EXCLUSIVE: Former Liverpool defender Jon Otsemobor spoke to Sam Carroll on being shot and why El Hadji-Diouf was misunderstood.
An interview with Jon Otsemobor is not like many others.
In the half-an-hour he spent with the ECHO on a piping hot day in May 2020, before he completed a run around Sefton Park, we talked being shot in the backside, getting arrested at training and El-Hadji Diouf gate-crashing his apartment with several scantily-clad friends.
But Otsemobor, who turns 39 today, is a deeply likeable character. He has been coaching his son’s under-eight team and dreams of returning to his boyhood club in any capacity…
After retiring from football in 2014, he initially became involved in property management and personal training, but both interests have been placed on the back-burner, for now, as he eyes his coaching badges in the near future.
He also speaks glowingly about representing Liverpool – the club he supported as a boy, despite being offered a YTS by Everton first – and what it means for a young Scouser to play for his club.
Basically, it is an unforgettable half-hour.
Otsemobor spoke about being shot – the incident happened in Wonderbar on Slater Street in the city centre in 2003 – during his two-and-a-half hour appearance on Under the Cosh.
He explained that the shooting, which occurred less than 12 months after his Liverpool debut, was an unfortunate accident, mistaken identity; the wrong place at the wrong time.
The bullet passed straight through Otsemobor’s buttocks and, fortunately, missed his hip. It did, however, take off the finger of a reveller near him, who ended up in the same hospital that evening.
The gunman shot another victim that night, leading to stories that Otsemobor was involved in the Liverpool gang scene. It is a perception he admits he struggled with at times.
“The people who mean anything to me, the people close to me and friends and family, know who I am and what I’m about,” Otsemobor responds.
“I think, obviously, where I’m from in Speke, it’s not the best area in Liverpool.
“There’s always been trouble there down the years and even if accidents like that didn’t happen, with the group of friends I was with, I was always going to be looked upon a bit differently.
“I didn’t mind it, because I knew who I was and wherever I go, people who actually know me have not got that perception of me.
“So it wasn’t so much that, but the people who didn’t know me, who always thought he’s a scally, he’s this, he’s that, this is why he’s been released from Liverpool.
“It was so far from the truth that people are going to make their opinions of what and when and you leave them to it.”
Ironically, the full-back made a speedy recovery from the bizarre injury and was back in the team two months later.
But this was not the only difficult moment he had to explain to Gerard Houllier.
Once, his brand new BMW was burned out on his mother’s path. Another time, he was arrested at Liverpool training.
Otsemobor, driving past a bar he knew his friends were visiting, spotted a fight in the street.
He realised it was one of his friends and attempted to help him. A few days later, police arrested Otsemobor at Liverpool on GBH charges. He claims it was the other group attempting to blackmail him into paying to have the charges dropped.
Nothing came of the arrest but with this and the shooting happening within an eight-month period, the perception of Otsemobor was not exactly glowing.
“I did get in stupid bits of trouble down the years but I’ve put that down to being very inexperienced,” he reflects. “A lot of my trouble came away from the football club, like on nights out.
“I could have controlled things if I had a more sensible head on me by not being in them places at those times but other than that, going through my career, once I started growing up and maturing I didn’t have problems anywhere else.
“It was just unfortunate that it happened at such a young age at a club where I had so much potential of doing well there.”
Does he believe that had he kept a different group of friends, or a lower profile, things could have been different at Liverpool?
Could it have been him handing over his mantle to Trent Alexander-Arnold several seasons ago?
“I would never know,” he says. “You would have to ask the people in charge. Looking back now, if I was the owner of a football club, you don’t want your young players….” Otsemobor trails off.
“Imagine one of the young lads now goes out and gets shot and there are rumours flying about?” he restarts. “I wasn’t even in the first-team at the time. Any football club doesn’t need that but fortunately, at the time, Liverpool did see something in me.
“I think if they didn’t it would have just been easier to boot me out the door, really.
“It was just the way I was processing things and thinking then. I was thinking like a young, Liverpool lad, instead of thinking, hang on a minute, I am young, but I am at Liverpool Football Club here.
“I can’t be going out to town where there are people who want to start fights with me. I have to be mature enough to walk away from them spots and involve myself in other people’s trouble whether they’re my friends or not. I need to turn a blind eye to it.”
In an attempt to move away from his off-field difficulties, Otsemobor moved from Speke into a flat on the Albert Dock.
It was here that he unwittingly hosted a party for Liverpool team-mate El-Hadji Diouf.
After assuming a friendship with the Senegalese international – he reckons Diouf might initially have thought he was his personal driver after showing him around the city – he was woken up at 2am with the doorbell ringing.
Diouf was outside. “Sem, open the door!”
Otsemobor obliged, but it was not just his team-mate. He
estimates there were around 10 party-goers, mostly women, with Diouf.
