Rob Tanner takes a driving lesson with Carl Muggleton (Picture: Plumb Images)
“I worked there for a couple of summers. It kept me grounded. I had a great lifestyle. I trained at 10am, then had lunch at the training ground, got back and I could be on the golf course by 1.30pm. You live that dream, but sometimes you need something to bring you back down. Probably not many players would do that.”
Advertisem*nt
Neither would many think about taking troubled youngsters into their homes as a foster parent, but Muggleton says the satisfaction he and Justine get from helping children and teenagers find a direction and purpose feels just as special as playing at Wembley.
“We had thought about it to help a neighbour years before, but didn’t go through with it,” says Muggleton.
“Then I went on tour with the Masters football and one of the lads playing was a fostered kid, David Johnson, and the other lad was Mark Wright, the centre-back from Derby and Liverpool. He was a foster parent with his wife.
“He had gone through the process and he said we should do the same, and if we decided not to do it at least we had done it (the process). We got in touch with the Foster Care Associates and after all the checks we helped a young lad. While it was tough, it sparked something.
“I have had this great life playing football, with great holidays and experiences, I have a nice family, and then you see all these kids who are really struggling. It makes you think you want to help because there are so many who need fostering. They need help and there are so many sad stories. It has been great doing it.
“There are so many different types of fostering; long term, short term, emergency and respite.”
The Muggletons went on to offer some respite to give other carers a break and had a teenage girl with a baby come to stay.
“She was 18 and had an abusive boyfriend and it was to get her away from him,” Muggleton remembers. “The baby was only days old. It was making sure she could look after the kid, and that she wasn’t going to go back to the boyfriend, but she ended up going to mother and baby units and then lost her baby because she went back to him. It was sad.”
Currently, they have a brother and sister who have been with them four years, and six months ago a four-year-old girl also came to stay.
Advertisem*nt
“It is all fantastic. it is great being a foster parent,” Muggleton says enthusiastically. “All the kids have issues and there aren’t many who have come into fostering who have lost their parents. Mostly they have been rejected in some form or have been taken away because they haven’t been looked after.
“To see how they grow in confidence and get better at school is so rewarding. Just to get some of them to go to school can be a challenge, and to make friends and trust people, it is a challenge but so worth it.
“To see them start to grow in life is so rewarding. It is up there with saving a penalty at Wembley.”
Finally, Muggleton delivers his verdict on my driving.
When asked if I would have passed a test, he swiftly answers, ‘No!’
“It wasn’t too bad,” he adds swiftly, to spare my feelings. “To be fair it was OK, but we all get into these habits after we pass our test.
“We all have this awareness when we drive and it is remembering to look and use the mirrors to keep you safe. That is what the driving lessons are all about, keeping you safe and everyone around you.”
For more information on fostering, visit www.thefca.co.uk
(Photo: Plumb Images)
