Ndiaye, Harlem Globetrotters-Style Moves and Sobering Football Statistics

IS THERE REALLY A POSSIBILITY?

Unless you’ve missed the clip of Iliman Ndiaye performing a backwards bouncing trick at Everton’s training ground, you should check it out. By pulling off a move so impressive that it would have been appropriate at a Harlem Globetrotters exhibition match, the skill instantly ended what was meant to be a informal game to finish what had been – up to that point – an revealing conversation about how non-professionals can earn a second chance after being let go from professional academies.

Ndiaye, who played Sunday League football directly before being recruited by Sheffield United at 19, is expertly placed to speak on this topic. “Don’t concentrate on the rejection and one day your luck is going to arrive,” he advised a young player immediately prior to executing said impressive trick on his victim, in doing so clearly demonstrating the gulf between Premier League and amateur footballers he had been attempting to dispel.

Ndiaye joins a list of professional footballer to take things that little bit too far. A younger Michael Owen gleefully humiliating a 13-year-old goalkeeper in front of a smouldering Neville Southall is clearly the benchmark in this specific category – but the ex-Anfield star is far from the only offender. Both Christian Eriksen and Shinji Kagawa have made young children cry with a series of merciless tricks, although it’s thought that the latter was at least inspired by the Japanese player’s social media disgrace caption – “difficulty breeds resilience” – and the related tag 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 trio played during the half-time break of their farewell game for BVB. A Real Madrid XI that featured Cristiano Ronaldo and Xabi Alonso were more competitive when they took on 109 Chinese kids in a similar experiment. But back to the start, it’s calculated that only 180 of the 1.5 million boys currently playing organized youth football in England will ever feature in the Premier League, a harsh truth for young players across the country.

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DAILY HIGHLIGHT

“Football took me but it never abandoned me because I never abandoned my dream. I went from place to place. The devotion to the game carries you. I couldn’t always see where it was leading me. But today I have the solution” – Serbia coach Veljko Paunovic makes time from his planning to reflect on his career.

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