This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine.
The new Premier League season begins with a million stories waiting to be told: Arsenal’s title defence, a raft of new managers, the established managers, multi-million-quid signings, old favourites, players who are gone for ever, like Mo Salah and Casemiro, and players like Erling Haaland, Bruno Fernandes and Declan Rice who might decide who lifts the title trophy next May.
But perhaps the most thrilling story of them all is that of the teenage sensation. The precocious genius, the player who has just acquired his first razor, who looks as if he should still be at school and yet is playing in the Premier League. Not just playing, but operating with the same swagger that he brought to his football in the playground.
Any one of the Premier League clubs’ academy players who get onto the pitch over the course of the season might turn out to be the best player you’ve ever seen in your life. Perhaps he’ll be the greatest player of all time: better than Pelé, Cruyff, Maradona or Messi. Or perhaps he’ll only be brilliant: player of the year, club legend, international stalwart. You can see the talent, everybody in the world can see the talent – but nobody knows how the rest of the story will go.
Arsenal star Bukayo Saka made his first start in the Premier League in 2019, aged 17, and played with playground exuberance – terrorising his full-back, driving over precise crosses or cutting inside for a shot. This boy will play for England, we all said, and we were right. Saka is a classic example of a promising player who – as people in horse racing say – trained on. That is to say, moved seamlessly from promise to achievement.
Football history is full of great players who showed their talents quite shockingly early. Pelé was 17 when he scored twice in the World Cup final for Brazil against Sweden in 1958. The problem is that football history is even more full of players who were brilliant at 17 and never heard of again. Many start, few make it: “Like turtles and the sea,” as the former Man United and England great Steve Coppell once told me.
I remember trying to set up an interview with one such wunderkind. Before we could meet, the poor lad had lost it.
I can’t remember why. Drugs, drink, injury, failure of nerve, social pressures, bad company, family issues – there’s any number of things to overcome between adolescence and adulthood, even if you’re not a brilliant footballer.
But every now and then, a great young player comes along. “I think we’ve got one ’ere!” I can still hear Gary Lineker saying that when Michael Owen played for England at 18. He scored against Romania at the World Cup in 1998 and added a goal of startling brilliance in England’s match against Argentina, the one when David Beckham (himself a wunderkind in his time) was sent off.
I was at the European Championship of 2004 in Portugal when Wayne Rooney first showed his brilliance as an England player. He was 18 when he scored twice against Switzerland, and it really seemed that England might win the damn thing
Early promise isn’t essential. Many players mature slowly. That’s traditionally true of goalkeepers; also of central defenders. Physical strength and experience at reading the game aren’t things you acquire at birth or even at 17. It’s the thrilling players, the attackers and creators and goalscorers, who are often so eye-catching, so young.
Let’s try a few names for the new season: Max Dowman of Arsenal, Rio Ngumoha of Liverpool, Fulham’s Josh King, JJ Gabriel of Man United, Chelsea’s Landon Emenalo, Brian Madjo of Aston Villa. They could all be worldbeaters; they could all be decent top-level players for a decade and a half. Or not, of course.
There he is, nutmegging the full-back, slicing open the defence with a pass, controlling the ball and laying it off in a single movement, bursting into the box when no one else dares and slamming the ball into the net. We shake our heads in wonder and say: “I think we’ve got one ’ere.”
And sometimes we have.
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