It was always: ‘Reiss and Jadon, who’s better?’
In the whole history of the England men’s national football team, dating all the way back to their first-ever official match against Scotland in 1872, over twice as many international players have come from the north as from the south of the country.
Yet, it was also widely reported that in 2016 out of all English players to feature in the Premier League no less than 14% were born in South London.
The likes of Jadon Sancho, Tammy Abraham, Joe Gomez, Aaron Wan-Bissaka, Callum Hudson-Odoi, Ryan Sessegnon, Reiss Nelson and Ademola Lookman are all South Londoners.
No wonder this relatively small area of the British capital has earned comparisons with the suburbs of Paris.
MULTIETHNICITY
Similarities seem obvious.
London and Greater London boroughs situated south of the river Thames form a densely-populated area of over 2.8 million people, making up around a considerable 5% of England’s whole population.
The more people, the more footballers. And the more footballers, the more good ones.
Coming, originally, from all over the world, of course.
“I do think that at the centre of the excellence that comes out of South London is multiethnicity and I think there is more multiethnicity in that part of London than there possibly is anywhere else”, believes former Crystal Palace chairman Simon Jordan.
The Afro-Carribean immigration to South London is said to have led not only to a remarkable cultural diversity within that particular area but also, inevitably, to poverty. And all the things connected to it.
Including playing football.
MENTALITY
“If I understand well, you say to me that there are areas where people are more hungry for success than others”, points out Arsène Wenger. “And I say yes.”
“What is really interesting about the South London kids, like Jadon [Sancho] and Reiss Nelson, is that they all possess a mindset that I see with the best footballers in the world“, says Andy Ansah, himself a South London-born ex-footballer, more recently known as a football choreographer working with the likes of Ronaldinho, Ronaldo and Wayne Rooney.
“That [mindset] is a single-mindedness, a confidence, not an arrogance, which they put out there knowing that they can do what they say they can do.”
Former Crystal Palace striker Clinton Morrison provides a perhaps radical example of the natural confidence of South London-bred footballers.
“I always remember when I was sixteen and [played for] the Crystal Palace youth team”, he recalls.
“We had a youth team game in the morning and I scored a hat-trick.
“Then we always used to go to first-team duty.
“Imagine we were in the first-team dressing room, swapping out of the kit and just before the game I was saying to Bruce Dyer, who was the first million pound striker at Crystal Palace, as he was going out to play the game: ‘Oh, I scored a hat-trick today, I’m coming for your position!’ And I said it in front of the manager!
“That was the confidence I had in myself. I believed that when I went out there I was going to produce. In the end, it worked out for me.”
Hunger and confidence are two mental aspects. Resilience is another one.
“If you hold onto the ball for too long […] they’ll knock you down without even thinking about it”, Rio Ferdinand has written in a letter to his younger… self.
“You’re going to get tackled and you’re going to get pushed to the ground.
“You’re going to think to yourself: ‘Man, I don’t know if I should be here…’
“But listen to me, Rio. When this happens, I want you to do two things.
“Get up.
“Then, look right back at them and say: ‘Gimme the ball again’.”
CAGE FOOTBALL
The right mentality can help you go far.
As long as it is supported by a required set of skills.
South Londoners believe that there used to be no better place to develop your footballing ability than in the so-called cages, preceding the more modern, small-sized pitches that can be found in today’s goal centres.
“It was all about being that showman in the cage, being the one”, Andy Ansah remembers.
“Even when we played multiple games, like three on three, it was all about twisting people up.
“What cage football does is it gives you the chance to home in your skills in tight spaces and have loads of touches.”
“There could be about 30 players on the pitch and that meant that when you got the ball it was not about trying to score, you wanted to stay on the ball for as long as possible“, adds David Powderly, the former Charlton Athletic and now England coach at youth level.
Cage football, where nutmeg is king, is said to be giving young boys an opportunity to express themselves.
And this is something of particular importance in flamboyant South London.
“It’s the swag and that’s a big thing in South London”, explains Andy Ansah.
“When you go onto the football pitch, it’s a level-playing ground and it’s a chance for you to show what you can do and stand out.
“There’s a massive respect and appreciation for ballers in south-east London. No matter what age you are, there’s a huge respect that comes with it, huge.
“I think that’s another thing that drives these South London kids to be the best on the football pitch.
“This is why every club in the country is setting up satellite centres in and around south-east London or got scouts around there, trying to get these kids and give them an opportunity.”
SCOUTING
As with Greater Paris, the growing prominence of South London – and its talents – on the footballing map has not gone unnoticed.
Scouts are everywhere.
In the EPPP era, football clubs are keen on signing the most promising-looking players as early as possible.
Jadon Sancho trained at the Watford Academy from the age of seven while his football brother Reiss Nelson joined Arsenal around the same time.
Meanwhile, Ryan Sessegnon was eight when he first played for Fulham and Callum Hudson-Odoi has been at Chelsea since the age of six. Tammy Abraham turned blue as a seven-year-old.
Staying in South London, Joe Gomez signed for Charlton aged 10 and his peer Aaron Wan-Bissaka joined Crystal Palace a year later.
However, grassroots football has remained strong south of the Thames, providing an opportunity for late-developers as well as players who simply entered the game at a later stage of their childhood.
An example of this, Ademola Lookman only moved to Charlton from local club Waterloo at the age of 16.
COACHING
Just as in Paris’ banlieues, South London always seemed to produce very good footballers – from David Rocastle and Ian Wright, through Rio Ferdinands and Wilfried Zahas, to the most recent generation of England under-17 and under-20 World Cup winners.
Just not so many of them.
So what is the key reason behind the emergence of – arguably – another powerhouse of European and world football?
Some believe it to be coaching.
“A lot of the old school methods of coaching were very autocratic and based around the coach having all the answers”, explains former Crystal Palace academy coach Harry Hudson.
“That immediately set the environment for the session and for an interaction between a coach and a player.
“If the coach wants things to be very orderly, very structured, for him to have the answers, he’s not going to want any type of wild card in there, any type of threat or risk towards that order.
“And young players from South London do have a swagger, a confidence and a will to test coaches.
“And a lot of coaches don’t like that because it affects their ego and potentially questions their place within the group.”
Especially in England, in no small part to the coaching education system led by the Football Association, this seems to have changed.
And considerably, too.
“They can be themselves“, agrees David Powderly.
“They can make it for how they’re playing outside [of clubs].
“That’s the key now. If they come in to our training sessions and don’t feel they can do what they can do out there, it’s the wrong environment.
“You’re coming in because of that. I don’t want to change that when you’re in here.
“We just have to create the way of playing, okay when or where to do it, but certainly at young level I want to see it more. We say: ‘don’t bore me!‘
“‘I get excited when you’re doing these things. You make the team better‘.”
“If you’re looking at the coaching structure within English football, until not so long ago, you had to go quite high up the pyramid before some of these kids came into contact with black coaches”, notices the Daily Mirror writer, Darren Lewis.
“There were situations where coaches would not be able to appreciate the social circumstances around why a player might be behaving in a certain way.
“And all too often with some coaches there’s a willingness to write off players where actually sitting down and understanding, talking, learning, identifying, empathizing goes a hell of a long way.
“I think working with some of the coaching set-ups down there, there has been a connection made between players and coaches that has enabled players to go and really fulfill their potential.”
RACISM
According to Lewis, there is another, very important factor behind a current rise of South London-born football stars.
“I think it’s hard to compare the footballing environment back then to the footballing environment now”, he says in relation to past generations of black footballers, many of whom originated from this area of the British capital.
“It’s different now.
“Those [current] players owe a huge debt of gratitude to those players back then.
“The players back then had to deal with horrendous racism. And it broke some players.
“There were players in that documentary who openly admitted that had they gone through some of the stuff that players like Paul Canoville went through, they would not have survived in the game.
“It took a special kind of courage and character and not all of the talented players of the day back then survived.
“Some of them walked away from the game.”
INFLUENCE
These days and quite possibly more and more so in the future though, as with your typical French footballer nowadays coming from a banlieue, his English counterpart could increasingly have traits of a South Londoner.
“They way they play is just having a knock-on effect [on other players in the England youth set-up]”, Powderly has observed.
“Not just technically, but [in terms of] their mentality, believing we’re [the] best, [that] we can take on a Brazil, we can play Portugal or France and [then] come out [on top] not just through passion, but with skills, nutmegs.
“That’s what we’re creating now.
“[And] I can’t emphasize how important creating [the] right environment is.
“Everyone is creating something special within these teams, that they can go and enjoy themselves rather than thinking: ‘oh, we’re away [for] 10 days’.
“‘Be yourself!’“
“I think that the talent pool that is coming out of South London has a certain feeling of uniqueness about it”, Simon Jordan sums up in the TalkSport documentary entitled South London Talent Factory.
“And it is in my view [that] a lot of these players are offensive-minded, flair players, but they’ve got more substance about them than maybe previous generations have gotten.
“I think that there’s been a talent pool in South London for some time, but I think the way this talent pool has been harnessed and they way the game has changed to embrace offensive football is giving these players more opportunities than possibly they would have had before.”
The historical cradle of English football will forever remain in the north.
But the future may now lie south.
In the picture: can you recognise young Reiss Nelson and Jadon Sancho (found here)?
BREAKTHROUGH 