Chris Smalling Steps Up To Prove His Class
By Richard Jolly
Sunday Express
THERE were doubts about the up-and-coming
defender. Was he too young, too naive, too thin? Was the Rymans League too big
a step up for him?
There are measures of how far and
how fast Chris Smalling has travelled. One is that, four years ago, the manager
of Maidstone was reluctant to pick him. Now the Manchester United boss, Sir
Alex Ferguson, has no such reservations.
Now if Smalling is in a battle
for his place, it is with Phil Jones, Jonny Evans or even Rio Ferdinand at Old
Trafford. And he is up against Glen Johnson, Kyle Walker or Phil Jagielka for
England’s right-back spot.
Back then it was very different.
“It took a lot of persuading for
the first-team management to take more of a look at him,” admitted Darren
Lovell, Maidstone’s secretary. “They wanted old players with experience and
they didn’t fancy him against the old-time, gnarled centre-forwards.”
Peter Nott, then in charge of the
reserve team and now Whitstable manager, was Smalling’s greatest advocate. But
he faced a battle to persuade Maidstone boss Alan Walker.
“The Ryman League is a very, very
physical league and Chris was always six foot-plus but very, very wiry and had
no real muscle on him,” Nott said. “And as a centre-half you are up against
some big burly players, there were some concerns if he could handle it
physically.”
Nott, who had tracked Smalling
from the age of 10 or 11, had no doubts about his quality. He was responsible
for bringing him to Maidstone after he left Millwall.
“Chris came to us as a
16-year-old,” he said. “We had a trial match and within five minutes I was
walking around the pitch to get him to sign forms. Chris has worked
exceptionally hard but he was a talent, he had speed and awareness.”
Once Nott’s advice was heeded and
Smalling was selected, he did not look back. Not that a place in Maidstone’s
first team was particularly lucrative. Now he is on £50,000 a week. Then he
earned £30 a week – or, more often than not, nothing.
Lovell remembers: “Chris was
probably getting an expenses payment of £30 a week, if that. It was little more
than petrol money but if you weren’t playing you didn’t get that, and he was
away quite a lot of the time with England Schoolboys.”
That was how he came to wider
attention. After excelling against Australia, Middlesbrough and Reading scouts
were the first to notice him but Smalling ended up at Fulham, under Maidstone’s
other graduate to the Premier League.
“That came about by me talking to
Les Reed and Roy Hodgson, who used to play for Maidstone,” said chief executive
Bill Williams. Two years after joining Fulham, Manchester United came calling
in a £10million deal.
Not that Smalling has forgotten
his roots. “He has just sent us a couple of shirts signed by all the United
players for our sporting auction,” Williams added. “They are like little bits
of gold dust.”
And as recently as 2008, Smalling
was in the seventh tier. Then he, and Fulham, struck gold.
From Wikipedia
The Isthmian League is a regional
football league covering London and South East England featuring
semi-professional and amateur clubs. It is sponsored by Ryman, and therefore
officially known as the Ryman League. It was founded in 1905 by amateur clubs
in the London area. It now consists of 66 teams in three divisions; the Premier
Division above its two feeder divisions, Division One North and Division One
South. Together with the Southern League and the Northern Premier League, it
forms the seventh and eighth levels of the English football league system. It
has various regional feeder leagues and the league as a whole is a feeder
league mainly to the Conference South.
Another related story
Maidstone United revel in Chris
Smalling windfall
Cash-strapped Maidstone United
are celebrating a cash windfall after Chris Smalling's move to Manchester
United.The 20-year defender played Ryman
League football for the Kent side until 2008 when he moved to Fulham.Stones have been unable to pay
their players since 5 December, but Smalling's transfer from Fulham has
triggered a compensation agreement.
"To say the money will come
in handy is an understatement," Stones chairman Paul Bowden-Brown told BBC
Radio Kent.
He paid tribute to the club's
youth development staff for 20-year-old Smalling's emergence as a Premier
League player.
"The guys who brought him
through deserve all the credit. I only wish we could gain greater financial
benefit for their work," he said.
Joint-manager Alan Walker, a
former Millwall and Gillingham central defender, believes Smalling could go all
the way and become an England international.
He said: "His attitude has
always been first class and I know he will go a long way because he is so
willing to listen.
"There is no reason why he
shouldn't one day play for England."
Smalling is not the first
Maidstone youngster to join Manchester United. Sean McGinty, who was on
Charlton's books, left The Valley for Old Trafford last summer. Stones received another cash
injection earlier in the week when they were awarded £5,000 from the FA Trophy
pool after Histon were expelled from the competition for fielding an ineligible
player against them.
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