When star players are starstruck, they’re more like us - The Square Ball 7/10/21

OFF THE TELLY

Written by Moscowhite • Daniel Chapman

One of the joys of Leeds United making ascension to the Premier League a caravan for all-comers is watching the players being as happy as we are when they succeed. If we ever start signing players for £100m, they’d better be elite internationals by default, but when prior excellence is transferred it can feel mechanical, transactional. Kalvin Phillips’ first England cap, earned before he’d ever kicked a Premier League ball, was something we all felt involved with.

Kalvin is now confident enough to shout down the phone at an EA Sports employee about his FIFA rating being “a shambles”, but back when he got his first England call up he pulled “flabbergasted” out of his peerless West Yorkshire vocabulary to describe having breakfast with Harry Kane. It didn’t end there: what about when Kane brought Ed Sheeran along to sing Three Lions for the squad at Euro 2020?

“I was just sat there looking at him like, ‘Oh my God Ed Sheeran’s right in front of me’,” said Kalvin. “I always get starstruck with famous people. Even the first time I came here [St George’s Park] I was a little bit starstruck to be honest.”

Pat Bamford, although he tried to play it cool telling Henry Winter in last weekend’s Times that he’s aiming for the Golden Boot, let slip in the same interview the real reason why, when he was called up, he was first of the England squad to report for training.

“The two I worried about were Jack Grealish, because whenever we played [Aston] Villa it had always been a bit feisty, and Tyrone Mings, because whenever I played against him we always had a battle,” he said. “The last time we played he ended up picking me up off the floor. I was worried, thinking, ‘These guys are going to be a little bit prickly.’”

I reckon Pat got there early hoping he could scurry in undetected and hide in his room until there were enough players around to protect him when Mings came hunting. He wasn’t exactly safe in his room, though, due to the kind of had-to-be-there footballer pranks that never look as good written down — Mason Mount hid in his bath and kept turning the light off at a signal from Declan Rice. Welcome to the England squad, where the hours just fly by! But Gareth Southgate had a chat with Pat about being a very special boy and he soon realised all those famous players are ordinary, underneath, just like him. The Villa contingent, “They were the nicest guys. Ty straight away was chatting with me. I sat with him for dinner the first day and Jack’s just a really funny guy, easy-going.”

Raphinha, in his first international squad, could have been different. Raphinha could have scowled all the way to Brazil, scowled at Neymar, scowled through a few nutmegs and arrived back with Leeds in Southampton, scowling. The fella loves a scowl. He’s also already mates with Ronaldinho, who celebrated Raphinha’s call up by sending him a video message and phoning his dad, and if you’re mates with Ronaldinho, I can’t imagine you’d do anything but scowl when Pat starts on about this funny thing Conor Coady did one time.

But it’s not even six years since then nineteen-year-old Raphinha took the huge step of travelling half a globe from Brazil to Portugal for football, and hardly twelve months since he swapped Rennes for the Premier League sooner than he ever imagined. He tries to play the tough cool guy, the way he had to growing up in the várzea tournaments in Porto Alegre, competing among outsiders to be spotted and offered a chance in an academy, in games where local mobs would threaten the away team with death: “You could be about to score when a random gunshot would go off,” he told The Players’ Tribune. “Let me tell you, it can kind of put you off!”

But the story of how Raphinha met Ronaldinho, as a seven year old accompanying his father’s samba band to their performance at the Barcelona player’s birthday party, reframes him somewhere closer to the boy underneath:

“When he saw me, he took me in his arms and walked around with me. I froze. Didn’t know how to react. But his charm can melt even the coldest little kid, haha. He treats everybody so well, even the small ones. I’m pretty sure that was the best birthday party I ever went to that wasn’t my own. (O.K. then, perhaps including my own, too.)”

That’s the seven-year-old Raphinha. What about the 24-year-old Raphinha, celebrating being called up by Brazil, getting video messages from one of the most famous players ever to wear a yellow and green shirt? By the sounds of The Players’ Tribune interview, Raphinha is still emphatically not cool about it:

“I have met Ronaldinho many times since [I was seven], and I feel blessed to consider him a friend. I get even more starstruck now than when I was a kid!! It feels unreal to hang out with the guy you used to watch on YouTube and TV. He even watches my games and says that he admires the way I play. I mean, how do you even respond to that?”

Seeing Raphinha giving a proper serious press conference on his first international duty this week, sponsors logos behind him, official Brazil teamwear all over him, speaking to the press over Zoom from the training base in Bogota, Colombia, he’s still emphatically not playing it cool. He might scowl when the ball goes to Dan James instead of him at Elland Road, but in the national training camp, he’s the same gushing fan Kalvin and Pat became with England.

“It is a very happy moment in my career, in my life,” he said. “Not only do I represent Restinga [in Porto Alegre], my family, my friends, but the whole community where I grew up … I’ve trained. I’ve met players I’ve always been a fan of — I used to cheer for them. I think it will only sink in after my first game. It’s a moment that mixes a lot of feelings, a lot of joy, a lot of happiness, and nerves, in a positive way. But soon these butterflies in the stomach will pass.”

I wonder what his first conversation with Neymar was like, before the flutterbies settled. ‘Er, Ronaldinho says hi?’ Now they’re together in Paris, you’d have to ask Neymar about Messi, but how can you start asking Neymar what Messi is like? ‘What’s Messi… I mean… like… how… how’s Messi? I mean, at Leeds our left-back is, um. He knows Messi. Have you heard of Leeds? I play for Leeds. I like your earring, Mister Neymar.’

Even the story Raphinha told at the press conference, about his frustrated attempts to join up with the squad last time, when Covid-19 denied him, sounded surreal and humbling. He had to call the Brazilian FA’s team co-ordinator to keep in touch about the fast-changing situation, which was fine. Except this is no ordinary admin official: it’s Juninho Paulista, World Cup winner, whose tears at Elland Road when we relegated his unglamorous Middlesbrough side in 1997 shouldn’t obscure what an outrageous talent he was in this country and internationally. Him being Raphinha’s team co-ordinator is like the days when Peter Lorimer or John Charles served you pints in their pubs. Or for a more modern equivalent, imagine being told to call up to book tickets to watch a Leeds game and the number you’re given is Raphinha’s.

I don’t care how old you are or how cool you think you are, meeting footballers, or even seeing them in the street, is an uncanny and moving experience. It’s them, but it’s not them, because you’re used to seeing them either from a distant perch on the terraces, close up on a TV screen, or badly rendered in FIFA. Seeing them in any other context always feels a bit wrong.

Leeds United are a Premier League club, but it’s good to know Leeds United still have players who feel the same as we do about, as Kalvin once put it, “all the big shots like Harry Kane”. When he first met them, Phillips said, “Some of the lads were talking about [being at] the World Cup and stuff like that, and I was sat at home in my living room, watching. Marcus Rashford was on about watching it on the bench and I was like, well I was sat on my sofa.” Kalvin had just played 33 games for Leeds in 2017/18, and any of us would have wanted his autograph. But that wasn’t, and still isn’t, his head about it.

I like that our players are good enough to train and play with the best at international level, but haven’t succumbed to fun-sucking arrogance that would stop them appreciating where they are and what they’re doing. Pat Bamford says it was a dream come true to play for England, something he always told his dad he wanted to do, and can rattle off his England legacy number at the drop of a ceremonial cap. “1263 … It’s the biggest thing I’ve ever done in my life.” Whatever Bamford or Phillips’ England careers become, or Raphinha’s with Brazil, it’s been our luck as Leeds fans to share the start with them. A wild feeling, peering around a corner in the camp, looking to see which famous player is walking in next, more like a kid with an autograph book than a new international footballer about to be fledged to the fullest. More like us.