Ndiaye, Globetrotters-Style Skills and Revealing Soccer Stats

COULD IT ACTUALLY HAPPEN?

Unless you’ve missed the footage of Iliman Ndiaye pulling off a backwards bouncing trick at Everton’s training ground, you should check it out. By pulling off a move so nasty that it would have been appropriate at a Harlem Globetrotters friendly display, the skill quickly concluded what was meant to be a informal game to finish what had been – up to that point – an illuminating interview 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 recruited by Sheffield United at 19, is expertly placed to discuss this topic. “Avoid dwelling on the rejection and one day your luck is going to materialize,” he told a young player just before using said impressive trick on his teammate, 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. Peak Michael Owen gleefully humiliating a 13-year-old goalkeeper in front of a annoyed Neville Southall is obviously the gold standard in this particular niche – but the former Liverpool man is just one of many culprits. 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 driven by the Japanese player’s social media disgrace caption – “difficulty breeds resilience” – and the accompanying hashtag of #friendship.

Kagawa’s former Dortmund teammates Lukasz Piszczek, Jakub Blaszczykowski and Nuri Sahin at least had the decency to lose their match against 100 children when the three lined up during the interval of their farewell game for BVB. A Real Madrid XI that featured Cristiano Ronaldo and Xabi Alonso were more competitive when they played against 109 Chinese kids in a similar experiment. But returning to the beginning, it’s estimated that only 180 of the 1.5 million boys currently playing organized youth football in England will ever appear in the Premier League, a stark reality for young players across the country.

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FEATURED STATEMENT

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