“You can’t afford for any stone to be left unturned, because the next little boy might be worth £100m.”
Beside me, a woman in a headscarf shares a packet of Quavers with a newborn; beside her, a man in an Adidas tracksuit holds a plastic pint of Guinness in one hand and a tiny sleeping child in the next. There are four different coaches of three different ethnicities, the youngest separated from the eldest by an absolute minimum of 50 years. They say it takes a village to raise a child. It must take an entire town to raise a footballer.
