Ndiaye, Globetrotters-Style Moves and Sobering Football Stats

COULD IT ACTUALLY HAPPEN?

If you haven’t seen the clip of Iliman Ndiaye performing a reverse bouncing nutmeg at Everton’s training ground, it’s a good watch. In executing a move so nasty that it would have suited perfectly at a Harlem Globetrotters friendly display, the skill instantly ended what was meant to be a informal game to conclude what had been – up to that point – an informative discussion about how Sunday league footballers can secure a fresh start after being let go from professional academies.

Ndiaye, who featured in non-league games directly before being picked up by Sheffield United at 19, is ideally suited to address this topic. “Don’t focus on the rejection and one day your luck is going to come through,” he advised a young player immediately prior to using said spectacular skill on his teammate, in doing so vividly showing the gulf between Premier League and amateur footballers he had been working to minimize.

Ndiaye isn’t the first professional footballer to take things that little bit too far. A younger Michael Owen cheerfully overwhelming a 13-year-old goalkeeper in front of a annoyed Neville Southall is obviously the gold standard in this unique area – but the ex-Anfield star is far from the only offender. Both Christian Eriksen and Shinji Kagawa have reduced toddlers to actual tears with a series of brutal nutmegs, although it’s thought that the latter was at least motivated by the Japanese player’s social media apologetic post – “setbacks build character” – and the associated label of #friendship.

Kagawa’s former Dortmund teammates Lukasz Piszczek, Jakub Blaszczykowski and Nuri Sahin at least had the decency to be defeated against 100 children when the group competed during the interval of their final match for BVB. A Real Madrid XI that contained Cristiano Ronaldo and Xabi Alonso were not so generous when they played against 109 Chinese kids in a similar experiment. But returning to the beginning, it’s approximated that only 180 of the 1.5 million boys currently playing structured junior soccer in England will ever appear in the Premier League, a sobering statistic for aspiring footballers across the country.

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FEATURED STATEMENT

“Football took me but it never left me because I never gave up on my goal. I went from place to place. The devotion to the game drives you. I couldn’t always see where it was taking me. But today I have the understanding” – Serbia coach Veljko Paunovic takes time out from his training to discuss his journey.

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