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Paul Vaessen first appeared for Arsenal as a substitute in a UEFA Cup
tie at Lokomotive Leipzig on the 27 September 1978. There was a further
European substitute appearance at Highbury against Hadjuk Split before
he made his full league debut against Chelsea in a 1-1 draw on 14 May
1979, all while he was still an apprentice. Paul signed professionally
with the Gunners in the summer of 1979 and with Malcolm Macdonald's
retirement through injury he started the 1979/80 season as the main
understudy to Frank Stapleton and Alan Sunderland. In many ways he was
an 'old fashioned' centre forward, fearless and good in the air, but in
addition to these attributes he had the rarer quality, for a big man, of
good feet. He made seven league appearances that season, scoring his
first goal in a 2-1 win at local rivals Tottenham Hotspur.
There were
also further goals in a 1-0 win at Coventry City and two in a 4-0 League
Cup victory over Brighton at Highbury. Paul scored one other goal that
season, a goal that would sadly turn out to be the highpoint of his
prematurely foreshortened career. Coming of the bench with barely ten
minutes remaining he scored in the last seconds of a European Cup
winners' Cup semi-final second leg at mighty Juventus to give Arsenal an
unbelievable 1-0 win and a place in the final. Thumping a header past
Dino Zoff at the far post he silenced the Stadio Communale and secured
his place in Highbury folklore. For Paul it was a brief moment when
dreams are realised, for reality quickly, and cruelly, reasserted
itself. There were still twenty more league and cup appearances for Paul
over the next two seasons, with four more goals, but a heavy knock to
his knee in a north London derby eventually required surgery on an
on-going basis and despite fluctuations Paul never recovered.
At the age
of twenty-one he was told he 'risked being crippled if he ever played
football again', and so Highbury's doors closed behind him. Although his
star shone only briefly it blazed with a magnitude rarely equalled that
night in Turin. It was a goal only surpassed in Arsenal's modern
history, for sheer drama and unexpectedness, by Michael Thomas' Anfield
title clincher in 1989. His goal stands as a testament to a potential
that Paul was never allowed to realise. (David Fensome).
In August 2001, he was found dead in the bathroom of his Bristol flat, aged 39. A post mortem found he had a high level of drugs in his bloodstream and the coroner recorded a verdict of accidental death. It was later revealed that Vaessen had been a heroin addict for several years and had several convictions for crimes including robberies and muggings.
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