Crysencio Summerville’s brother is harder than yours - The Square Ball 16/11/21
SO DON'T START
Written by Rob Conlon
Enjoying a breakthrough season at Leeds United is a handy
crash course in life as a professional footballer. The trajectory of Crysencio
Summerville’s development propelled him above Helder Costa and Ian Poveda in
Marcelo Bielsa’s plans, and his emergence as a Premier League player has
prompted another step up the ladder in his national team’s set-up, scoring on
his Netherlands Under-21s debut against Gibraltar on Monday.
Summerville doesn’t look like a teenager bogged down by
expectation whenever he’s skinning dazed full-backs, but the 19-year-old is
having to adjust to a new level of attention in his day to day life. “When you
walk through the city, everything revolves around Leeds United,” he told Dutch
outlet NOS last week. “Every home game is sold out. The fans are so fanatical.
If you are a player, everyone recognises you in the city. I can’t have a quiet
meal or have a drink.”
You’ve only been old enough to have a drink for a year,
Jimmy, so less of that before Bielsa hears about it, but not being able to have
a quiet meal sounds pretty annoying. It reminds me of seeing Pawel Cibicki
standing outside a hotel, waiting to be picked up and taken to Elland Road on a
match day not long after joining the club. Cibicki was 23 at the time, a few
years older than Summerville is now, but looked overwhelmed and confused by
dozens of fans approaching him for a selfie, score prediction or quick chat
when he couldn’t speak English. Cibicki is my age and has no doubt earned a lot
more than I have, but seeing him fending for himself, living in a hotel on his
own in a foreign country, unable to speak the language, where thousands of
people know who he is and want him to live up to their expectations, made me
feel sorry for him more than anything. I certainly couldn’t cope with any of
that.
Summerville is being forced to grow up even faster than
Cibicki, and thankfully he’s dealing with the attention better than he did at
his former club Feyenoord. In December 2018, he was banned by Feyenoord for a
month, fined and forced to do community service. Summerville had reportedly got
into a fight with teammate Mats Knoester in training. Then he phoned his
brother to come and have a go at chinning Knoester too.
Summerville apologised to Knoester and his family, but that
probably wouldn’t go down too well at Thorp Arch. “Everyone is young
sometimes,” he recently told ESPN.nl. “You make mistakes in life, but I’m just
on positive vibes now. I’ve kind of put the past behind me. Some nasty things
happened, but we move on. Yes, that’s also growing up.”
Positive vibes are exactly what we need from Summerville,
but if you see him out having a meal, maybe let the boy eat in peace. Just in
case he gets his brother on you.