Authors: Michael Calvin
Austin, the former Spurs full back, was working through his angst at the interruption to his coaching career, which had surprisingly stalled. He managed in the Conference, and combined coaching with player recruitment at Southend before becoming Brendan Rodgers’ assistant manager at Watford and Reading. He had been seeking a manager’s role, since leaving Crystal Palace in May 2011, and was prepared to keep head-butting a glass ceiling. ‘He’s my angry young man’ said Johnson, affectionately. ‘I just love getting out there, on that training field’ said Austin, with convincing force.
Mark Anderson arrived from another dawn shift as a senior site manager for a construction company. Football was his release, the Liver Bird on his quilted jacket a badge of honour, even if wearing it on duty defied convention. He was proud of his association with a club of Liverpool’s stature, as a youth scout, and radiated unfulfilled ambition. He, too, was determined to get back into the game on a full-time basis.
Steve Gritt was in his first year as Bournemouth’s chief scout. While Alan Curbishley, his former managerial partner, endured the purgatory of punditry, he was sustaining a career defined by spells in charge at Charlton, Brighton and Millwall. His most recent post, as director of Charlton’s Academy, had relevance, but he remained in culture shock.
‘When I first started in management with Curbs, twenty years ago, the managers went out scouting’ he said, tightening the draw-strings on the fur-lined hood of his quilted coat. ‘That’s not the case these days. So many rely on the judgements of their scouts. Funny, that, because they are the ones who pay, if those judgements are wrong. This job is a bit of an eye-opener, to be honest. Even managers don’t really realise what scouts do, how hard they work. They are out in all weathers, at all hours. They don’t get the credit they deserve.’
The scouts sat where they could, in a 300-seater main stand. They didn’t share the laughter as balls disappeared into adjoining gardens. They were blind to the idiosyncrasies of the setting. Closely planted Leylandii, evergreen symbols of Middle England, stood guard behind one goal. Newly built houses, as neat and symmetrical as loaves of bread on a baker’s shelf, were vulnerable to stray shots at the other end.
During lulls in play, Anderson delivered despatches from football’s dirty war. Scouts were having their car tyres slashed, on suspicion of poaching young players from smaller clubs, who were aggrieved by what was perceived to be the institutionalised greed of the Premier League’s Elite Player Performance Plan. ‘There’s a lot of aggro out there,’ he reported. ‘It’s getting naughty. A lot of clubs won’t have us on the premises.’
Representatives of six Premier League teams, including Arsenal, Manchester United and Chelsea, drafted the plan, which created four categories of academy. It was, essentially, a self-selecting process since those in the top category were required to underwrite an annual budget of £2.3m and employ at least 18 full-time staff. Wealthier clubs were freed from the need to recruit young players within a 90 minute radius, in terms of travel time, from their bases.
Naked self-interest is excused when an outstanding 14-year-old has a bounty of up to £2 million on his head. EP3, as it is known in the trade, was reportedly forced through when the Premier League threatened to withdraw £5.4 million in so-called ‘Solidarity funding’ from Football League clubs if they did not sanction its adoption. Their resistance, understandable because it gave an open invitation for scouts to pilfer boys as young as nine for small change, was futile.
Young footballers are on the menu, and the price list is set. Instead of paying seven-figure sums, the biggest clubs need only to pay £3,000 for every year a newly recruited boy has spent at another club’s academy between the ages of 9 and 11. As little as £12,000 compensation is required, for every year he has been nurtured, elsewhere, between the ages of 12 and 16. Premier League clubs, who had accumulated debts of £361 million from a collective income of £2.3 billion, had a vested interest in portraying anarchy as opportunity. Johnson, a man of ritual and restraint, busied himself with his paperwork. He had folded a sheet of A4 into quarters, and recorded the players’ names and numbers, in formation, in blue and red ink. It would be stored, like thousands of others, in a series of suitcases in his garage. Occasionally, in shorthand designed to offer a mental image, he wrote ‘looks like’ next to a name. Thus Taylor Miles, scorer of West Ham’s 43rd minute equaliser, was linked in perpetuity to Craig Bellamy. He lacked the Liverpool player’s default mode of an enraged ferret, but shared his energy and eye for goal.
Whenever Johnson spoke, he instinctively held the official team sheet over his mouth with his right hand, to prevent strangers overhearing. His voice was soft, yet insistent. ‘You’re very much on your own in this job,’ he said. ‘It can be very lonely. You don’t really have friends, you have your fellow scout acquaintances, but they’re not really friends. It’s a bit of a secret world. We try not to tell each other who we’re watching, but most of the time it’s quite obvious.’
Two young men behind us, one apparently pre-occupied with his iPad, another saucer-eyed from texting from his smart phone, caught his attention. ‘You can tell the agents,’ he said, with a barely decipherable flick of the head. ‘They’re the ones who are on the phone all the time. They don’t watch the game at all. They’re here to work the rooms, to see and be seen.’
His son, Jamie, was initially impressed by John Swift, Chelsea’s elegant, straight-backed central midfield player. He made good angles, picked clever passes and was sufficiently adept, technically, to be comfortable on the ball in tight areas. ‘A young one, a Gary Gardner type, Dad,’ he said, referring to another midfield tyro, at Aston Villa. ‘Good footballer but an academy player,’ came the reply. ‘Ask yourself the question: will he keep me in a job if I take him for a Championship or League One club? No. He’ll get you the sack.’ Swift duly faded into insignificance.
The older man was examining body shape, the probabilities of genetic inheritance. ‘Look at Elliot Lee – Rob’s son. Chip off the old block, isn’t he? But a big arse. Not an athlete.’ Few words were wasted, and judgements were harsh: ‘Look at the goalkeepers. One’s a great size, but a coward. The other’s a great shot stopper but too small. Their mistakes prey on your mind.’
I was struck by Chelsea’s Todd Kane, a full back in the modern idiom. He was strong, adventurous and aggressive, and his delivery from wide areas caused problems. ‘He could have a career, him. My first thought is Brentford. He’s a Nicky Shorey type. He does what it says on the tin. Problem is his size – can’t see him defending at the far post at top level. He’ll be a proper pro though.’
There was logic to Johnson’s caution, borne out of 27 years’ experience. ‘The window of opportunity isn’t open for long, and they’re out there flicking and farting around. It is a cruel world. They have only one chance to impress. There are too many games, too many players, to spend long on them. When you are working for Liverpool, a lot of the time you are crossing names off your list.’
Islam Feruz, a small support striker blessed with extreme pace, earned a reprieve by scoring a goal of sublime quality. He picked up the ball midway in the opposition half, surged past four challenges into the heart of the penalty area, and dinked a shot over the advancing West Ham goalkeeper. ‘Blimey!’ exclaimed Johnson. ‘Didn’t see that coming. That was Diego Maradona.’
Feruz was a child of his times. The only son in a family of Somalian refugees which relocated to Glasgow after fleeing to London from Tanzania, he was saved from deportation, at the age of 12, by the advocacy of Celtic’s youth coach, the late Tommy Burns. He made his first team debut at the age of 14, in a memorial match for Burns, a man of immense integrity in a game of shallow expedience.
Within 18 months, Chelsea had taken advantage of a loophole in the system to spirit him south. Conscious of competition from Manchester City, they installed the family in a flat near their Cobham training ground. The boy was reportedly being paid £10,000 a month, and had his own website, which proclaimed: ‘Islam Feruz will be famous.’ Wotte, who might have been expected to be a little more circumspect, promptly compared him to Romario.
With five minutes remaining, and the scores level at 2–2, most of the scouts had seen enough. Only Anderson stayed to witness Chelsea’s win, on penalties, after the game had ended 3–3 after extra time. ‘What have I got to go home to?’ he said with a mischievous smile. ‘I’ll be here helping them sweep up.’ He would make himself busy, networking with agents, parents and coaches. He could talk for England, but, crucially, he was a good listener. He, too, worked a room, like a bee collecting pollen.
Johnson scurried to his car, in the company of Steve McCall, Ipswich’s chief scout. His small talk – ‘that Nat Chalobah, he’s got Chelsea-itis. Got all the tools, but a laid-back Larry’ – was tellingly deceptive. It was several months before he revealed he had logged the defender’s speed of thought, intelligent movement and ease on the ball. He recommended him, as the putative holding midfield player Liverpool were seeking.
Johnson had been taken to Anfield by Damien Comolli, with whom he worked, as chief scout, for Tottenham. He recruited Gareth Bale from Southampton, but was a victim of regime change under Harry Redknapp. It was the first time he had been ‘moved on’ since he began scouting, as a self-confessed ‘football fanatic’, in 1985. The following year, on Good Friday, he recommended Norwich City sign an 11-year-old midfield player he had spotted playing for Ridgeway Rovers in the Canaries Cup.
David Beckham was duly invited for trials at Carrow Road, but joined Tottenham’s School of Excellence before Manchester United, and corporate canonisation, beckoned. Since Leyton Orient, the boy’s local club, were also unfulfilled suitors at that time, there was an appropriate symmetry to Johnson’s next tutorial, an Under 19 international between England and the Czech Republic at Brisbane Road.
Johnson parked in the terraced streets surrounding the ground, and popped into a newsagent to buy a local paper. ‘Everyone canes me for it, even Damien,’ he said, with a self-deprecating chuckle. ‘But I always buy one for the titbits. You never know what you’ll find out.’ He returned to his car, and studied the Czech squad on his iPad for an hour, before he entered the Olympic Suite, 35 minutes from kick-off.
The scouts were devouring ham and mustard sandwiches, with the obligatory chips, as they retold tall tales of ducking and diving. My favourite revealed the ingenuity and duplicity of one solid citizen, who monitored youth football for Portsmouth, did first team match assessments for Newcastle United, and covered non-League football for Wolverhampton Wanderers. All three clubs were ignorant of his involvement with the others.
Johnson preferred the company of Tottenham coach Clive Allen. ‘He was good to me at Spurs,’ he explained. ‘He kept phoning to see how I was after they outed me. You don’t forget things like that.’ They discussed striker Harry Kane. He was excelling on loan at Millwall, whose manager Kenny Jackett had worked with Johnson at Watford and QPR. The one doubt, about his pace at the highest level, was neutralised by memories of Teddy Sheringham, a player whose game intelligence compensated for a slight lack of speed.
‘I love this place,’ Johnson reflected, as we looked out on to a museum piece, the deserted old main stand. ‘The fans are the funniest around. I was here once when they started chanting “we can see you washing up” at the inhabitants of the flats in the corner. It’s a proper club, with some great people.’ Memories of the old John Chiedozie tea bar, and the fabled eccentricity of former manager John Sitton, stirred a smile.
Stuart Pearce, who was to make a cameo appearance as England caretaker manager against Holland at Wembley the following night, nodded as he bustled past with his retinue. Johnson had talked football with him the previous week, in Jackett’s office at the Den, but his perspective shifted suddenly, as the teams, and his sheet of A4, came out. ‘We know the England boys so well,’ he rationalised. ‘This is my chance to look at the Czechs. They’ve beaten some top sides.’ He quickly concentrated on goalkeeper Lukas Zima, a tall, slightly built fashion victim in tangerine kit, and predominantly orange boots. All that remained was for him to address the error of my ways.
‘Don’t look at the game, look at the man,’ Johnson instructed. ‘You are following play just like the coaches who come out with me. Scouts study their man. I blank the other players out, although if the ball is at the other end of the pitch I’ll watch out of the corner of my eye, just in case I get asked for an opinion. You cannot follow the ball in this job.’
I felt self-conscious at first, but it was simple, and startlingly effective. Watching Zima so intensely had a strange intimacy. He morphed from an unknown name on a team sheet to a definable human being. His mannerisms became familiar, and the complexities of his character emerged. He unwittingly evoked sympathy and understanding. Johnson was enthused: ‘Look at him. Good concentration. Keeps communicating. Attention to detail. He’s alert, thinking. A good size. I like him. I like his bravery. He’s been out at people’s feet a couple of times. I know he punches, but all the foreign ones do, especially at youth level.’
As he spoke, England broke quickly from an ill-judged Czech attack. Harry Kane chested the ball down inside his own half, fed Ross Barkley on the right, and sprinted to receive a return ball on the edge of the penalty area before scoring with a low shot into the corner. Johnson spoke with proprietorial authority and concern: ‘There was nothing the keeper could do. He’s got nothing in front of him. That Celtic boy, the left-sided centre half, is struggling for his life. It’s not the keeper’s fault they keep getting caught out by balls over the top.’
The consensus at half-time was that the Czechs were ‘crap’. Lil Fuccillo, Luton’s technical director, was telling anyone who would listen: ‘it’s Barça this, Barça that. I’m getting sick of it. We’ve got to play to our strengths in this country.’ Rather than enlist in the Bedfordshire branch of the Flat Earth Society, Johnson gravitated towards Dave Holden, the veteran Arsenal scout, who was instrumental in the recruitment of Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain.