No Hunger In Paradise Read online

  ‘When, in say five years’ time, he is in the first team he has got to have all the component parts. He has to have the clear head to play as a four, the box-to-box qualities of an eight, and the cleverness and creativity of a ten. He needs the challenge of taking on substantially different roles. Combine those qualities, and you have the project, to produce a world-class player.’

  A new breed of mentor is emerging, typified by Kristiaan Speakman, who became the youngest academy head, at 32, when he was appointed by Birmingham City in 2011. His emotionally intelligent approach involves chaperoning boys to big matches and honing social skills through restaurant visits. Should a player have a boot deal, he asks the parents to maintain the benign deception they paid for them. The fact that eighteen academy graduates have made the first team since 2010 is statistically impressive, even without taking into account supplementary case studies such as Demarai Gray.

  He sent a simple text to Speakman – ‘I got picked at 20’ – on January 4, 2016, when Leicester City activated the £3.7 million release clause in his contract and signed him from Birmingham. The message provided cryptic confirmation that a private prediction, shared between coach and player, had come to pass. Gray made his debut for Leicester at Tottenham in the FA Cup six days later, and within five months had a Premier League winners’ medal. He cites England under-21 teammate Nathan Redmond as a key influence and is a regular visitor to Birmingham on his days off.

  ‘He feels like he is coming home,’ Speakman says, with an endearing sense of pride. ‘Coaches say they have a relationship with a player, but that has to mean more than taking a session. I have known Demarai since he was an under-9. He was a bit of a silver medallist, not quite in the top group, but I can say, hand on heart, that I saw him as a Premier League player at fourteen.

  ‘We knew what he would look like at twenty. He was a great kid, with all the athletic components he needed. He was a late developer, with a June birthday, but he loved learning. He had a single mum, but the family structure was strong. She kept him grounded. I knew so much about him I could see where he was going.

  ‘Players don’t mind an uncomfortable journey provided they know how, why and where they are going. Outside, people looked at what he couldn’t do. They said he couldn’t run, and wasn’t particularly quick. But we loaded him with belief. We developed almost a parental relationship so we could be constructively critical. We had a capacity to hit the reset button and get on with a new day.’

  As head coach of England’s under-15 squad, Kevin Betsy has a pivotal development role. He has played in every division, from the Premier League to the Conference, but has had a strong sense of vocation ever since he worked in McDonald’s, ‘flipping burgers’, before Woking sold him to Fulham at the age of 18.

  At 38, having been recognised for the excellence of his coaching at Fulham’s academy, he exudes energy and an intelligence tempered by realism. He has augmented the lessons of his fifteen-year playing career, distilling the principles of an eclectic range of coaches and managers that includes John McGovern, Paul Hart, Jean Tigana, Christian Damiano, Steve Wigley, Steve Parkin, Kevin Keegan and John Gorman. Self-education has continued across Europe, with particular focus on study visits to Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Ajax:

  ‘As a pro, you get lazy. You finish your career and you think, right, I’ll be a coach now, but it’s a different ball game. So, for me, it was about understanding the profession, learning the trade from the under-9s all the way up to where I felt I needed to get to. I was respectful of the trade. Coaching is an art. You’re a teacher. You’re not a dictator.

  ‘You have to know the person. Your first connection needs to be with the boy, so you understand him in the greatest of detail. I ask what his background is like, where does he live, how does he train, does he see his family, what’s his history, his heritage. Until I know that, I can’t coach him to maximise his potential. Once I do, I can start tapping into the psychological aspect of the role and develop the player.

  ‘You have to try your best to educate the parents. Some come from a tough background. I’ve been a player. I’ve been on the other side. I know how it feels when they ask whether they should stay local and wait for the money, or take it when it is available. I try to teach long term. Get the money at twenty-two, twenty-three, when they’ve played a hundred league games, rather than at sixteen. It’s a bigger reward, for better development.

  ‘I understand the pathway because I played at every level. I gained experience with different managers, different styles of football. My perspective is one of a late developer. I was really small, still a dot in football terms at fifteen or sixteen. It wasn’t until I reached eighteen that I grew into my body. It means when I’m analysing players, I’m always more patient.’

  He believes EPPP has seen a step change in the sophistication of youth development, but appreciates the value of old-school attitudes, such as Paul Hart’s insistence on shin pads being worn during combative training sessions. For context, he rummages through the memory on his smartphone, and produces a photograph of a minibus in a car park filled with luxury first-team coaches.

  ‘This was us, at the Premier League finals when I was with Fulham’s under-16s. Players from other teams were a bit sniggery. Our lads were a little self-conscious about arriving in the minibus, but that set the tone of my team talks. It’s not about how you dress, what haircut you’ve got, what earring you’ve got, what boots you’ve got, what bus you turn up in. It’s about what you do on the grass, how you conduct yourself around the place. That’s all that matters. We won the tournament.

  ‘The traditional loan system stress-tests players, through games and experiences. Travelling on a bus that’s not great, up north, League Two, maybe no pre-match meal, playing under lights on an average pitch. I was no different. I took things for granted that I shouldn’t. At Fulham in the Premier League I was in the bubble, so when Steve Parkin wanted to take me to Rochdale I said no.

  ‘Six months later he was at Barnsley. He called me again. I said yes. It was the best experience of my life because I was playing football, in front of a crowd. In the end, I sacrificed my contract at Fulham. I had two years left but I wanted to go and play and learn my trade. It was a great decision. In a football context, on the grass, you can be pure, you can be free.

  ‘Off the pitch it is more difficult. We’ve needed to police the agents, because players were getting tapped up in what is a public arena. It is not necessary. It is not right. We are trying to create a learning environment, an environment of excellence. We have a duty of care to do our best for our kids, to provide them with a setting that is safe and comfortable.’

  Inevitably, given the conflicting priorities of club and country, there is an ambassadorial element to his job. He visits academies to establish connections with club coaches on a personal and professional level, supplementing a full-time FA education officer who liaises on academic issues. Players with disciplinary problems at school are not considered for international selection.

  There can be difficulties with players on relocation packages, who take time to adjust to a different city and a new peer group. Betsy speaks of players ‘taking ownership’ of their development, a buzz phrase which in essence means committing to their craft, but is aware of the sensitivities of boys whose sporting eminence can breed envy and resentment.

  ‘In my experience players love one-to-ones. They love relationships. They want to be talked to. Perhaps we haven’t been giving them the autonomy to speak, to have a voice, to come up with new ideas. They’re the ones on the pitch. They see it, they feel it. They are very clever human beings. As coaches we think we know everything, or at least we used to. We don’t.’

  My mind wandered back to a Saturday morning in September 2016, in which the lawnmower drone of low-flying light aircraft, struggling in strong crosswinds, provided a suitably surreal soundtrack to one of the strangest matches of the season. The scoreline, a 6–0 defeat for a side containing aspiring sch
olars, was both simplistic and deceptive.

  It is no exaggeration to suggest they were extremely fortunate to avoid a double-figure humiliation, but the result was utterly unimportant, since life had taken precedence and put football into true perspective. Across the pitch, backstories coalesced and mutated. Coaches, with their tactics boards and copybook compassion, were powerless in the face of physical and psychological immaturity.

  One boy had what can only be described as an extended toddler-tantrum, angrily half-volleying the ball at his own goalkeeper from just inside his own half in what could easily have been interpreted as a deliberate attempt to score an own goal. He was all smiles after being substituted at half-time, when a sports psychologist joined a semi circle of support staff. The pressure on him to excel had eased, even though his performance would ensure his eventual release.

  Elsewhere, a defender prone to periodically bursting into tears was being watched by his seriously ill father. A midfield player, slovenly in possession and sullen in nature, was merely recreating the mood that drove his schoolteachers to distraction. The most assertive player, who at least attempted to galvanise the team after half-time, was channelling the diligence and determination he brought to his role as a carer to younger siblings in a fragmented family.

  A Spanish striker, starved of service at the conclusion of a week’s trial, never stood a chance. His plight paled alongside that of the most promising player in the group, who was absent, mourning the murder of his best friend. When he returned he did well enough to be retained, but he was to lose another friend to gang-related violence later in the year.

  Coaches attempt to create emotional bonds with fragile young men, but they are also hostages to fortune. I will carry with me the smile of that wannabe malcontent, as he idly kicked a ball around with unused substitutes behind the home dugout. It took weeks to emerge, but his rationale for his behaviour was perverse, stark and bleakly comprehensible.

  In his scrambled brain, he apparently reasoned that he could have tried his best and been found wanting, anyway. Now the pressure was off. He embraced failure, relished its release. I shuddered to think of the price he might pay, in years to come, in the dark, pre-dawn moments of self-reproach.

  16

  Work Hard, Dream Big

  COMPLIMENTARY CHOCOLATE BARS turned to ash in the mouths of fifty-one scouts, eagerly availing themselves of Wycombe Wanderers’ hospitality in the Honours Lounge at Adams Park. The team sheet contained the barely digestible news that Ryan Sessegnon, the primary reason for many a visit on this misty Monday night, was on the bench for England under-19s against Bulgaria.

  There were distractions in the form of Tottenham’s diminutive Marcus Edwards and Trent Alexander-Arnold, an athletic right back being fast-tracked by Liverpool. Looking to the longer term, Chelsea’s Dujon Sterling, quick, strong and at ease playing in an unfamiliar role on the right of a front three supporting the main striker, confirmed his ability to impose himself on important occasions. His ninety-second-minute header secured a fortunate 2–1 win.

  Tom Davies, born on the day David Beckham was sent off as England lost to Argentina on penalties at the 1998 World Cup in France, had a nineties haircut and a sixties habit of playing with his socks rolled down. Ronald Koeman, who was introducing him to Everton’s first team with increasing confidence, was taken by his tenacity and his capacity to pass incisively, but some observers wondered whether his fractional lack of pace would preclude a career at the highest level.

  It was the sort of match in which momentary inferences of weakness, and inflections of mood, meant more than they perhaps should. Eyebrows were raised and opinions hardened, for instance, when Manchester City’s central defender Cameron Humphreys appeared to flinch and turn his head fractionally away from contact during an aerial duel.

  In an episode that seemed to support doubts about the delicate nature of some young players, Aston Villa winger André Green collapsed extravagantly under minimal challenge. He clutched a fluorescent-booted foot, which was left to hang limply as, describing a windmilling action with his index fingers, he demanded his substitution.

  In truth, he did not appear to be a candidate for emergency surgery immediately after the match, when he signed autographs at the tunnel entrance without discernible discomfort. The rationale of his evident reticence was simple to follow, even if it offended old-school sensibilities. Since Villa were about to appoint yet another new first-team manager, Steve Bruce, the last thing he needed was to pick up an injury on international duty.

  The compensation in his dying beetle impression, for the men clustered at the back of the smaller stand, was that his departure paved the way for Sessegnon’s appearance. I’d been promised by Mel Johnson, sage of the scouts’ tea room, that the Fulham defender would make me ‘purr’, and though he played out of position he changed the tempo and shape of the game.

  Normally a left back, he began wide on the left of the three, where his pace, close control and aggression allowed him to dominate the opposition full back. His instinctive appreciation of space, and capacity to see and supply deft angled passes through a slightly square defence, also marked him out as a potential playmaker.

  The youngest member of the team, he was only 16. He joined Fulham with his twin brother Steven at the age of 8, and became the first player born in the twenty-first century to score a senior goal, in his second Championship appearance for the club, a 2–2 draw with Cardiff in August 2016. In terms of market value, he was being compared to Patrick Roberts, the winger Fulham sold to Manchester City for £12 million at the age of 18 in July 2015.

  Little wonder, then, that Mike Rigg, Fulham’s sporting director, and his head of talent identification and recruitment, Malcolm Elias, one of the formative figures in Gareth Bale’s development at Southampton, were on point, protecting their investment. The stature of the scouts sitting around them, and the presence of representatives from RB Leipzig, the new force in the Bundesliga, suggested the chase was on.

  Chelsea sent Mark Ridgway, their area scouting co-ordinator, Manchester United their youth specialist, John Lambert. Liverpool’s chief scout, Barry Hunter, was in the same row as Alan Watson, Manchester City’s UK scouting and recruitment manager. There were familiar faces from Arsenal, Leicester City and another dozen Premier League clubs. Some, like Middlesbrough’s Lee Adam, understood their place in the financial pecking order and pragmatically preferred to study a robust Bulgarian team for signs of unheralded promise.

  Foretelling the future is, of course, a perilous business. If it were simply a matter of the consistent application of natural talent, Zeli Ismail would have had a greater chance of fulfilling the prediction of his former academy manager at Wolves, and becoming football’s first £100 million player. Instead he was enduring a dispiriting sequence of twelve successive defeats at Bury, where he was attempting to revive a faltering career.

  Neil Smillie, a former Wycombe Wanderers manager back on eerily familiar territory that evening, knows more than most about the intricacies of development. His seven-club playing career began at Crystal Palace and included an FA Cup final appearance for Brighton & Hove Albion in 1983; he managed Gillingham, and became Nike’s head of talent identification in 1999, soon after being sacked by Wycombe.

  His role is to detect and deliver the best young players, so they can contribute to what is widely acknowledged as a marketing masterclass, fusing money and modernity so that a pair of football boots becomes a personal statement. The sums involved in endorsement deals might have changed – ‘offering five grand to a boy on thirty thousand a week isn’t going to register’ – but the essence of his job, recognising attributes and projecting their evolution, is constant.

  He requires diplomatic skills to deal with parental demands, which are becoming markedly more extreme, and has that scout’s knack of subtly judging the correct level of information to share. When we were introduced by Johnson, close to the boardroom in which he was dismissed in another life, he engaged ea
sily and quickly asked me to name the young players who had impressed me most during my research.

  A slow smile broke across his face, as warming as a winter sunrise, when I mentioned Jude Bellingham at Birmingham City. He positively beamed when I spoke of the astonishingly mature leadership qualities of Tommy Doyle at Manchester City, and the quickness of Jadon Sancho’s brain and feet, as a right-footed left winger.

  ‘Ah, Jadon can be anything he wants to be,’ he said, recommending I take a look at another member of the England under-17 squad which, together with the under-20s, is regarded as the best group in terms of depth, quality and potential. Manchester United’s Angel Gomes, born in London when his Portuguese father Gil was playing non-league football at the end of a career that peaked at the 1991 mini World Cup, was showing signs that he might develop into the best number ten of his generation.

  His name was being mentioned alongside that of Marcus Rashford in the echo chamber of football gossip but, as Smillie wryly remarked, a lot of people at United doubted Rashford’s ability to train on when he first saw him ‘as a twelve-year-old dot’. The strength of Rashford’s family unit, critical when Manchester City attempted to recruit him at 14, was an enduring lesson.

  Given the speed of his ascent, it is sobering to realise Rashford’s natural peer group remains the under-19s. Gareth Southgate admits he has to be aware of the dynamics of promoting players from age-group football to the senior squad because ‘the social bit, sitting with people you don’t know at dinner, makes it difficult to feel natural. If you don’t feel natural it makes it really hard to train and play as well as you might, because you feel people are watching everything you do.’

  Of the England squad beaten 3–2 by Germany in the quarter-final of the under-17 World Cup in Mexico in 2011, only Raheem Sterling has a full cap. That provides a benchmark for the ‘Class of 2016’, which startled the football world by defeating Germany 8–1 to win the Croatia Cup in early October.