When my youngest son Charlie was seven he was talent-spotted by a QPR scout who saw him playing football in the park and invited to try out for the junior academy. I struggled to take this seriously – he still couldn’t ride a bicycle – but duly turned up at a ‘sports academy’ in Willesden, a secondary school, where the trials were held. To my astonishment, a QPR coach told me Charlie had potential and offered to enrol him in a programme that involved spending two hours every Wednesday evening at this school. This wasn’t the junior academy, but a level below. Charlie was keen and after talking it over with Caroline we decided to give it a whirl.
Some of the kids couldn’t cope and would burst into tears – driving their fathers round the bend
Within a few weeks of him starting, I began to get cold feet. This school in Willesden wasn’t easy to get to on public transport and was an hour’s drive from our house in Acton. Then there was the fact that Charlie’s odds of becoming a professional footballer were vanishingly small. According to Richard Allen, former head of talent identification at the Football Association, less than 0.5 per cent of the players signed by professional teams under the age of nine end up playing for the first team – and Charlie was a long way from being signed. Finally, there were the other dads.
The coaching took place inside a wire cage and the dads would cling to the outside, screaming at their sons. They knew this was a gladiatorial arena in which only a handful, if any, would make it to the next round and they wanted their lads to be among them. This wasn’t run-of-the-mill encouragement, but blood-curdling threats. I got the impression that many of these men had fantasised about being professional footballers themselves and were vicariously pursuing their dreams through their offspring. Some of the little scraps, barely bigger than toddlers, couldn’t cope with the pressure and would burst into tears, driving their fathers round the bend. Afterwards, you saw them being dragged towards the car park, repeatedly told how ‘shit’ they were. And in case you think this is an example of ‘toxic masculinity’, some of the boys were accompanied by their mothers and they were far, far worse.
I don’t believe in mollycoddling children, but even I found this a bit much. The reason the parents cared so much wasn’t just because of their own thwarted ambitions. They also had dollar signs in their eyes. To be fair, they may not have been thinking of the jewellery and cars their children would buy them – they wanted them to do well. For many, it was a bit like buying their kids premium bonds. The odds were poor, but this was their one chance of hitting the big time.
And it was that, above all, that persuaded me to withdraw. Unlike most of these other children, Charlie would have all sorts of opportunities in his life. This wasn’t his ‘one shot’. Why, then, get his hopes up when it would almost certainly end in disappointment? Even if he was signed by QPR, the odds of him walking out at Loftus Road were 200 to one. During that winnowing process, he would be spending most of his time playing football instead of studying and, when he was spat out, he might have no GCSEs or A-levels to fall back on. I know from conversations with ex-cons that prisons are full of young men who’d been enrolled in football academies and, when they didn’t make it, turned to crime. Indeed, the first team at Wormwood Scrubs is said to be better than QPR’s.
So, I pulled Charlie out after four weeks and have never regretted it. Until last month, that is, when something happened that gave me pause. During my son’s brief career as a QPR recruit, he befriended another seven year-old – Botan Ameen – who was tapped up at the same time. I became friendly with his dad and, because he lived nearby, we would take it in turns to drive the boys. But unlike me, Botan’s dad stuck with it and, in due course, his son signed for QPR. He was let go last year aged 16 – so wasn’t among the 0.5 per cent – but picked up by Swindon Town, a club in the fourth tier. And on 8 October he made his first team debut in a cup game against Bristol Rovers and scored a goal, helping them to victory.
I know what’s going to happen next. Botan, who has already played for the Iraqi under-20s team, is going to become the highest scorer in League Two next season, then get bought by QPR and score the goal that seals their promotion to the Premier League in 2026. After we’ve finished celebrating in the stands, Charlie will turn to me with an accusatory look and say: ‘That could have been me, Dad.’
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