The Nowhere Men (9 page)

‘Oh, mate, magnificent,’ said Warburton. ‘I was sitting there at Hyde, watching Grimaldo play against Manchester City, with Stuart Pearce, Brian Marwood and Aidy Boothroyd. This kid would do a couple of things and you’d hear this collective gasp. He’s sixteen, five foot six, but an outstanding professional both on and off the pitch. He just did things you struggled to comprehend, at such a tender age. Everyone in that team was just so comfortable on the ball. He shifts it so quickly he can play against man or beast. He simply doesn’t get caught.

‘The reality is, how many kids like him are going to make Barça’s first team? That’s the key question for me. Let’s say two, three, maybe four or even five. There are probably eighteen to twenty outstanding players who will not progress, in each group. What do they do from there? If we lack players of their quality in our game, we have to go and get them. That sets the standard. It’s why we are all here. Look at the players who’ve already come through at the tournament. Lads like Suarez at Man City, Samper at Barcelona, Pritchard at Spurs, Gardner at Villa. They’re all of a type, which can be difficult to judge objectively. Their stats might not leap out of the page at you, but how can you register something like speed of thought? At some stage, whatever your business, you have to rely on the expert eye.’

Warburton was cutting to the chase. There were lifetimes of untutored expertise in that stand. Mark Anderson pointed out Dave Goodwin, who discovered Rio Ferdinand, and still trawled through schools football in Blackheath and Lewisham in the hope of finding another star. At the other end of the age scale, Kevin Bidwell, a protégé of Arsenal chief scout Steve Rowley, was making copious notes. The fusion of instinct and experience had lost none of its effectiveness, according to Warburton:

‘As a scout, there are things that grab your attention. We might be watching an under fourteen game, chatting about having had a drink in the pub the previous night, and a boy just does something. It might just be a first touch. It might be a little turn of pace, or an unusual type of pass. Now he’s got your eye. You are watching that boy, looking for something that makes you turn your head. I’m not talking about beating nine men, or scoring from fifty yards. Far from it. I’m talking about comfort on the ball, the kid who always wants the ball. He might be physically smaller, but is he at ease? Can he evade the bigger boy who tries to clobber him? Now you are really starting to look. You are ticking off your mental boxes. Does he receive the ball well? Is he two-footed? Does he move quickly? Has he a low centre of gravity?

‘I don’t care if he is playing on a khazi of a pitch on a Friday afternoon in a local park with puddles everywhere. Those players just do something. It might be good delivery of a corner, the way he attacks the ball when he heads it. It might be the flight of a set piece. Those boys just do something which alerts your body and engages your mind. For the good scout, something triggers, both objectively and subjectively. The eureka moment isn’t that bolt of lightning that everyone imagines, but the hairs do go up on the back of your neck because you know, just know, you are watching something special.

‘I remember seeing Sterling for the first time. We played at QPR with Watford. I was with Andy, the academy manager, and we didn’t need to say a word. We simply looked at each other. The pace, the sheer, frightening pace, combined with an end product. That was a fuck me moment, and Liverpool moved faster than anyone to get him. I had something similar with Marvin Sordell, who has just been sold by Watford for four million. I think he had been released by Fulham when he turned up. He’d be the first to tell you he was a raw, very angry boy at times. His mother was great in supporting him, but we once had to take him off the pitch at a tournament in Amsterdam, because he was on the edge. Then, when we were umming and ahing about keeping him, he’d suddenly have a turn of pace and bury a shot in the bottom corner. Everyone would simply go “wow”.

‘It sounds boring, but when you are assessing a player, you’ve got to go across the four key areas. Physically, what is he? If he’s a centre half, he might be magnificent on the ball but if he’s five foot seven he is binned straightaway. Has the full back got good energy levels – aerobic and anaerobic? Has he got a good turn of pace over five yards, is he good over sixty yards, can he do recovery runs? Technically, what is he? Has he got a good range of pass, a good first touch? Is he comfortable taking the ball from the keeper or is he going to hide? Does he attack the ball well, does he volley well? Mentally, how does he deal with things? When they go one–nil down with ten to go, what’s his reaction? When they go one–nil up with ten to go, what’s his reaction? Does he still want the ball? Does he hoof it? Does he respond to criticism well? Tactically how is his pitch geography? Does he squeeze at the right time? Does he drop at the right time? Is he aware of distance between units? Does he communicate well with his teammates? Does he look to act as a leader or is he more of an individual who has to focus on his own game to get the best out of his own abilities?

‘All sorts of things go on with the kids. Seventy-five per cent of them come from fairly humble backgrounds. Football is a street game. Players come from inner city areas. They have a hunger and devilment about their play. There is a price to pay for that. The fact of the matter is that if their parents are offered a house or a job for the father, by one club, rather than another, what are they going to do? It’s life changing. They will opt for the bigger offer. I look at banking, in the old days. If Goldman Sachs wanted the right people, they went and got them. There are so many comparisons between what I did, currency dealing, and football. High pressure. Short career spans. Team environment. Communication skills.

‘But I know also that I am now dealing with someone’s son. At an academy level, you eventually have a horrible decision to make, about a lad who has been with you from the age of eight. How do you maintain the passion and compassion, and reach the right business decision? Never forget that football is a business. That, for me, is where the educational aspects of the system should kick in. If he doesn’t make it, can you keep him in the game, either as a player at Conference level, or as a physiotherapist, sports scientist, scout or analyst? I’m trying to replicate the Watford model here, at Brentford, and I’m staggered bigger clubs don’t go down that route. You have access to the boys ten, twelve hours a day and you get to know the families. It’s great for the fact you can implement an ethos and philosophy in terms of discipline, and standards of behaviour, but it makes it all the harder when you have to say no.’

Football likes to think it has its own eco-system. It has turned introspection into a fine art. Yet scouts were increasingly obliged to factor social trends and attitudes into their decision-making process. The nature of players was changing, imperceptibly. Tottenham, who also had great hopes for striker Shaquille Coulthirst, used psychometric testing as part of their recruitment process. John McDermott, their academy director, stressed the importance of a boy’s intellectual and social development, away from the training ground:

‘I want everyone involved to understand our philosophy. Today’s children are more curious and bolder than before. We have got to be able to be honest with our kids, have an empathy with them. We can do the scouting reports, examine the sports science, do the physiology, but we need also to look at the person. What is he like socially? Where, and how, does he fit into the group? It is a two-way process, in which trust can be built up over time. Remember, it could be fourteen years, from a boy being recruited, to him making his first team debut.’

McDermott expected his coaches to be ‘igniters, inspirational people’. His scouts were encouraged to look beyond stereotypes: ‘We do what I call Zidane work. Can our boys twist and turn, protect and use possession, when they have someone up their back? All our players have to have the attributes of a midfield player, that ability to play forward when they are under pressure. We have to be careful of being condescending, because the days of the thicko have gone. We have got to see beyond the now. The best players have football courage. Speed across the ground is not their single most important quality. Perception, and speed of thought, is as important.

‘Only the mediocre are at their best all the time. We see if boys can cope, by playing up, beyond their natural level, and provide a safety net when they can’t. Of course there will be a time when we have to decide whether the kid has hit the ceiling, and whether it is the end for him, with us at least. But until then, we won’t drown talent, by accentuating fear. We live in a world where managers are three or four games away from the sack. Trying to get through to that culture is a major issue for all of us in English football.’

Recruitment was one of his five pillars of youth development. The others were coaching, offering the right environment, delivering holistic support, and providing proper career pathways and opportunities. In the single-tiered main stand at Griffin Park, attitudes were rather more prosaic. The prevailing view was summed up by one of those pressurised managers, Gary Waddock of Wycombe Wanderers. No one was inclined to offer much of an argument when he opined that the standard of the semi-final was ‘shit’.

In a sense, Marseille’s youngsters were too good for their own good. Five were withdrawn on the morning of the game, and returned home, to bolster the first team squad. This deprived Mel Johnson of the chance to evaluate one of his two main targets, Chris Gradi, a young striker who was sufficiently versatile to play wide, or as an attacking midfielder. Johnson’s other intention, to assess Lukas Spendlhofer, Inter’s Austrian centre half, was more straightforward.

Tall and athletic, like most of the Inter team, Spendlhofer had a nervous habit of sweeping his hand through his luxuriant hair at any opportunity. This offended old school sensibilities. It summoned images of Hugh Grant, never the most reassuring characteristic in a game of muck and nettles. He was callow in comparison to partner Marek Kysela, a Czech defender more in the mould of Arnold Schwarzenegger, but Johnson noticed his ability to read the game quickly and intelligently. He would be one to monitor, over the next year or so.

Since Liverpool would meet the losers in the third place play-off, Johnson tossed a coin to decide which teams Anderson and Andy Stevens would use, as the basis for their opposition reports. Each compiled detailed notes, which matched individual assessments with the usual insights into set-piece patterns and team shape. In Anderson’s case, the work was largely academic. Inter, his subjects, were 2–0 ahead by half-time, and in complete control of the game. Stevens, a postman attuned to early starts, had a late night ahead. The glowing report he had received that morning, from a periodic health check following a heart attack eight years earlier, was understandably reassuring.

A strange sense of torpor settled on proceedings. Johnson was occasionally engaged – ‘why do they train every day of the week, and still come up with the same set piece nine times out of ten?’ – but became increasingly distracted. He had been irked by the news that Kerim Frei, a throwback 18-year-old winger who played for Switzerland at Under 21 level before opting to represent Turkey, the land of his father, had signed a new contract with Fulham. He was on his shortlist of right-sided players, capable of addressing a worrying weakness in Liverpool’s squad. Another, Jonathan Williams, of Crystal Palace, was being played out of position after making a rapid recovery from a badly broken right leg, sustained playing for Wales Under 21s.

Talk turned to other leading prospects. Angus Gunn, son of former Norwich goalkeeper Bryan, was following his father’s lead at Manchester City. Jeremie Boga, an Under 16 midfield player who had already made his reserve team debut, was being quietly hailed as long-overdue justification for Chelsea’s Academy. Arsenal were in the process of writing off a generation, and concentrating on their Under 16s, where Brandon Ormonde-Ottewill was regarded as the best left-sided prospect since Tom Walley converted Ashley Cole from a left winger to a left back. In a variation on a theme, Jack Harper, a prolific Scottish midfield player implanted in Real Madrid’s youth system, was getting easyJet some business from the brethren.

The ritual of recommendation and rejection was ceaseless. Johnson brought up an email on his BlackBerry. It had been forwarded from Damien Comolli. Barry Silkman, one of the most media savvy agents, was touting James Sage, a raw Peterborough central defender, as a cross between Rio Ferdinand and Franz Beckenbauer. ‘A little undercooked, don’t you think?’ said the scout, with an arched eyebrow. He had sourced Sage’s biography and career statistics, which revealed he had played only four Under 18 games in three months. If Silkman was taking a punt – and he was – he had more chance of cashing in on a wager involving the moon being made of cheese.

Anderson had spent two years trailing Luke Shaw, a 16-year-old full back popularly assumed to be the next expensive product, prised from Southampton’s Academy. ‘Very relaxed on the ball,’ he said. ‘A bit splay-footed, but naturally left-footed. Gives you great width and gets his crosses in. When the opportunity is there to have a dig on goal he’s not afraid to take it on. Arsenal could have had him for two million in the summer, but baulked at the price. Now it’s three million and Southampton are not returning calls. I’ve a feeling he may stay.’

Paul Mitchell, a close friend of Mel’s son Jamie, had just been head-hunted by Southampton from MK Dons, where he was head of recruitment. A former MK Dons captain, he was only 30, and had moved into scouting after being forced into retirement following an unsuccessful 18-month attempt to recover from a badly broken ankle and leg. Like many of the new breed, he had a strong sports science background. His brief was to inform all aspects of transfer strategy, and it left his friend on the horns of a moral dilemma. Jamie Johnson was extremely well regarded, and especially effective in developing a long term strategy in the loan market. He had to balance the central loyalties of his role, as Millwall’s chief scout, with the economic realities of his trade: