No Hunger In Paradise Page 26

  Gomes and Sancho scored within eight minutes, a platform built upon by further first-half goals by Phil Foden of Manchester City and Chelsea’s George McEachran, younger brother of Josh, the midfield player who has come to symbolise the too-much-too-soon generation. Liverpool’s Rhian Brewster scored twice before the rout was completed by Chelsea’s Callum Hudson-Odoi and Reading’s Danny Loader, who was one of six second-half substitutes.

  As a player from a Championship club, Loader was the exception that, in an increasingly elitist youth system, proves an expensively applied rule. Manchester City provided four of the starting side against Germany, Chelsea three. Analysis by the YouthHawk website, of the allegiances of players called up for England across six age groups in August and September 2016, confirmed the trend.

  Chelsea provided twenty players, Manchester City fourteen. Arsenal’s total of sixteen included seven selected for the under-16s, whose international assimilation programme – designed to offer experiences of different cultures, climates and conditions – accelerated later in the year with two friendlies in Brazil, a win and a loss. Tottenham and Everton supplied ten each but Liverpool and Southampton only three apiece, two fewer than Fulham, Manchester United and Wolves.

  Arsenal’s Reiss Nelson, who signed his first professional contract on December 10, 2016, his seventeenth birthday, typifies a player in transition. His potential had been confirmed in the summer’s European under-17 championships, when he scored nine times in ten games. Nimble, skilful and dexterous, but prone to occasionally overplaying, he benefitted from the physical and mental demands of regular training sessions with the first-team squad.

  Intriguingly, Barcelona scouts, monitoring his progress, suggested he would be employed at full back in their system because of his athleticism. His education, enhanced by first-hand evidence of the ability of senior players to think quickly, move intelligently and take the right decision under pressure, has encompassed coaching duties at Arsenal’s Hale End academy, which he joined at the age of 7 after being spotted playing for Moonshot, a junior club in Catford.

  It is a delicate process. Kevin Betsy’s workshop sessions with the younger age groups are primarily visual, and scenario-based: ‘Even though it’s in retrospect, they need to see things. “OK, why did I move it there, why didn’t I do that? If we’re trying to break the block, why not overload it in the middle?” You let them see, test, and if they fail, you have to correct them, give them advice. They’re not coaches, they’re football players, but you have to give them an understanding.

  ‘We talk about what teamwork looks like, but what does that mean? It’s all phrases, but if you don’t show people, they don’t know what’s right. It might be a video clip of you shaking hands with an opponent after the game, or even a player not doing it. You know, you’ve lost a game and the camera is still rolling. Three or four won’t shake hands with the referee or the opposition and just go in, down the tunnel.

  ‘So the next time you’ve got a meeting, you don’t lambast anyone, but you subtly put messages to them about what’s right and what’s wrong. It’s about respect. Wearing that badge, it’s a duty of care to the next generation. Your status is already elevated because you’re playing in the England shirt and you’ve got to present yourself in the manner that is respectful of that.’

  The danger of over-indulgence is marked, and there were signs of inconsistency at another under-19 international, a 1–1 draw with Holland at Telford United, earlier in the season. Though technical director Dan Ashworth was in a crowd swelled by schoolchildren on half-term, lack of FA staff meant that a well-meaning functionary from the host club was left to announce that players and management were unavailable for post-match interviews because ‘they have to eat’.

  Since the teams had staged a penalty shootout, won 8–7 by England, to try to recreate match-day pressure, it seemed puzzling, to say the least, that they were shielded from the sort of scrutiny to which they will be subjected, whether they like it or not, as their careers progress. Their world contains greater perils than a scribbler with a sense of curiosity.

  Karim Fatih is the founder of A Better Perspective, a self-styled gambling and integrity consultancy that works with educational staff at such clubs as Watford, West Ham, Brighton, Charlton and Derby. A former professional gambler who ‘returned to the real world’ because he missed ‘contact with other human beings’, he believes young footballers are being targeted due to their premature wealth.

  Though casinos cannot legally admit clients under 18, he alleges academy scholars are bombarded with marketing material promising up to £1,000 in free chips as introductory VIP offers. He highlights the disproportionate numbers of athletes being treated at the Sporting Chance Clinic for gambling addiction, some 70 per cent of all entrants.

  A 2014 survey of almost 350 footballers and cricketers concluded that around 6 per cent merited the description ‘problem gamblers’, more than three times the rate in the wider population. The majority of these were senior players, but Graeme Law, a former York City player who researched gambling in football for his PhD, tells of an 18-year-old player jeopardising his first-team place by playing distractedly after losing £2,000 on the bus to an away game.

  Fatih counsels academy players on the seductive culture of betting and reflects, ‘I see a lot of boys under twenty-one who are hardened gamblers. They think they know it all, but actually they know so little.’ He blames the ‘search for the buzz that playing gives them’, and draws attention to the detachment inherent in the youth system:

  ‘The spirit of the group tends to be in inverse proportion to the quality of facilities. I see boys and staff working their nuts off in a normal environment. There’s not the rigour elsewhere, in the equivalent of a seven-star hotel. I see teenagers who are excellently educated, very polite, but there is very little going on behind their eyes. The word that springs to mind is “robotic”. It seems they are on a treadmill. They do everything unquestioningly.’

  Southgate is aware of the balance to be struck between individuality and conformity, especially in the older age groups. England’s under-20s, preparing for the 2017 World Cup in South Korea, have a players’ leadership group that coalesces around Bristol City’s French-developed central defender Taylor Moore and Newcastle United goalkeeper Freddie Woodman. Southgate sees independence of thought as ‘a natural evolution of how they work’.

  Ashworth expands the point: ‘Each team sets their mantra. What does it mean to come and represent England? What are we looking to achieve? What will we accept and what will we not accept? It is not about a prehistoric code of conduct, do this and do that. They have to set out what they want. They have to love coming here. They have got to be desperate to come back, devastated if they are not picked. We are trying to instil that pride of playing for your country.’

  The manifestation of that pride, the visualisation of a shared ambition, is an A4 laminated sheet, taped to the bathroom mirrors of each member of England’s under-20 squad whenever they are together. A product of their leadership group, it features a photograph of their ultimate prize, the mini World Cup, and a simple list of pledges of professionalism. It may sound twee, but it works.

  ‘The picture of the cup is there because every morning we wake up and have to see it,’ Moore explained. ‘It reminds us we are capable of winning it. The rest is basics. Telling people they are not doing things right if it is going to help the team. Cleaning the changing rooms, putting kit around the right way before handing it back to the kit man. Arriving five minutes early for every meeting, every mealtime. Getting into the routine of doing stuff in a correct manner. Small details, but every little helps.’

  Moore is blond and tall, angular and eager. His voice has similar inflections to that of Southgate; it is a soft, sensible monotone that hints at maturity beyond his years. His childhood exile in France might have been parentally driven, but in an era in which very few senior professionals have the courage to leave the feather-bedded lifestyle
of the Premier League, his example is instructive.

  Having already been spotted by West Ham, he moved to Le Touquet at the age of 7, when his parents Barry and Julia sought to combine a business opportunity with enhanced quality of life in an elegant coastal resort. ‘Chucked into a French school not speaking a word of the language’, with his younger brother Keaton, he used football to aid his assimilation.

  Racing Club de Lens, the region’s powerhouse, first attempted to recruit him from junior club AS Etaples at the age of 11. Since the club was ninety minutes away, and acceptance of an academy place was dependent on moving to a boarding school closely associated with Lens, he asked for a year’s grace before entering into such a demanding environment.

  ‘You’re twelve. You arrive there with a suitcase even bigger than you, and have got to get used to things. It is scary, but at the same time very exciting. Yes, you are leaving home, leaving your parents, but you are going to be with your teammates 24/7, playing football every day. There are some tough kids, from tough backgrounds, but togetherness builds.’

  Like many French clubs, Lens recruit heavily from the African diaspora around Paris. Academy regime is strict; lessons are taken from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., when the boys make a fifteen-minute journey to the training ground. They eat, spend an hour on school homework, and then train for up to two hours. Lights are out, back at the boarding school by 9.30. They are allowed to use their phones for only an hour a day.

  ‘The coaches are demanding. Though they want to turn us into the best pros possible, they sometimes forget we are human beings as well. They don’t think about the fact we are twelve or thirteen and have not been home for four weeks. Sometimes you need that little bit of freedom and encouragement. There’s a lot to deal with.

  ‘You are living with thirty-five other boys, and having to be careful about what gets stolen from the changing rooms. You get judged by what you do rather than by who you are. That massively helped me grow up, more than people think. I love my family, but you feel independent. You are in an adult world. It hardens you.’

  That so-called pre-formation stage is completed at 16, when survivors of the system are housed in the club’s training complex, and start to study for their baccalaureate at a new school. The lifestyle is marginally more relaxed, since good habits are deemed to have already been instilled. Players are expected to be responsible for their actions, and are conditioned to unforced demonstrations of respect.

  They stand whenever a stranger enters the dressing room. In public areas, such as a hotel lobby, they are expected to shake hands with everyone they encounter, ‘whether that is three people, or a hundred’. Professional contracts are awarded sparingly, a practice which ironically plays into the hands of predatory English clubs.

  ‘One, maybe two or three in the same generation will sign a professional contract. They put everything in place for you, but it is up to you whether you really want it or not. Desire is a big factor. A lot of young boys now think it is all going to come easy. When it gets tough they really don’t know what to do. They don’t make the right choices sometimes.

  ‘You do wonder, what if I had a normal life? You watch your mates doing normal things and have to know what you want. You tell yourself, in a few years it will be worth it. That’s where I consider myself stronger than most of the boys I came through the system with. I had less of a comfort zone.

  ‘I am not going to knock the English system but there is a lot more money here than in any other European country. Sometimes there is so much, we don’t know what to do with it. That could be a good thing or a bad thing, I don’t know, but there is definitely lot more reward without achievement.’

  Moore made his first-team debut at 17, in front of 50,000 spectators drawn by the Derby du Nord against Lille on May 3, 2015. Lens’ relegation from Ligue 1 was already assured, and he played out of position at right back. Apart from a moment of panic when he realised he had to take throw-ins, a disconcertingly new experience, he set up the goal in a 3–1 defeat and acquitted himself well. Yet the club was in turmoil, created by major shareholder Hafiz Mammadov, an Azerbaijani businessman, and the mood was sour.

  He grew up fast: ‘In a senior dressing room, when stuff is going wrong, you see people – managers, coaches and players – panic. Some are coming to the end of their careers, and don’t know what is around the corner for them. You sense a certain fear. Though it is a team game, everyone realises it is every man for himself.’

  Called up by England, he featured in the winning team in the 2014 European under-17 championship in Malta, where Holland were beaten on penalties in the final. The nucleus of that group has progressed through the international system, but the lack of conformity in their club careers since then is symptomatic of an age at which, according to Southgate, ‘they are starting to get the reality of a first-team manager telling them what’s needed to get in his team’.

  Patrick Roberts discovered that even scoring against his parent club, for Celtic against Manchester City in the Champions League, is not enough to pierce Pep Guardiola’s carapace of professional reserve. Josh Onomah, who first trained with Tottenham’s first team at 14, was marking time after his breakthrough season in 2015–16.

  Joe Gomez, one of those quietly mentioned in the England coaches’ room as having the requisite qualities to evolve into a senior international, was rebuilding his career at Liverpool following a thirteen-month absence in which his recovery from a torn ACL was complicated by the diagnosis of tendinopathy in his Achilles.

  Southampton’s Josh Sims was named man of the match in his Premier League debut, but Adam Armstrong had been sent to Barnsley to pay his dues in the Championship by Rafa Benítez, his manager at Newcastle. Dominic Solanke, his England strike partner, was embroiled in protracted contract negotiations with Chelsea, complicated by incorrect reports that he had demanded a long-term contract worth £50,000 a week.

  Solanke’s dilemma, of seeking supposed market value in terms of his earnings at the expense of first-team exposure, had wider implications. His case rested on his worth as a bargaining chip to a club which farmed thirty-eight players out on loan in the first half of the 2016–17 season, and used the academy as the sort of counter-productive, cost-efficient profit centre inadvertently encouraged by UEFA’s Financial Fair Play strategy.

  The theory, that clubs should not be penalised for investment in community schemes, infrastructure projects and youth development, appears reasonable enough. But in reality, it gives them carte blanche to sign far more young players than they will ever need; some will be hawked in a secondary market that resembles a supercharged car-boot sale.

  Winners’ medals from the FA Youth Cup are of marginal compensation to a generation at risk of concussion from repeated contact with the glass ceiling that tends to descend at Chelsea on or around a player’s eighteenth birthday. Solanke, who benefitted from a second phase of development at Vitesse Arnhem, faced a career-defining decision without being given confidence or context by his employers. It seemed likely that he would opt to leave at the end of the season, with any transfer fee being decided by the arcane Professional Football Compensation Committee.

  For some, like Chelsea’s Izzy Brown, rehabilitating at Rotherham before progressing to Huddersfield Town following a disappointing season in the Netherlands, exile highlights immaturity. In others, it broadens horizons, contracts the field of vision so that distractions are marginalised. Mandela Egbo, another product of Steadman Scott’s Afewee project in Brixton, required patience and diligence at Borussia Mönchengladbach; when Tafari Moore, the dreadlocked Arsenal full back, approached his namesake Taylor for advice about moving on loan to Utrecht, the response was unequivocal:

  ‘I told him, “It will do you a world of good. Not only will you come out of it a better player, but you will come out as a better man.” Taff was very excited. The boys are very curious, and I suppose I helped the group in a way when I arrived. I was the different one, not the special one, and thought it might
be difficult to settle, but we wanted to learn from each other.

  ‘French coaches work on repetition. It is very controlled. I was expecting the English game to be less technical, but the boys were really good, showing high technique at speed and intensity. I know there is this perception of a washbag mentality, and results can make it easier to look at young players and say this or that is wrong, but I’ve found most of the boys have their heads firmly on their shoulders.’

  The critical difference between Moore and the majority of his peers is that his experience of a cruel, claustrophobic first-team environment is vivid, rather than hypothetical. His return to England in August 2016, to join a young Bristol City squad assembled by a young manager, Lee Johnson, was a direct result of upheaval typically associated with the senior game.

  He failed to feel the love from Alain Casanova, the former Toulouse manager, who replaced Antoine Kombouaré at the end of a fractious season, in which Lens finished sixth in Ligue 2 and Moore became vulnerable to political positioning. Moore was judged harshly during the new man’s summer stocktake, when he was absent, captaining England at the European under-19 championships in Germany.

  ‘I got caught in a bit of a trap between negative mentalities. The new coach came in and within five days he said, “Listen, I don’t want you here. I don’t need you. You’ve been away at the Euros and I don’t like your attitude.” It was hard, having spent eight years at the club, giving blood, sweat and tears, having him tell me, “You are out.”

  ‘It was unexpected on one level, but looking back over my last year there I was caught up in so much jealousy and negativity from people who once wanted me to succeed. There was a change, an incredible envy. My parents got it as well. I’m lucky I have a stable family. It was getting out of hand. Some of the things that were said, and done, were just ridiculous.