Everton legend Adrian Heath admitted he was left thinking, ‘Is this it?’ after being kidnapped and held at knifepoint in Morocco.
The 65-year-old told eSPORTY that what was supposed to be an interview for a job in Saudi Arabia led to extortion threats to his stricken wife, who was worried sick for his safety back in Minnesota.
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Heath, who won two league titles and an FA Cup during his six-years at Everton, which began in 1982, had been no stranger to overseas adventures.
The retired striker enjoyed a stint in Spain with Espanyol after leaving the Toffees in 1988, while much of his post-playing career has been in the US.
The eight-cap ex-England U21 international has spent the last 18 years across the pond at Austin Aztex, Orlando City, and Minnesota United.
He’s been absent from the dugout since leaving MLS side Minnesota in 2023, but had an offer to coach again less than 12 months later.
However, what should have felt like a new lease of life soon turned into fearing his days were numbered after a harrowing kidnapping.
Heath joined Jim White and Simon Jordan live from New York on eSPORTY, where he recounted the shocking and terrifying ordeal.
“I’ve had better days, Jim, I’ve got to be honest,” the Newcastle-under-Lyme-born hero started dryly when retelling the story.
“The crazy thing about the whole situation was how well it was planned because from the summer, the agent kept in touch with me sporadically through the year.
“Eventually, I’m watching them – what’s going on – since I spoke about the job. They gave it to a German guy, but the results didn’t pick up.
“And then I get the phone call asking ‘are you still interested? They’re going to change the coach again – Yeah, I’m interested.’”
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‘Big blade at my throat’
“From there, anyway, going to meet the Sheikh, going to meet the people,” Heath continued. “I have to be careful because there’s still stuff going on now that I can’t talk about.
“Then eventually, I get there, we end up in Morocco, and within 10 minutes of getting in a car, I realized this is maybe not what I thought it was going to be.
“Cut a long story short, and two hours later I’m there with a big blade at my throat.
“They’re going to, you know, get onto my wife demanding money to be wired by the following day. But the amount of stuff they knew about my family, you know, two children, four grandkids.”
Heath, who met his wife Jane in 1990 while playing for Manchester City, had left her behind in America while he journeyed to Tangier.
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Heath explained he managed to survive his kidnapping through his son.
“He coaches kids and one of the kids’ fathers was in the FBI and said, ‘Have you done this? Have you done that?’
“So this was about a day later, and within maybe seven hours, it had gone from demanding money [then] bundling me in a car, took me to the airport, threw me out of the car as it’s moving, and I got the last flight out of Tangiers to Madrid that night.
“It was a day and a half I wouldn’t want to go through again, pretty harrowing stuff, but, at the end of the day, it came out okay.
“[The intermediaries] were going to take me to meet the Sheikh, and everything there’s all above board, all legit, the correspondent, the emails going backwards and forwards.
“There’s nothing that I’ve gone through since looking at it, thinking, why shouldn’t I have seen that? Was that a red flag? Everything that we asked for, we got everything there.
“We got all the hotel reservations the flight reservations came through on time. So these guys, and it’s still ongoing, this is still ongoing.
“I know for a fact that another manager, I don’t know whether he was English or American, he actually got duped by these people only a few months ago. So they’re still out there.”
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Still an active FBI investigation
Heath alerted the League Managers Association (LMA) of his situation upon his return, while the FBI are still searching for his kidnappers.
He even bravely revealed that he would have no problem identifying his perpetrators if law enforcement tracked them down.
“I contacted the LMA as soon as I got back because I didn’t want somebody else to go through this,” Heath continued. “And I actually think, Jim, it was worse for my wife and my children at home.
“We see all these movies now, don’t we, where it’s all the kidnapping, with the bag over their head, they’re taking the fingers off, and
so obviously all that’s going through my wife’s head while she’s back in Minnesota. So I didn’t want anybody else going through it.
“So we contacted the LMA, and from what I’m aware, they have let all the managers and coaches in the UK who were involved with the organization to say, hey, if it’s anything in certain countries, make sure you go through us, and we’ll go and check and go to the clubs directly.
“The FBI were around the house about three or four weeks ago, and they bought a few photographs, but it wasn’t the two people…
“They were Moroccans. I would [be able to identify them again]. But the two fellas, the two pictures that I got from the FBI recently, they were not the same two guys.”
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Heath reflected: “There was a seven-to eight-hour period through the night where I actually thought, ‘This is it!’
“So then you go through the other thoughts of your mind, going, ‘Well, I’ve had a good life, but is this it?’
“I’m not going to see my grandkids grow up. I’m not going to see my wife and family again. It was pretty harrowing stuff!”
