No Hunger In Paradise Page 24

  15

  Feeding Frenzy

  FAILURE HAS A name, a face, a passport to everywhere and nowhere. At 13, Freddy Adu was going to be the best footballer on the planet. At 17, he briefly piqued the interest of Sir Alex Ferguson at Manchester United. At 27, a veteran of thirteen clubs in eight countries across three continents, he makes most of his money by organising stag weekends in Las Vegas.

  He is football’s version of the bogeyman, a victim somehow manipulated into an ogre. His fate, as a recklessly hyped young player who fell to earth when the world was supposedly at his feet, is woven into mythology as a warning to others. Eat your greens, boys, or your dreams will die in such outposts as Jagodina in Serbia, Rize in Turkey, or Kuopio in Finland.

  Others may take Adu’s name in vain, but pupils in year nine at St Ninian’s High School in Kirkintilloch have selective hearing. They are enraptured by Karamoko Dembele, their celebrity classmate. He is 13. He looks 10, plays for Celtic with sinuous grace against young men of 20, and according to those top-of-the-head, back-of-the-envelope calculations that come with the territory is on the verge of becoming a pubescent millionaire.

  Dembele, Lambeth-born of Ivorian descent, moved to Govan in Glasgow with his family, aged 5. Like Adu, he has an early boot deal with Nike. Industry sources suggest any contract will be structured to spectacularly reward advancement; the sum of £100,000 for each of his first fifteen first-team appearances is mentioned, though with the usual caveat that such estimates tend to have the credibility of bookmakers’ reports of their losses to a once-in-a-lifetime punt.

  Barcelona may have demurred, because of their wariness of FIFA’s cross-border recruitment restrictions, but Manchester City and Chelsea – football’s topsy-turvy version of billionaire art collectors who obsessively buy up Old Masters for their private collections – are among those clubs looking for the upside in an association with a boy who has risen to prominence with stunning speed.

  In September 2016, Dembele’s performance in the St Kevin’s Boys Academy Cup went viral on YouTube; comically small, he engaged the opposition in a pantomimic chase with the ball at his feet. In October, Celtic invited global attention by playing him in an under-20 match against Hearts. It was hard to reconcile the warning of Chris McCart, the club’s head of youth, that ‘it is crucial that we do not push him too far, too soon’, with the subsequent feeding frenzy.

  In November, Dembele was hailed by the Scottish tabloids as a ‘Tartan Teen’, a national treasure. Stewart Regan, chief executive of the Scottish FA, vowed to ‘fight tooth and nail’ to maintain his allegiance to Scotland, who gave him an under-16 debut in a 2–2 draw with Wales in the Victory Shield. Dembele also attended an England under-15 training camp, announcing on Instagram that he had been selected for a friendly against Turkey in December.

  The haste with which the post was deleted suggested options were being kept open, but he duly made his debut in a 5–2 win at St George’s Park. His pursuit by England was inevitable, since his birthplace fulfilled a rather obvious criterion. Dan Ashworth, the FA’s technical director, is an unapologetic advocate of a recruitment strategy which takes into account family history, residential qualifications, and even refugee status:

  ‘I am a recruiter by trade. That was my job at my previous club. Each individual case is different, but it is our duty to explore them all. It is a parallel process. Wales, Ireland and Scotland do it. They maybe don’t have our pool of players and have to be creative. We, in England, do it in cricket, rugby and athletics. FIFA put the rules down for every country to follow. Why should we not follow them?

  ‘Look at Diego Costa, a Brazilian-born player who plays for Spain. Look at the Turks and Poles who play for Germany. It would be remiss of us not to look at every option. We have been a little bit lazy, looking only within England. Why not look at expat communities in the USA, for example? I don’t get how we can be criticised for that. We will and we have unearthed one or two gems. Every other nation and every other sport is doing the same thing.’

  In that vein, England were also pursuing Ben Woodburn, who fulfilled a schoolboy fantasy in a League Cup quarter-final against Leeds United by volleying a close-range goal at the Kop end to become Liverpool’s youngest scorer. He captained Wales at under-17 level, and starred in an under-19 win against England in the late autumn, yet was born in the border town of Chester and qualified for Wales only through his maternal grandfather.

  He represented a good bet. His mother Alison sought normality, successfully lobbying Liverpool to allow him to stay at the family home in the Cheshire village of Tarporley rather than moving in with house parents closer to the academy site in Kirby. The club hired a driver to take him to school, and ferry him to and from training.

  Ashworth can’t be blamed for the dispassionate application of logic, since it is a professional duty, but a quiet voice whispered caution. I had seen the Dembele movie before, and the script was difficult to digest. The main characters were a Somalian refugee and the taxi driver sitting across the table from me in a cabbie’s café, appropriately situated in London’s Smithfield meat market.

  Sonny Pike had it all at 14. His legs were insured for £1 million. He starred in McDonald’s advertisements, featured in Coca-Cola promotions and had a clothing deal with Paul Smith. By 17 he was suicidal, a rag doll tossed between five agents and other random opportunists. His relationship with his father was fractured beyond repair as his family life disintegrated.

  Now, at 33, he has acquired the stability that eluded him during a truncated childhood, pockmarked by trials at clubs as diverse as Ajax and Grimsby Town. His smartphone carries photos of his infant son Beau and his 7-year-old daughter Freya, who accompanied him on a fun run in aid of the British Heart Foundation. Rather than an enforced diet of football, he is replenished by boxing. He reveres the fighters’ bravery and feels at home in the earthiness of the East End’s bear pit, York Hall.

  He devoted three years to acquiring ‘the Knowledge’, and spends six days a week behind the wheel. He has the cabbie’s twin obsessions – the iniquity of Uber and the brain-deadening relentlessness of the urban crawl – and slips into character as someone closer to child star Mickey Rooney than Wayne Rooney, who can loosely be described as a footballing contemporary.

  His bitterness with his father, a builder portrayed as the ringmaster in a tawdry circus, is regurgitated in quiet, urgent sentences that run into one another, like a tumbling tug-of-war team. He seeks advice from me on a potential book project and seems resigned to his telephone number remaining in the contact lists of TV producers who freeze him in time as a curly-haired imp who could make a football float.

  He worries about the sedentary nature of his job, the slight swell around his waist that signals impending middle age. His eyes are heavily rimmed, but bright when he speaks of a newly developed ambition to visit academies, to tell his story for the common good. ‘I want to look forward,’ he says, acutely aware that media interest in the Dembele case will drag him back.

  Sky Sports were at the front of the queue: ‘Karamoko is very talented but as I experienced myself, it can go from being a good thing to a bad thing pretty quickly. Once you get to the money side of things and people start earning, it can go very wrong. I’d imagine his parents have already had lots of new friends presenting themselves. They have to realise how all the focus, attention and distractions could mix up their son’s feelings and affect his game. It’s a lot for a kid of that age to take on.’

  The former refugee, Islam Feruz, is only 21, but has a slight fleshiness around the face and shares Pike’s world-weary caution. Comparisons with Dembele are a little more raw, but he freely admits, ‘I had my head turned at fifteen,’ when he joined Chelsea following the death of his mentor at Celtic, Tommy Burns, who had helped prevent the family being deported when he was 12.

  His mother Aisha insisted that she, Islam’s stepfather and three sisters claimed asylum in the UK after fleeing to Yemen from the Somalian conflict, but
other sources suggested they lived in Tanzania. The family lived in a flat near Chelsea’s Cobham training ground but despite his progress being monitored by a small army of scouts, his potential, as a fast forward with close skills, remained unfulfilled.

  As it was four years since I had last seen him play, I asked some of those scouts for a read on his character: one referred to him as ‘Billy Big Bollocks’, while others spoke sympathetically of a quiet young man, a misguided victim of premature publicity. What was incontestable was that his career had meandered, worryingly.

  He made a solitary substitute’s appearance on loan to OFI Crete, lasted two days with Krylia Sovetov in the formerly closed Russian city of Samara, and returned home twenty-four hours after joining FC Aktobe in the Kazakhstan Premier League. He spent a total of sixteen minutes playing on loan for Blackpool, whose manager at the time, Lee Clark, was unamused by Islam’s suggestion on social media that ‘this team take more kick-offs than corners’.

  The sense of drift and disarray was emphasised when a court summons was issued in June 2016 for his arrest when he failed to answer driving charges arising from a cruise through the Gorbals in his £80,000 Porsche. He pleaded guilty to driving without insurance, while disqualified, in a case heard at Glasgow’s Justice of the Peace Court on February 1, 2017. Having made a solitary start in the first half of a season-long loan at Excel Mouscron, he had entered the year with a new adviser, David Wilson, Chelsea’s scout in Scandinavia, and a vow to prove his maturity.

  Chelsea gave him the chance to do so by recalling him from Belgium and sending him on another loan, to Swindon Town in League One, where, together with two other academy products, Charlie Colkett and Fankaty Dabo, he would come under the influence of the club’s director of football Tim Sherwood, a noted promoter of young players.

  Islam’s admission that he should have stayed longer at Celtic underscored comparisons with Dembele: ‘It all just seemed to happen at once and hit me overnight. There was so much publicity. It’s hard to cope when you are so young. It’s easy to put your faith in other people and it becomes easy to lose focus on football. People will now want to get involved with him and, no doubt, promise plenty. People will try to sweet-talk him.’

  Ashworth, too, sees the bigger picture: ‘We’ve all got a responsibility, the governing body, the clubs, the media, the parents as well. If you are a young boy or girl, put on a pedestal as a saviour who is going to earn millions of pounds for the family; blimey, that is pressure. It is easy to point the finger at the clubs, but everyone goes into this knowing in the cold light of the day it is unlikely the player will get there.’

  Manchester City warded off competition from Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool by paying an initial £175,000 for 13-year-old Southend United defender Finley Burns in January 2017. Phil Brown, Southend’s first-team manager, was merely stating the obvious when he described the deal as ‘an absolute punt’ yet the names and improbable backstories, each with their own showreel on YouTube, kept coming.

  Rashed Al-Hajjawi, a Palestinian born in Norway, signed for Juventus at the age of 10. Mustafa Kapı was launched into the market as a 14-year-old, through a first-team debut for Galatasaray. Liberian-born, Edmonton-raised striker Alphonso Davies was pursued by Manchester United after breaking into the MSL at 15 with Vancouver Whitecaps. Across Glasgow, at Rangers, the promise of 15-year-old Billy Gilmour had seven Premier League clubs, led by Chelsea, poised to start bidding at £1 million.

  Another 13-year-old, Hannibal Mejri from FC Paris, had been snapped up by Adidas. A midfield player with David Luiz corkscrew curls, he is due to remain at the French national institute at Clairefontaine until June 2018, but has already had a trial at Arsenal. The usual suspects, Manchester City, Manchester United, Chelsea and Liverpool, have also registered their interest.

  His father Lofti, a former Tunisian Second Division player, has spoken of his ambition that Hannibal will become a lawyer or doctor rather than a footballer ‘with a chickpea in his head’. He told Le Parisien: ‘Football is an execrable world. This environment is full of incompetent and dishonest people. Our duty is to protect our child.’

  It is a myth to refer to hidden gems, secret starlets. Another 13-year-old at a relatively small English club was spoken of with something close to awe in certain football circles. The biggest clubs sought unsuccessfully to entice him, and his family, with the guarantee of a life-changing two-year professional contract, to commence on his seventeenth birthday.

  Agents, some inexperienced so-called ‘plant pots’ but most of them sufficiently established to know better, stalked him on social media. He was even approached on Instagram by a Premier League star, seeking contact details on behalf of his representatives. All were rebuffed by his father, a man of firm principles and far-sighted priorities.

  The duty of care in such a febrile atmosphere was shared by his academy manager. His relationship with the family, fostered over six years, is based on mutual trust, common respect and a holistic approach to the boy’s welfare.

  ‘He embodies everything that is good and bad about youth development,’ he said. ‘He is an outstandingly nice boy, whose Mum and Dad have done a fantastic job with him. People are materialistic and want to commoditise him, but they [his parents] will never allow that to happen. He’s a child. Let him be crap, let him be brilliant, but just let him play.

  ‘Football is starting to forget why people get up in the morning. As coaches we want to get out there on the field, and get the balls out. The fans love a local boy playing for their team. The boy wants to play for his local club, and, one day, for England. I know this sounds corny, but that is his dream. Money is trying to supersede that dream. We are trying to share it.

  ‘There are too many people in the game who think you will come running when they offer lots of money. I can understand the temptation for some parents to take life-changing amounts, and my relationship with his parents has to be authentic, so we can express and communicate what is best for him.

  ‘There is a small team of people working their socks off to try and protect him from everything that is going on around him. As a club, and as individuals, we have certain principles and values, so for a senior player, one of his heroes, to text him directly on behalf of his agent is unfair, unrealistic and manipulative.’

  One independent agent, not involved and, to be clear, not making a direct comparison with the case, gave an insight into the nature of the frenzy. He discovered, to his cost, the perils of association with a prodigy when, after spending several years nurturing two schoolboys until they were on the fringe of their Premier League teams, he was powerless to prevent them being spirited away by another agent.

  He had no means of redress since, under FIFA rules, players can pursue a deal using whatever representative they wish, regardless of whether they had signed a contract with anyone else. Members of the extended family are often involved in the deceit; it has been known for players to play off up to eight agents against one another in search of the most lucrative deal:

  ‘It is more cut-throat than ever, because there is no support from FIFA and the FA. They’ve basically made the decision to allow everyone to do whatever they want. Agents use the loophole about commercial representation under sixteen to build a relationship with parents. Then they start to mess with their heads, “He’s got his boots, so he is well on the way to being a pro.”

  ‘Parents speak to each other. For most, their first thought is the money, so they are very easily led. The young boy does what his mum and dad tell him. Big agencies take up to ten boys from the same club, knowing all they need is for one of those ten to pop up in the first team. Where’s the mentoring? Where’s the guidance?

  ‘The agent doesn’t know if the parent is talking to another agent behind his back. Is that right? Of course not, but the temptation is to make a few quid knowing most of these lads will never be seen again. The clubs play their part. They big people up, making them feel good. They fawn over a player, but when the t
ime comes to say goodbye they’ll be given a DVD or put on a circular. It’s a nonsense.

  ‘The good agent shares a vision, sets out a pathway, knowing that if it is followed it will benefit him in the long run. It is about managing expectations, looking for market value while giving the family an idea of how it can go, good or bad. At fourteen you are only just beginning to see a picture of what a player could be. The system is killing the kids. It’s sad to see. The only innocent one in the whole process is usually the boy who just wants to play football.’

  The shamelessness of the process is still startling. A senior figure at a Premier League club confided that he was approached at an airport by a close relative of an England international, quietly testing the market for a move. He was promised first refusal, just as he had been when the player was 15, and the family were looking to launch his professional career with a seven-figure contract.

  The relative’s indifference, when reminded that he had reneged on that apparently forgotten promise, after using the club’s interest to trigger an auction, was telling. He evidently felt he didn’t need to care, since he was a seller in a seller’s market. Cash outweighed courtesy and common decency. There were mouths to feed, lifestyles to fund. The player needed to pay for the chaotic communal playground of a villa overlooking the Caribbean.

  Just as little care is devoted to the truth, scant attention is paid to the complexity and humanity of a boy’s development. The 13-year-old was being described, on the grapevine, as the ‘New Wayne Rooney’, a lazy piece of headline-seizing shorthand that was, in a football context, ill-considered and borderline illiterate.

  The boy is known internally as ‘Project 22’, since coaching staff are seeking to develop him in the modern idiom, as a player who can play in a variety of roles – namely as a number four, eight or ten. He has already trained with the first team; the academy manager is looking beyond the perceived probability of him becoming the club’s youngest player.