No Hunger In Paradise Page 10

  ‘You really get to know very quickly the clubs you want to do business with,’ said John, the more quietly spoken of the pair. ‘Forget the setting, football, for a moment. You have in your hands the life of a vulnerable, often lost, young man. This is about how you deal, how you communicate, how you respond, the information you are willing to share. I’m not afraid to have a hard conversation to cut through the bullshit.

  ‘There are some, like Stoke City, West Bromwich Albion and Bournemouth, who are brilliant. They engage honestly and openly. At the other end of the spectrum there are clubs where I don’t trust a single thing they do or say. They go behind your back because they are so desperate to get a player or parent’s information. They don’t understand how stupid that is, because we get to find out about it.’

  Football’s back-of-the-hand cynicism and knee-jerk cronyism is so deeply ingrained that many in the game will dismiss the projection of such a combination of realism and idealism as hopelessly naïve or deliberately deceptive. Parents straddle a natural fault line; they become so immersed in the career path of their sons that a significant percentage is seduced into a sense of personal entitlement.

  Peter, stockier than his brother, also has interests in the building trade. He is neither artless nor unworldly. He draws on his experience as co-owner at Redditch United where, in addition to managing the first team and expanding the youth programme from three to twenty-one teams, he accepted an informal invitation from a scouting contact to mentor a richly talented 11-year-old. The relationship was in its fifth year when it fractured under pressure from competing clubs and agents.

  ‘I don’t blame the kid, because parents get sucked in so easily. I’d advised the family what they should be looking for from a scholarship at sixteen and spoken about the pros and cons of going with an agent. Then, over a meal, the dad suddenly said, “What’s in it for me? Does a signing-on fee help me?” I told him it wasn’t about him, but I’d lost him.

  ‘I don’t like the dishonesty in the system, the lies, the backhanders. That’s not me. I am an honest person. I couldn’t get involved in something where I could destroy a boy’s life, maybe not immediately, but somewhere down the line. That is what happens in football.’

  The brothers employ so-called associates – coaches and scouts who will contribute to the ultimate aim of establishing a national network of development centres. The pivotal figure in their planning is Mike Linley, my companion at St Neots. This is a vocational exercise for him; he spent five years funding a low-key but ethically similar scheme in the south of England before accepting a job with the Finnegans, whom he met while watching his son Joe, a full back in Villa’s under-23 team. A natural networker, who lives on his mobile phone from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m., charging it three times across the course of an extended working day, Linley has turned down a series of prominent jobs in youth recruitment because he believes in the power of personal commitment. Life, for him, is about fashioning the next opportunity rather than securing the next result.

  Some boys can’t afford public transport, so he picks them up and takes them to training, or to trial matches. The majority are registered on what is colloquially known as ‘a seven-dayer’. They are essentially non-contract players, and trade the lack of security for the ability to respond rapidly to the chance of advancement.

  Typically, during the ninety-minute drive to Cambridgeshire from his Essex home, Linley was called by Sonny Shilling, an 18-year-old winger released by Scunthorpe. He placed him at Cambridge City, where his mentality and potential could be properly assessed. It can take time to detect the extent of the hidden damage to those unwillingly set free.

  ‘They don’t know what to do. They look lost, half the player they once were. Scholars become used to going into training every day and suddenly they have nowhere to go. It is no different to you and I working for twenty-five years, and coming into the office to find an envelope on the desk telling you you’re out of the door. The kids can’t take it. There is no aftercare. It destroys them.

  ‘They should not be bringing in kids at five years of age. Every parent thinks their boy is going to go all the way, even at that age, and the boys easily become disillusioned. They get all the hype and none of the realism. A boy should not come into a club until he is fourteen.

  ‘I see boys of thirteen who think they’ve made it when they’ve not reached the first rung on the ladder. Make them sub and their dummies come out of the pram. All these people with all these badges don’t seem to know it is really all about how you mentor the child. There are no man-management skills. Coaches are in it for the wrong reasons, for themselves.

  ‘There are too many kids in the system. Clubs are taking too many, too early. They are building their hopes up too high, too young. They’re telling ten- or eleven-year-olds that they’re fantastic and dropping them when they’re thirteen. It is just all wrong. People treat their greyhounds better than clubs treat these boys.

  ‘They are training far too much when they are maturing. It is absolutely ridiculous. I hear of scholars being in every day for two weeks. They are pounding, pounding and pounding them to get the hours in. They run them too much. Judgements are made too quickly and too many parents can’t handle the rejection.’

  The talent trawl can occasionally be taken a little too literally. Linley recounts, with an enduring sense of wonder, the tale of a boy whose father was twenty miles out in the North Sea, working on a fishing boat, when he took a phone call from an agent who had been passed the number by an anonymous official at his son’s parent club. In so many words, the agent wanted to poach the boy, and was disinclined to take into account the surreal setting for what was a short, understandably fractious, conversation.

  Linley’s empathy with his charges stems from the experiences of his son, who, after overcoming a fractured tibia and stress fracture of the back, was facing a critical season at Villa, a club in meltdown following relegation from the Premier League. He is attuned to signs of stress, and calls each player with whom he is associated at least three times a week to gauge their mood and progress.

  ‘Agents have already taken their money out of most of the boys we take on. I get more pleasure out of seeing them run out in places like tonight than sitting at home moping, or going down the pub. They’ve all got decent parents, and they have to have mental strength to get as far as they have. They’ve been able to take the abuse, the hard work.’

  But for how long?

  Fortunes fluctuate on a week-to-week basis. Clarke Bogard, a goalkeeper parachuted briefly into Soham, joined another of Linley’s special projects, the former Millwall and AFC Wimbledon central defender Jake Goodman, at Braintree Town in the National League. Clarke made a stellar debut, and quickly attracted scouts from several league clubs, led by Brighton.

  Josh Smith, a goalkeeper released by Leicester following his scholarship, was undermined by intermittent hot-headedness during a subsequent spell at Brighton. Linley had high hopes of his earning a professional contract at Cheltenham Town, but by the autumn of 2016 he had slipped off the radar.

  Similarly, the original Soham trio splintered in October 2016, when Billy Harris, who had won admirers for his energy and application, decided his apprenticeship as a plumber offered greater scope than playing football in front of crowds of 150. The grind of 160-mile round trips to training and home matches, and a burgeoning relationship with a new girlfriend, swayed the decision. Ultimately, he simply craved what passes as normality for an 18-year-old.

  His father, on the horns of a dilemma, kept his counsel while Linley got to work on his son following a two-week absence from the game. ‘You are going to regret this later,’ he told Billy. ‘I let it go at twenty-three and should have done more with my talent. Don’t make that mistake.’ The short speech worked, since Harris quickly agreed to join Great Wakering Rovers, a Ryman League North club close to his Southend home, under newly installed manager Keith Wilson.

  The teenage generation is married to social media, fo
r richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health. Ben Marlow, a technically gifted, strong-willed midfield player regarded by Linley and Peter Finnegan as having the greatest promise of their summer intake, unwittingly emphasised the inherent perils of inadvertently allowing strangers into his life.

  He was catching the eye at East Thurrock United in the National League South, and played for a strong Leicester City team in a behind-closed-doors friendly. Mark Venus, Coventry City’s caretaker manager, made several scouting trips to watch him, yet Marlow’s social media activity hinted at underlying insecurity. Most starkly, he shared this Twitter post by Blair Turgott, a friend attempting to revive his career with Bromley: ‘They all think football is this smooth sailing ship with beautiful scenes … you better bring your umbrella and life jacket.’

  Retweeting such fortune-cookie philosophising is, of course, harmless. In the same spirit, Marlow, who was impressing with his diligence as much as his natural ability, gave an insight into his value system by sharing the sentiments of boxer Chris Eubank Jr: ‘Two things will define you as a person. Your patience when you have nothing & your attitude when you have everything.’

  Yet by choosing to comment publicly on the acquittal of Welsh international footballer Ched Evans on rape charges in mid-October, he was entering more dangerous territory: ‘Ched Evans found not guilty. The woman should get put away for ruining his whole life, just for a bit of fame for a couple of years, bitch.’

  The post, completed by an emoticon depicting a raised middle digit, doubtlessly reflected the views of many in his infantilised profession. Marlow may have, at the time of writing, only 1,666 followers, but, in an age where employers comb Twitter, Facebook and Instagram searching for clues of character, he had no control over the size and nature of his audience.

  I am conscious that by highlighting an indiscreet intervention I am leaving myself open to accusations of mean-spiritedness at best, and malevolence at worst. There is no intention to demean or cast doubt; the point at issue here is that had a Premier League player posted something similar the howl of moral outrage would have registered on the Richter scale. It is never too early to learn the lesson that football and footballers are placed under an unforgiving microscope.

  The game can positively highlight social issues, as I know through my contacts with Martin Ling, the former Leyton Orient, Torquay United and Swindon Town manager who has emerged as a compelling and courageous voice in the mental health debate. His son Sam, a defender who caught the eye along with Marlow in a series of pre-season friendlies for a Newbart select side, had broken into a Dagenham & Redbridge team seeking an immediate return to the Football League after their relegation the previous spring.

  Martin Ling had, by way of return, managed some of the early Newbart composite teams, in conjunction with coaches Garry Clancy and Steve Southgate. He was held in the highest esteem by Peter Finnegan, who was actively considering the purchase of a non-league club of appropriate stature, with the intention of installing him as manager.

  Linley, meanwhile, was bullish about the prospects of Ross Elsom, an attacking midfield player whose promise was confirmed by former Arsenal full back Lee Dixon, a family friend. Undeterred by failure to win a contract in extended trials at Glasgow Rangers and QPR, he was parked at Bishop’s Stortford, where he was being monitored by such clubs as Stevenage, Gillingham and Cambridge United.

  His backstory was the English development model in microcosm. His was the first year group obliged to deal with the practicalities of the Elite Player Performance Plan; in the words of his father Mike they were ‘guinea pigs’. Ross dutifully changed schools to one aligned to his boyhood club, West Ham, but, according to his father, canteen lunches occasionally ran out before academy players arrived from late-morning training sessions.

  Young footballers obliged to visit the local fish and chip shop to stave off hunger pangs was hardly cutting-edge custom and practice. Ross suffered from asthma during puberty, and seemed to have been written off well before the end of his two-year scholarship. His availability was signalled on the PFA website, but nothing came of three fleeting requests for further information from the union by interested clubs.

  Linley, who had helped facilitate a work experience loan at Histon while Elsom’s scholarship was winding down, took pride in his proactivity. He helped Ross move on again in early November, to join Billy Harris in what amounted to an entirely new first-team squad at Great Wakering. Further up the food chain, one of Linley’s most productive areas of partnership was AFC Bournemouth, who were attempting to build an academy in the modernistic, intelligent image of first-team manager Eddie Howe.

  The Premier League club took Will Dennis, an under-16 goalkeeper released from Watford, and showed significant interest in the Soham experiment. Foxley continued to excel for the Cambridgeshire team, which improved incrementally after a slow start to the season; Bournemouth gave him a two-week trial and agreed to examine his progress.

  Bailey moved to National League South club Poole Town on the recommendation of Stephen Purches, manager of Bournemouth’s under-21 team, for whom he also played in what amounted to a fruitless three-month audition. When he tired of the commute to Hampshire, which involved overnight stays in a budget hotel, Linley arranged for another transfer, to Cambridge City, so that he could ‘enjoy his football for a while’. That lasted until mid-December, when he left ‘by mutual consent’. The incestuous nature of non-league football was reinforced the following month when Darren Foxley, who had scored four goals in thirty-three appearances for Soham Town Rangers, moved to Cambridge City, who were being managed by former Soham manager Robbie Nightingale.

  Other such ‘last chance’ schemes were starting to emerge like mushrooms after summer rain. Komarni, an agency operating out of the south London suburbs, were experiencing notable success in placing young players in the non-league game, at clubs like Grays Athletic, Greenwich Borough and Godalming Town.

  FAB Academy, established at Bisham Abbey National Sports Centre by Nas Bashir, a former Reading player and coach who briefly assisted Stuart Pearce with the England under-21 squad, recycled youngsters into such clubs as Sheffield United, Nottingham Forest, Birmingham City and Kidderminster Harriers.

  The Kinetic Foundation, a charity that seeks to help disadvantaged youths in Croydon, where one in five young people under 16 are classified as living in poverty, placed boys at Barnet, Charlton, Ipswich, Reading and Sunderland. Their most eye-catching, headline-seizing success story involved Yeboah Amankwah, an under-16 defender spotted playing Sunday league football.

  He joined Manchester United on trial, and helped them win the Premier League’s Football for Freedom trophy in October 2016 before accepting Manchester City’s offer of a scholarship in early December. This did little to smooth relations between the neighbours, exacerbated a fortnight earlier, when City beat United 5–0, 6–0 and 9–0 at under-13, -14 and -15 level respectively.

  The Strachan Football Foundation, run from a junior club in Rugby by Gavin, son of Scotland manager Gordon, operated a typically diverse model, which offered BTEC educational courses in conjunction with opportunities for academic advancement, through football scholarships to the US. Junior Boyaback, a left-sided full back or winger, was capped at under-20 level by Cameroon; five clubs competed for striker Jordan Ponticelli, who signed a two-year professional deal at Coventry City.

  Bobby Bowry, a midfield player who had a sixteen-year professional career at Crystal Palace, Millwall and Colchester, manages to combine commerce with coaching. He is a director of Volanti, an agency that represents, among others, Bournemouth defender Charlie Daniels, but he also oversees the development arm of the organisation.

  The flagship for the Volanti Academy, which aims to nurture previously undiscovered or undervalued talent, is Shelton Athletic, a grassroots club in Croydon which runs up to twenty-four youth teams. Like Newbart, Volanti field composite teams against professional academies, giving what Bowry terms as ‘second chances to those
who have lost direction in life’.

  It is easy to be sceptical, especially when some, like Anthony Hamilton, father of multiple world F1 champion Lewis, make crass attempts to make commercial capital out of the yearning for football eminence. He spent the autumn promoting KickTrix, in essence a football tethered to a console that enables children to practise ball skills indoors. At a minimum list price of £199 the sales pitch had to be robust.

  His invention, designed to build muscle memory and encourage deftness of touch, was hailed as being ‘revolutionary’ with notable over-eagerness. The principal promotional theory, that the keepie uppie is ‘one of the most crucial skills in football’, may not bear too much scrutiny, but the modernity of offering a data app and performance log, to track progress, suited the five-colour marketing strategy.

  Hamilton made sensible points about the priceless gift of parental time, and understood intimately the delicate balance which must be struck between inspiring and intimidating talented offspring, but was on distinctly unsure ground when he extrapolated the benefits of his machine to the prevailing problems of domestic football.

  ‘I looked at the plethora of players that come into football and into the Premier League and all the British kids that aren’t playing in the Premier League and I’m wondering, what’s the difference?’ he told CNN. ‘Maybe it’s the weather? When you’re abroad you can play longer but you can’t play when it’s raining outside in the UK. There are a lot of good young players but a lot of them don’t make it because they don’t have the skills necessary to control the ball.’

  Football in the rain? He was right. It will never catch on.

  Back in what passes as the real world I asked Peter Finnegan to articulate the more profound feelings stirred by his work. He described the transformation of a young man he first met as a troubled 13-year-old, misbehaving during a club night at Redditch United: