Quotes of the Day

It's 70 minutes past happy hour in this smoky Guangdong snooker hall, and the lonely have congregated to shoot another night away. Every night at seven a downcast man claims a table for himself to rack and break and pocket balls in meditative solitude until closing time. Occasionally, he glances over at the yellow-haired man who nightly commands a table next to him. Tonight, the magical geometry of ball to pocket is off, so the Chinese man diverts himself by ambling toward the equally lonely-looking foreigner. "Hello," he says in his best English. "I am Mister Wang."

The yellow-haired foreigner smiles over at him. "Cheers," he says, clinking his imported beer to the black-haired man's local brew.

"Cheese," responds the Chinese man, grinning broadly. He is waiting for something more.

The foreigner pulls his eyebrows together, runs his tongue anxiously over his teeth and reaches for some Chinese words.

"Wo shi [I am] ...," he says.

He pauses. "What the bloody hell is my name?"

A Chinese acquaintance looks over and laughs. "Your name is Jia Si Ke Yin."

The blue-eyed man tries again, his tongue tripping over the unfamiliar syllables. "Wo shi Jia Si Ke Yin."

"Cheese," says the Chinese man. "Cheese, Mr. Jia Si Ke Yin."

"Yeah, cheddar to you, Mister Wang," responds Paul ("Gazza") Gascoigne, a forced smile lingering on his lips. "Cheddar and bloody brie to you."

It wasn't supposed to end up like this, not for one of Europe's finest footballers, not in this grim snooker hall in remote China, where Gazza is so lost that he doesn't even know how to pronounce his own name in Mandarin. He had been the most promising English footballer of his generation, a sublimely gifted mid-fielder with that rarest of abilities—he could control the tempo of the game, making average teammates seem good and good players seem great. There were a few years, as he played his club football for Newcastle, Tottenham and Lazio, and also for England's national side in the 1990 World Cup, when he seemed on the verge of becoming a blond Maradona; the ball stayed glued to his foot even at full pace, his passes found angles that seemed impossible. Through it all, however, he was a notoriously heavy drinker. He now says that boozing contributed to his many injuries and 27 surgeries, leaving him with only flashes of his former brilliance. And now, at the twilight of his career, 35-year-old Gascoigne is searching for one last chance at redemption. Earlier last year there was talk of a deal in Dubai or America or Malta. Maybe even one last shot in England.

But times change. Contracts failed to materialize, and Gazza's body refused to convert the lightening moves in his mind to dazzling play on the pitch during tryouts with Major League Soccer's DC United and a slew of lackluster sides, including Scottish second division Berwick Rangers. Which is why Gazza has ended up in a training camp in southern Guangdong province, where he will practice for a couple of weeks before heading north to Lanzhou, a city so dirty that when you blow your nose the resulting mess is black. No one expected him to land here with the lowly Gansu Agricultural Land Reclamation Flying Horses, a team that dwells in the basement of China's second division and makes its home in a city that has been named the most polluted on earth. Even today, Gazza admits he couldn't find Lanzhou, in northwestern China, on a map, especially "if you spelled the place in the funny Chinese language with all those bloody lines and scratches." At least, he hears, the beer is supposed to be tasty—something that matters now that Gazza is back off the wagon. "Look, it doesn't matter where I am," says Gascoigne, his voice barely above a whisper, "as long as I get to play me football. That's what makes me happy."

On day six of training camp, Gazza, who's been brought on as a player-coach for a reported $500,000 this season, has led his ragged side to a win over a Guangdong third-division team in a preseason friendly. On the pitch, it's easy to pick out the Englishman: he's the only one with a red face and hairy arms. "Growing up, Gascoigne was my hero," says 22-year-old teammate Li Zheng. "But in person, he looks a lot older than he does on TV." The other teammates don't know exactly what to make of Gazza, either. He is a fallen football legend in their midst, and there is far more than just a language barrier keeping them apart. "He has lived so many football lives," says Flying Horses' chief coach Gong Hai. "Maybe it's hard for us to understand everything that he has gone through."

At dinner, Gazza sits at the foreigners' table and eats what's been identified to him as beef curry—even though there's no discernible beef or, for that matter, curry in the dish. The club has two fellow outlanders trying to make it in the Middle Kingdom. One is a lanky Brazilian who speaks no English. The other is a powerful Senegalese whom Gazza introduces as Adam Caesar. His real name, it turns out, is Adama Cisse, but the Senegalese doesn't correct his British teammate. In halting English, he explains to Gazza that his contract hasn't been signed yet. His wife and children are back in France and fast running out of money. Could Gazza put in a good word for him with the coach? There are dozens of homeless foreign players roaming around China these days, desperately angling for a place to live out the end of their playing careers. Already, two footballers from Germany and Guinea have come and gone from the Flying Horses' training camp. Gascoigne gives the Senegalese a wink and assures him that he'll talk to the manager. The Brazilian is listening intently to the conversation, even though he can't understand a word. "He's not going to make it," remarks Gazza, nodding toward the silent Brazilian. "He'll be gone by next week, but he doesn't know it yet." The Brazilian notices that Gazza is speaking about him and smiles. He gives the thumbs-up sign, and Gascoigne thumbs-up back. His face, though, is no longer cheerful. Gazza knows what it's like to be cut from a team, and his heart goes out to the befuddled Brazilian. "Poor bloke," he says. "Sometimes all you want to do is play football, and they won't let you."

The depression that has dogged Gazza over the years is already threatening his stay in China. Just a couple days earlier while walking down the street in Qingyuan, the town where the team is training, Gazza suffered a panic attack when the sense of dislocation overwhelmed him. It was all too much, the motorbikes laden with squawking ducks bound for market, the green-tiled temples rising in the distance and the men blowing spheroids of snot straight onto the street one nostril at a time. "I thought, s---, I'm going to get stuck in this bloody ghost town forever," he says, hands tearing a napkin to shreds in his lap. "At that moment I thought: I have to get out of here or I'll die."

When he first arrived for spring training, Gazza stayed in Guangzhou at one of the most opulent hotels in town, where the lobby showcased live white tigers pacing in glass cages. Training camp, though, was an hour-and-a-half away from the glitz of Guangzhou and it introduced him to a different China. The hotel mattress felt like it was stuffed with goal posts, the toilet overflowed and the only wildlife in the hotel was tiny, brown and had six legs. "It's supposed to be a communist country, where everybody's equal-like" observes Gazza. "But I reckon things aren't so equal at all."

Gazza is a man who likes to talk, poke you in the ribs after a witty aside and repeat the joke in case you didn't get it the first—or second or third—time. But here, the garrulous footballer has been reduced to pantomime gestures and one-word exchanges. "Okay," says one teammate, clapping Gazza on the back as he watches the foreigner try to capture a particularly slippery dumpling. "Okay," responds Gascoigne, dramatically spearing the morsel with his chopstick. "Okay!" cheers the teammate. It's one of the longest conversations Gascoigne has had with a teammate all day.

By evening, the burden of this vacuous camaraderie leaves Gazza feeling low. After the rest of the team has been tucked into bed by a 9:30 curfew, he finds solace in snooker and San Miguel. At night, his motions are usually lazy, a languor born of loneliness. But tonight Gazza is all manic energy, careening around like a banked cue ball. He has invited his father, John Gascoigne, and best mate, Jimmy Gardner—Jimmy Five Bellies to the British tabloids—to stay with him for the next three months, and they will arrive by car from Hong Kong in a few hours' time. Now, Gazza babbles like an excited child on the eve of summer vacation, giggles because he's just talked to Dad on the road and the old man sounds absolutely tanked. When the three of them get together and carouse, says Gazza, they have the best of times—even if the setting is some forsaken snooker hall in China.

When the pair finally shows up, two hours late and suitably soused, it's like all the energy of his glory days has been jolted back into Gazza. He hugs each man twice and offers up snacks of spicy squid, dried beef and shrimp chips. Jimmy samples the squid, but Dad refuses the food and instead pulls out a half-finished bottle of Famous Grouse whiskey, plus a glass he says he "nicked" from the Grand Hyatt in Hong Kong. Even though Gazza and his father don't actually talk much—John is as taciturn as Paul is chatty—the son says they're only truly at ease when they're together. The whole family is so tight-knit that Gazza bought five houses all next to each other on a street in the Newcastle suburb of Dunston so that his mother, father, two sisters and brother could live in a neat little row. His parents divorced years ago, but his mother still cooks dinner for his father every night. That makes Gazza's old man happy, but not as happy as watching his son practice. Looking over at Paul, John fingers one of the gold chains around his neck, raises a glass of Famous Grouse and shoots his son a crooked almost-smile. "Aw, look at me, Dad and Jimmy Five Bellies," says Gazza, leaning back in his chair with a San Miguel as they toast news that Adama Cisse will get a contract, thanks in part to Gascoigne's intervention. "I'm so happy, you know? Finally, I'm so happy again."

The next morning, over a breakfast of fried noodles, the mood among the Flying Horses' club management is far less sanguine. It turns out Gazza did not clear his father and Jimmy's stay with the team. It is all, says Shi Minghua, a team administrator, highly irregular. The famous foreigner has been allowed some latitude, like an extended curfew, his own private room and even an unchaperoned trip to the area's famous hot springs. But inviting an entourage of two men and six bellies is just too much, especially in a country so regimented that Olympic athletes are not informed of a parent's death, lest their personal lives get in the way of their athletic performances. Officially, Gazza's late-night drinking isn't seen as an issue by his club. "Gascoigne fixed his alcohol problems before coming to China," says team manager Zhong Bohong. But the Flying Horses' officials also know that the potential for out-of-control partying is that much higher with Gazza's drinking buddies in town. Already, the first day after his father and friend showed up, Gascoigne drags a little in practice. "He needs to work harder," mutters an assistant coach. The Englishman runs by, red faced and slightly out of breath. When a younger teammate passes him, Gazza cheers and slaps him a high five. His mouth is curved into a smile, but his eyes are not quite happy. Redemption, he knows, comes in the strangest of places. But in faraway China, Gazza seems so very lost.

• Hannah Beech / Qingyuan
• Once football's favorite son, Gazza's bottomed out in China and back on the bottle