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COULD IT ACTUALLY HAPPEN?

If you haven’t seen 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 spectacular that it would have fit right in at a Harlem Globetrotters show game, the skill immediately shut down what was meant to be a casual practice to finish what had been – up to that point – an revealing conversation about how non-professionals can get another opportunity after being released by professional academies.

Ndiaye, who competed in amateur leagues directly before being recruited by Sheffield United at 19, is perfectly positioned to discuss this topic. “Don’t concentrate on the rejection and one day your luck is going to materialize,” he told a young player shortly before executing said spectacular skill on his victim, in doing so vividly showing the gap between Premier League and amateur footballers he had been working to minimize.

Ndiaye joins a list of 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 fuming 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 harsh skills, although it’s thought that the latter was at least inspired by the Japanese player’s social media regretful message – “this frustration makes a person stronger” – and the accompanying hashtag 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 played during the mid-game pause of their last appearance for BVB. A Real Madrid XI that featured Cristiano Ronaldo and Xabi Alonso were not so generous when they played against 109 Chinese kids in a like situation. But coming full circle, it’s estimated that only 180 of the 1.5 million boys currently playing structured junior soccer in England will ever appear in the Premier League, a stark reality for toddlers and teenagers across the country.

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DAILY HIGHLIGHT

“Soccer carried me but it never abandoned me because I never stopped believing. I went from team to team. The devotion to the game drives you. I couldn’t always see where it was taking me. But today I have the answer” – national team manager Veljko Paunovic takes time out from his training to share his career.

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