The Nowhere Men: The Unknown Story of Football's True Talent Spotters by Michael Calvin

Author:Michael Calvin
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780099580263
Publisher: Random House UK
Published: 2014-09-23T04:00:00+00:00

11

Yellow Ten and the Custard Cream Kid

THE CHOSEN FEW lounged on beaches lapped by the Caribbean, or partied in seven-star ghettoes beside the Arabian Gulf. The wannabes, who envied the lifestyle of football’s rich and famous, and had convinced themselves of the legitimacy of their ambitions, sought to emulate Sakho Bakare. As career strategies go, that had its limitations. Bakare was unemployed, separated from his family and sleeping on the sofa in a succession of friends’ houses.

The French forward was deemed a success by those unversed in the ways of the football world, simply because of his rarity value; he got something for the £50 he paid to participate in the lottery of a mass off-season trial. It had earned him a year in the Evo-Stik Southern League with St Albans City, where he was given £100 a week and as many free chips as he could eat from Andy’s Gourmet Burger van, situated in the corner of the tree-lined Clarence Park ground.

I had seen him play there just before he was released, at the end of the 2011-12 season. Clarence Park was a place of suburban gentility, reached by a wooden walkway from a bridge. Anxious parents fussed over children, amusing themselves noisily on swings and climbing frames in a rubber-crumbed playground. A sheepdog, with a blue and yellow Saints scarf wrapped around its neck, dozed in the shadow cast by another van, which dispensed coffee. Bakare had justified his pedigree as a one-season wonder in the Swiss League with Neuchatel Xamax by scoring 15 goals, yet was utterly dysfunctional.

He was tall, and the thinness of his legs was emphasised by the fashionable habit of stretching his socks over his knees. He loped, rather than ran, and his lack of co-ordination suggested he was not in full control of his limbs. He struggled to do the simple things automatically, and had the peripheral vision of a mole. His awareness of his teammates was minimal, and a source of collective frustration. But he had a physical presence. Occasionally, in a fusion of fortunate timing and sheer instinct, he took the breath away.

He provided the highlight of a dour 1–1 draw with Banbury United just before half-time, when he met a headed clearance on the right-hand edge of the penalty area. He fashioned a scissor kick as he fell with the grace of a flamingo in a high wind. The ball swerved and dipped, but cannoned to safety off the crossbar, with opposing goalkeeper Andy Kemp as astonished a spectator as the rest of us, in a crowd of 482. The Official Sakho Bakare Appreciation Society had 173 likes on Facebook, but the fans’ forum which summed him up as ‘egg beater or world beater’ represented a more measured judgement.

Bakare was 27, too old, too unreliable and too high maintenance. Scouts representing Morecambe, Dagenham & Redbridge and Luton were unimpressed. St Albans manager David Howell was sanguine about their disinterest. A protégé of Barry Fry, he understood the limitations of the

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