Three young aspiring footballers attempting to take their first steps in the English game. One has had the unusual pathway of travelling eventfully from Africa to begin his dream. All three have the will and desire to play at the highest level.
The path to success is not easy. In the brutally harsh dressing room there is no hiding place, any weakness will be exposed and many young men struggle to compete without their mental health suffering as they handle the pressures thrown at them.
First we meet Taylor, an exciting young talent. Level headed, intelligent, with a good attitude and a nice personality. Injuries hamper his progress at his local football club, and he is unexpectedly released without a chance to get fit and show what he can do.
Brett, also was released from in the summer. Again, a polite young man with a good steady technique. But there is a brooding silence noticable in Bretts demeanour, something eating at him, since he left his club, Rovers, which never really dissapears.
Both of the boys are fortunate to enjoy a succesful trial with City, another local team a little further down the league pyramid. A third boy, Sanko, is also contracted after the trial and the three young men bond together as the new recruits in the testosterone-fuelled environment of the local football club. Soon the two English boys learn of Sanko's journey and how he ended up playing in England.
Sanko's story is particularly harrowing: People smuggled, conned, and abducted, he is seperated from his brothers who also set off on the same pathway to football glory. Unfortunately Sanko's siblings aren't as talented as him and they suffer grotesquely after seperation from their brother.
Sanko's past never leaves him even when signed up to the football club. Underworld contacts have him in their grasp, hoping to make a tidy profit on their protege. Things get heavy for Sanko and his two new friends support and help him, unwittingly becoming embroiled in the murky business too.
There follows tales of murder, alcoholism, sexual abuse, and gangland warfare with the whole football club dragged through the gutter, all resulting from the signing of a promising young African footballer.
I enclose part of the epilogue from the book to give you an idea of the inspiration for the tale:
I commenced writing this book in 2018, inspired by an article I read in the Guardian about an African boy by the name of Aboubacar Sidibe, who was promised an opportunity to leave Mali in the hope of becoming a top football star, but ended up, marooned, like a good many Africans in Nepal of all places, eking out a living playing for glorified Sunday league teams and having to pay a tax to the manager for the opportunity to do just that.
In addition, a few years before reading this, the abuse and exploitation of young boys in the care of British football clubs had reached the media's attention with some high-profile convictions of serial sexual predators such as Barry Bennall hitting the headlines.
Just five days before I completed the first draft of this book, the Sheldon report, an inquiry into how the Football Association, the Football League, and leading football clubs had handled safeguarding issues relating to young boys in their care, was published. The leader of the enquiry, QC Clive Sheldon, was scathing of all the aforementioned organisations, particularly the FA, who reacted slowly to instigate child protection measures.
And five months before that, the news broke concerning my football club. Jeremy Wisten was a promising footballer who committed suicide, believed partly due to Manchester City releasing him from the youth academy, therefore he had 'failed to make the grade'.
The full facts of the story are still to emerge, and I'm not castigating City about the tragedy, but I do think there are three strands here that are intertwined for this story.
