Signs on the walls of the concrete Canute Gardens create the impression that it is a rules-based place. ‘No parties’, ‘no barbeques’, ‘no ball games’ they state and, at the metal gates to the football cage where a group of boys are kicking a ball around, ‘No under-12s’.
But when it comes to football here there are no rules, actually, only free spirits.
In the chill of the late afternoon, a dispute briefly arises about that age limit with two boys who look at least 15, though no-one’s heart is in the argument and the game runs on.
Half an hour earlier, there had been three boys playing here but by 5pm it is seven on one team, nine on another, with players dropping out, wandering in and the numbers not mattering. Don’t ask them the score, ask them only how they scored their fifth or sixth goals.
‘Remember my name, now?’ Ryan, who is 10, tells the others after a Cruyff turn and fizzing goal from distance. Jordon manipulates the ball around Troy, one of the older boys, who cannot lay a foot on it. Ryan, the best player here, nutmegs Calvin, a manoeuvre which seems to carry more kudos than scoring. There is a social stigma to being ‘megged’.
The setting is a careworn, unprepossessing and sometimes dangerous place surrounded by blocks of flats, for which ‘Gardens’ is a misnomer and where murder squad detectives were present a few years back.
Crystal Palace are preparing to take on Manchester City in the FA Cup final at Wembley
Palace have thrived this year and they have several ‘street ballers’ like Eberechi Eze in the team
Palace have been tapping into football’s most prolific new breeding ground over the past 10 years: a 10-square mile stretch of urban South London where the sport is played in cages
But in the absence of anything else, the 50m square cage in Bermondsey, south London, is paradise. It holds an identity for these boys, mostly black or of another minority, who are so wrapped up in displaying their skill that that they are playing in school uniform.
It is also a microcosm of what, in the past decade, has been football’s most prolific new breeding ground, a 10 square mile stretch of urban south London where cages — Astro Turf enclosed by chain-link fences — are producing for British football what Parisian banlieues (outskirts) delivered for France.
At the centre of increasingly competitive attempts to tap into the talent are Crystal Palace, the south London club which has a population of seven million within a 20-minute radius of its ground, who will attempt to win their first ever silverware in the FA Cup final against Manchester City today.
The stars the cages have yielded for Palace reveal the rich potential. Victor Moses, Wilfried Zaha, Nathaniel Clyne, Aaron Wan-Bissaka and Eberechi Eze, the 26-year-old on whom so many Palace fans’ hopes are pinned today.
Players whose hours and hours of free, unstructured initiation to the game imbues them with a feel for the ball, a wonderful touch and innate sense of the possibilities when they receive it in a confined space.
The lack of space forces them to see crevices unappreciated by those who have played only structured football. The cage wall is both an obstacle and assistant for those taking the ‘bounce ball’ against it.
Palace manager Oliver Glasner captured it all this week, when defining Eze’s brilliance on the Men in Blazers podcast.
‘He’s not a robot,’ the Austrian said. ‘No, he’s a human being and you need this freedom. For me, there is balance between telling a player what he has to do, especially in attack, and letting his creativity work. Creativity needs more freedom.’
Wilfried Zaha is one of several stars that the cages have been able to produce for Palace
Aaron Wan-Bissaka’s impressive one-on-one tackling has been credited to the cages by some
Gary Issott, the director of Crystal Palace’s academy (pictured in 2015) told Mail Sport that he believes the cages are a form of the street football that has disappeared from much of the UK
For Gary Issott, the director of Crystal Palace’s academy, the cages are a form of the street football that has disappeared from much of the UK. ‘We call it “disorganised practice”,’ he tells Mail Sport. ‘It might be teams of two v two or two v five in which players, of all ages, are getting a fantastic feel for the ball, an ability to protect it and manipulate it, which you don’t get in organised football. The best players in the world can all handle and deal with the ball in tight pressure situations.
‘It lends itself to creativity and flair in the way street football used to when we were kids and would play until it was dark. We lost that once there became more TV channels and phones in the early years of the 2000s. Cage football is bringing it back.’
Palace have invested more than £20million to create one of the best Category One academies in Britain, an attempt to keep this local talent closer to home and become the club for young south London players.
It is the mission of club chairman Steve Parish, who rescued the club from liquidation 15 years ago. ‘We love the amount of local talent on our doorstep and how we are part of the area,’ he tells Mail Sport. ‘But also, the overseas lads have bought into it all brilliantly as well.’
Palace employ over 50 scouts in south London alone, and around the cages everyone is aware of their aim to make a piece of club history this weekend.
Most of them speak of Eze and Marc Guehi as players they will be looking out for, but it is telling that youngsters want to discuss other clubs, too — Arsenal, Barcelona, Liverpool and Paris Saint Germain.
The rich clubs’ obsessive scrutiny of every edge an opponent might find means Palace do not have a free run at the chunk of south London that has become known as the concrete Catalonia. Everyone else is on to it, too, as the fleets of smart Addison Lee taxis laid on to ferry talented boys straight from south London schools to richer clubs’ training grounds proves. ‘Arsenal are spending a fortune in this respect,’ one source tells Mail Sport.
The Premier League’s Elite Player Performance Plan of 2012 removed geographical restrictions and gave clubs with Category One academies the right to sign young players from anywhere in the country. Palace, Charlton and Millwall continued to run successful youth systems, but City have a dedicated south London scout. Brighton are also active recruiters in the area.
Chairman Steve Parish is keen for Palace to become the club for young South London players
It was Arsenal who signed Eze, a player born in Greenwich, 12 miles north of Selhurst Park. He was released by them at 13, again by Fulham at 16 and by Millwall at 18 before finding a solid footing at QPR. He has become the poster-boy for Palace and their ‘South London and Proud’ identity.
Palace have made themselves attractive to south Londoners rebounding from the elite — Guehi, signed from Chelsea, and Eddie Nketiah from Arsenal — as well as the natural step up for players like Romain Esse from Millwall, or those looking to move on loan, such as Chelsea’s Trevoh Chalobah and Ruben Loftus-Cheek.
The fruits of Palace’s investment in their academy were evident in their Under 21s’ 6-0 defeat of Chelsea at Sutton United’s ground a few weeks ago, though the star performer was the Sierra Leone talent Hindolo Mustapha. It is proof that Palace, like everyone else, are not just looking for talent in their own backyard.
For Cal Murray, author of ‘Something in the Water: The Story of England’s Football Talent Hotbeds,’ the emerging talents confirm that street football has always been the best academy and cage football particularly so.
‘The ball never stops,’ he says. ‘There are more touches in a tighter space and more contact. There’s an extra edge because one of the goals is to embarrass your opponent and not be embarrassed yourself.
‘You see it in Zaha with the dribbling, in Wan-Bissaka with the one-on-one tackling and in Eze with the way he glides, with poise on the ball. There’s almost an arrogance because he’s not afraid to have the ball in difficult situations.
‘The YouTube skillset in a competitive environment has created a hotbed in south London and it is producing a different type of English player to the traditional hotbeds of the ‘70s and ‘80s, less of the hard graft, body-on-the-line player and more like the French players that we’ve seen come out of the banlieues of Paris.’
In many ways, Palace’s academy is precisely what City’s old Platt Lane youth set-up was under the leadership of Jim Cassell, in the years before the club was bought by Abu Dhabi. Palace’s fans have embraced the way their club is striving to stay local at a time when the wealthiest are global entities.
Palace have become attractive to South Londoners rebounding from the elite like Marc Guehi
Under Glasner, who was a shrewd and bold appointment, Palace have thrived in recent months
One of the greatest weapons in Palace’s armoury at Wembley today will be the Holmesdale Fanatics, the Ultras-style fan group whose legendary tifo banners have become a huge part of the club’s local identity.
One banner famously raised when Palace played City 11 years ago stated: ‘You’ve got the money, we’ve got the soul.’ And though City fans would challenge that, one of the signature moments of the club’s third FA Cup final appearance today will be the tifo, or banner, being planned for the occasion by fans who have raised £40,000 to create it.
The extraordinary £13,000 tifo produced for the semi-final against Aston Villa depicted the image of a seven-year-old who received Andros Townsend’s shirt after a win at City eight years ago, above the words, ‘Take my hand, take my whole life too.’ The song ‘Can’t Help Falling In Love’ has an age-old significance for Palace.
This FA Cup final appearance comes in a period which, for some Holmesdale Fanatics, is Palace’s best since 1990, when they played that heart-stopping 3-3 draw against Manchester United in the showpiece before losing the replay.
It has been as topsy-turvy as always — heavy defeats at City and Newcastle in April, wins over Aston Villa and Tottenham in the past few weeks — but Glasner has built a team who are organised, yet also on the front foot. His was a shrewd and bold managerial appointment by Parish and Dougie Freedman, the Palace sporting director with whom Parish forged such a great working relationship. Freedman’s decision to leave for a role in Saudi Arabia creates another recruitment challenge for Parish when the season ends.
‘For me, the club’s success has been built on four pillars,’ former striker James Scowcroft tells Mail Sport. ‘They’ve had Steve Parish, who has been a brilliant owner and chairman. Oliver Glasner, who pound for pound is one of the best Premier League managers outside the top three. Dougie Freedman as a brilliant sporting director and identifier of talent and the Holmesdale Fanatics, who have contributed to Palace keeping this identity as south London through- and-through.
‘They’ve also mined this rich seam of street footballers who are technically brilliant, have close control, balance, pace and a change of direction. It’s contributed to Palace becoming one of the most over-achieving clubs in the Premier League.’
Eze told Men in Blazers last year that the cage had given him the resilience to deal with the way clubs rejected him.
‘It’s the mentality of being able to fail and just go again,’ he said. ‘Make mistakes and don’t be afraid of making mistakes and by the fourth, fifth time, you’re going to get it. That level of resilience in your mind is the thing.’
At the cage Kingston, a schoolboy, says he can be anything a team might need.
‘Winger, striker, whatever you need I’m there,’ he says. ‘All I have to say to defenders is “keep your legs closed”. All I have to say to the goalkeeper is “make sure you have your breakfast”.’
He will have plenty of skills to demonstrate this weekend. Just don’t expect him to stop for the FA Cup final.
