| Personal information | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Full name | Kevin Joseph Campbell | ||
| Date of birth | 4 February 1970 | ||
| Place of birth | Lambeth, London, England | ||
| Height | 6 ft 2 in (1.88 m) | ||
| Playing position | Striker (retired) | ||
| Youth career | |||
| 1985–1988 | Arsenal | ||
| Senior career* | |||
| Years | Team | Apps† | (Gls)† |
| 1988–1995 | Arsenal | 166 | (46) |
| 1989 | → Leyton Orient (loan) | 16 | (9) |
| 1989 | → Leicester City (loan) | 11 | (5) |
| 1995–1998 | Nottingham Forest | 80 | (32) |
| 1998–1999 | Trabzonspor[1] | 17 | (5) |
| 1999 | → Everton (loan) | 8 | (9) |
| 1999–2005 | Everton | 137 | (36) |
| 2005–2006 | West Bromwich Albion | 45 | (6) |
| 2006–2007 | Cardiff City[2] | 19 | (0) |
| Total | 499 | (148) | |
| National team‡ | |||
| 1990–1992 | England U21 | 4 | (1) |
| 1991 | England B | 1 | (0) |
| * Senior club appearances and goals counted for the domestic league only and correct as of 20:10, 17 April 2008 (UTC). † Appearances (Goals). |
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Kevin Joseph Campbell (born 4 February 1970 in Lambeth, London) is an English former football player who played as a striker.
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Campbell began his career as a trainee with Arsenal, joining the club on schoolboy forms in 1985. He had a prolific run in the club's youth team (with whom he won the FA Youth Cup and scored 59 goals in a season), but despite making his first-team debut against Everton on 7 May 1988, the forward positions were usually taken by Paul Merson and Alan Smith.
Campbell came to prominence during a loan spell at Leyton Orient in 1989, when he scored 9 goals in 16 games; Orient manager Frank Clark wanted to make the move permanent but Arsenal refused to sell. After a poor start to the 1989-90 season he was again loaned out, this time to Leicester City. However, the following season (1990-91) he established himself in the Arsenal team, scoring eight times in ten matches during the run-in to the club's First Division title win.
Despite Arsenal signing Ian Wright in September 1991, Campbell continued to play for Arsenal, although he was often overshadowed by his more prolific partner. Nevertheless, he scored some crucial goals for Arsenal, including last-minute equalisers against Millwall and Derby County in Arsenal's successful FA Cup and League Cup campaigns in 1992-93. The following season he scored 19 (his best single season for the Gunners) and won the Cup Winners' Cup, but his form deserted him in 1994-95, and the arrivals of John Hartson and Dennis Bergkamp threatened his place in the side. In all he played 224 times for Arsenal, scoring 59 goals.
In the summer of 1995 Campbell was sold to former European champions Nottingham Forest for an initial fee of £2.5m, where he spent three seasons. He was part of the team that was relegated in 1997, but his 23 goals the following season helped a return to the top flight at the first attempt. However, Campbell controversially left Forest at the end of that season to join Turkish side Trabzonspor for £2.5m, causing Forest team-mate Pierre van Hooijdonk to go "on strike".[3] His time in Trabzon was brief and unhappy; he left the club after seven months after a racist incident involving the club president, Mehmet Ali Yılmaz, who called him a "discoloured cannibal" and also criticised him by saying "We bought him as a goal machine, but he turned out to be a washing machine".[4] He was very popular during his time at the club with the fans. To show solidarity with him when he asked to leave following this incident, the two club captains, Ogün Temizkanoğlu and Abdullah Ercan, were with him during his press conference in which he stated his reasons for leaving.
Everton, who were battling against relegation from the Premier League, signed Campbell on loan in March 1999. His impact on the side was immediate as he scored 9 goals in 8 games, making him Everton's top goalscorer that season and saving them from the drop. His 6 goals in his first 3 games earned him the April player of the month award, the first on-loan player ever to win it.
Campbell's move to Everton was made permanent in the summer of 1999 for a fee of £3million. In the first half of the 1999-2000 season, he scored Everton's winning goal in the Merseyside derby at Anfield against Liverpool.[5]
He was Everton's leading goalscorer for both of the following two seasons, scoring 12 and 9 goals respectively, although Everton remained disappointing in the Premier League as they finished in the bottom half of the table both times during a run of bottom-half finishes which lasted from 1997 to 2002. After scoring only 4 goals during the 2001-02 campaign, he was once again the club's top goalscorer the following year when he scored 10 times. This would prove to be Campbell's final season as first-choice for Everton as he struggled to battle both injuries and the emergence of a number of strikers, in particular Wayne Rooney. Campbell left in January 2005 on a free transfer to West Bromwich Albion, who were bottom of the Premiership.[6] He was appointed team captain shortly after his arrival and successfully led the club to Premiership survival (this was the first time that a club which had been bottom of the league on Christmas Day had survived relegation).
However, in May 2006, after WBA's relegation to the Championship, Campbell was released by the club. He signed for Cardiff City on a free transfer on 2 August 2006.[7] He scored his first and only goal for the first team in an FAW Premier Cup quarter-final match away at Carmarthen Town on February 13, 2007, and was released by the club in May 2007,[8] subsequently retiring from the game to pursue business interests. His final competitive appearance came against former club West Brom on 20 February 2007.[9]
Campbell earned 4 caps for the England U-21s and 1 for England B. He has the distinction of being the English player who has scored the most goals in the Premier League without earning an England cap.
He ran his own record label, '2 Wikid', with rapper Mark Morrison the label's first signing.[10] But in December 2004, with the artist still signed to 2 Wikid, Campbell was forced to obtain a court injunction against rival label Jet Star, in order to prevent it from releasing Morrison's album Innocent Man.[11] The injunction was lifted shortly afterwards,[12] and the album was eventually released sometime later.
Campbell was featured on the Sky Sports series "Where are They Now?" in 2008, when he was the co-owner of a security company "T1 Protection", specialising in supplying bodyguards to celebrities and other wealthy customers whilst traveling abroad. He also commentated with Asia-based TEN Sports for their Premier League and Champions League coverage.[13]