The impossible dream?
What it takes to make it as a professional footballer, and how you pick up the pieces if you don't
On the same day in May 2019, Manchester United team-mates Marcus Rashford and Jesse Lingard posted the same cryptic message on Instagram.
It simply read ‘0.012%’ and was a reference to findings that only 180 of the 1.5m boys playing organised youth football in England will ever play a single minute in the Premier League.
That means there is slightly more chance of one of them making it into the top flight than being struck by lightning, but not by much.
The rewards are great if, like Rashford and Lingard, you reach the summit of your sport - but making it at any level is hard enough, as thousands of boys find out every year.
Told over the course of more than two decades, this is the story of just two of them, who found out the hard way what it takes and where you can go wrong, on a journey that begins in the footballing hotbeds of Merseyside and the North East and features every level from the glamour of the Premier League to the very grassroots.
James and Paul were boyhood friends who were given a path into the big time as young teenagers when they went to an England trial together, but their lives and careers took very different directions as they grew up trying to make a living out of the sport they loved, or at least they loved when they started out.
Some footballers appear destined for greatness from an early age - Rashford joined United aged seven and was being talked about as a superstar in the making long before he hit double digits. James was not at that level but he still stood out.
Aged 13, James was asked to join Middlesbrough’s school of excellence, but there was to be no easy route to the top. Despite being a gifted playmaker who modelled himself on his hero Juninho, a Boro legend - “I had a season ticket and he was my idol, my inspiration” – James’ hopes of making it in the game were initially dashed at an early stage. He left Boro at 14 having been told he was too small, gave up on the idea of professional football and was happy playing for fun with his friends.
But he kept making and scoring goals for Marton Juniors, one of the best youth sides in the area, and did the same when he moved to play for an adult Sunday League team, Woodgarth FC, aged 15.
“I was player of the year and top goalscorer in my first year with Woodgarth, which was when clubs started to notice me, but then I scored three goals in one game at the start of the following season,” James explained. "There was a scout watching, and he asked me to go for another trial.”
That trial in 1997 at his local League Two club Darlington turned into a two-year contract offer as a scholar. Aged 16, James was suddenly a footballer.
“I’d only thought of football as a hobby, not a career, so when they offered me that contract I was absolutely gobsmacked,” he said. “It was amazing just to make it that far, but I had no idea what would happen to me next.”
Joining James on Darlington's 1997 Youth Training Scheme (YTS) and earning the princely sum of £42.50 a week was a skilful left-footed midfielder for Merseyside Schools who was an oddity at that level because he came from further afield.
Paul started out as a striker and after scoring 34 goals in one season for his junior side, Vernon Sangster Under-10s, he was asked to join Liverpool’s centre of excellence at Melwood, where he trained with a young Michael Owen, who was in the year above him, and Steven Gerrard, who was the same age.
“I only ever wanted to be a footballer when I was a kid,” Paul says. “I lived and breathed it. I didn’t really think about doing anything else.”
Like many before him, and since, Paul got lost in the system at Liverpool and, at 15, ended up under the wing of his neighbour in Toxteth - former Reds striker Howard Gayle - who collected lost souls discarded by Liverpool or Everton to kickstart their careers at Stanley House Youth Football Club, and saw something he liked.
Gayle, who came through the ranks at Liverpool to become the first black player in the club’s history and helped them win the 1981 European Cup, explained: “Paul lived two doors away from me. We ran a football programme with a view to getting boys places at pro clubs. He came to it after leaving Liverpool, and never looked back.
“He wasn’t just a good player and reader of the game, he influenced people around him. You could see straight away he could maybe play at a higher level.”
Gayle helped Liverpool win the 1981 European Cup (credit: Arnie Baldursson, LFChistory.net)
Gayle helped Liverpool win the 1981 European Cup (credit: Arnie Baldursson, LFChistory.net)
But how to make that happen? Gayle had remained close to his former Liverpool team-mate David Hodgson, a North East native who was Darlington's manager, and knew he had a commitment to developing youth as part of the blueprint for the Quakers' financial survival. The move could also offer Paul a way out of a tough neighbourhood.
“I see it all the time with kids in Liverpool,” added Gayle, who is still coaching Stanley House now and has gained nationwide acclaim for his community work and campaigning for racial equality. “They just need to escape the inner-city environment and concentrate on football and developing their skills.
“There were a few league clubs in the North West after him but Darlo was ideal for Paul - more of a backwater place. With Hodgy there, it ticked all the boxes because he was someone who understood the culture of Scousers and it was going to get Paul to where he wanted to be, which was to play professional football.
“It should have been just the start for him.”
Paul recalls standing proudly in front of his school assembly when it was announced he was leaving early to become a footballer, to the envy of his peers.
“I didn’t bother with my GCSEs because I knew I was going to Darlington,” he explained. “I remember thinking ‘football is my future and I've got my next couple of years lined up’. I was never going to be a straight ‘A’ student, but I was doing alright. Then I stopped working, because I was thinking ‘I’m the bee’s knees here’.
“I wasn’t, I was just a small fish in a massive pond, but you don’t realise that at that age.”
There was not much glamour at Darlington, who had finished the previous season ranked 86th out of England’s 92 professional clubs - the main perk was a free pass to use the swimming pool at the local leisure centre.
Still, he and James were among the few teenage footballers to make it on to the first rung of the professional ladder and were determined to make the most of it.
They quickly forged a friendship off the pitch, with Paul frequently leaving his lodgings to visit James’ family home in nearby Guisborough, and developed an understanding on it, which did not go unnoticed. Sheffield United were among the bigger clubs scouting them.
Their lifestyle was a million miles away from what Rashford and Lingard would experience years later, and cleaning the boots of Darlington’s first-team players could never be described as being in the big time - but they were about to get a taste of it.
Less than four months into their YTS, in autumn 1997, Paul and James both received a letter from the Football Association. They were being invited to Lilleshall in Shropshire, then the home of England’s national academy, for three days of trials for England Under-16s.
Each of England’s 92 professional clubs had been asked to send their two best young players, with the prize a place in the squad to face Poland in Warsaw the following month. Paul and James caught the train south and were transported to a different world.
“At Lilleshall, we were suddenly playing with and trialling against the best young players in England, from Manchester United, Arsenal and Liverpool,” says James.
“Joe Cole was there - he was the biggest talent in the country at the time. I remember going there thinking ‘I don’t really stand a chance’.”
As well as Cole, players like Gareth Barry, Peter Crouch, Francis Jeffers and Leon Osman were all in action. Would the watching England coaches even notice an unheralded duo from Darlington?
“We only went there for the experience, really,” Paul recalls. “I was not expecting much to come from it. On the first day, I thought we’d done well but still not well enough to get ahead of players from the big clubs.
“So, at the end of the second day, when they called out the names of everyone who would be going home early the next morning, I was shocked. I thought they’d missed us out by mistake. Instead, we were both in the last 30.”
They had beaten the odds just to make it that far, but there was only room for 16 boys in the squad. Could either of them make the final cut?
James says: “We'd all played together in trial games and after that they picked teams to play against some of the top club academies. There was a point on the third day where Paul and I didn’t get included anymore and I was thinking that, more or less, was it. They have picked the best players and we are going home.
“But then I got asked to play in another game against a team of the best boys and I scored a hat-trick. They were good goals too. I will always remember Chris Kirkland, who eventually played for Liverpool, was the opposition keeper - and they sort of took a look at me as if to say 'well this kid is in the wrong group'.
“It’s very strange but the night before I was staying in the same room at Lilleshall as Paul and Paul Konchesky, who was from Charlton. It wasn’t make or break for Konchesky because he knew he was good enough - he was already on standby with England Under-18s – but I wasn’t a confident person at all. I’m not religious and I'd never prayed before, but that night I prayed I'd score a hat-trick the next day.
“People probably won’t believe me but it meant I visualised it happening, and it worked. I didn’t realise it at the time but having that mindset made all the difference in what was such a vital moment for me. It changed my life in ways I could not have understood back then.”
A few weeks later, a letter arrived at Darlington addressed for James. It was good news - he was on the plane.
Paul was not so lucky, he had opened his post to be told he was staying at home. It was not the last time their lives would be heading in dramatically different directions.
“I spoke to the gaffer [Hodgson] when I got back from the England trial and he said I’d done well, that he’d heard really positive things about me,” Paul recalled. "He said to just keep doing what I was doing and my chance would come too. It didn’t really work out that way, though.”
On the night of 4 March 1998, Paul’s 17th birthday, he played for Darlington’s reserves at their Feethams ground and headed home, via a quick trip to McDonald’s with some team-mates.
“I remember it was absolutely belting it down,” Paul says. “I was in the car with a couple of other players…”. His voice trails off.
“We were coming back from McDonald’s in Newton Aycliffe when we lost control in the rain and came off the road. The car flipped, did a couple of rolls and hit another car coming towards us. We ended up upside down in a ditch.
“I was in the back and at first I thought I was paralysed. I couldn’t feel my legs when they lifted me out. They took us into hospital but at the time it was only one of the other lads who got properly diagnosed, with broken ribs. The rest of us were sent home, they thought we only had cuts and bruises.
“The gaffer told us to have some time off and rest up so my dad picked me up the next day to take me back to Liverpool, and it was obvious then that something wasn’t right.
“I was in the bath that night and I started passing blood. He took me into hospital and I was there for 10 days - I had broken ribs, ruptured kidneys, a punctured lung and a punctured diaphragm.
“I was lying there thinking 'am I going to play football again?’”
March 1998 was a big month for James too.
He had continued to play for England Under-16s throughout their European Championship campaign, winning his first international cap after making the squad for the qualifying tournament (see images above), but thought he was in trouble when he was summoned to the manager’s office at Darlington on 24 March - transfer deadline day.
“Instead, David Hodgson told me my dad was on his way down with my suit because I was heading to St James’ Park to sign for Newcastle United,” he explains.
“A few minutes later I was on my way to meet [Magpies manager] Kenny Dalglish and sign a contract. I’d just turned 17, and had not even played a first-team game. Newcastle had been watching me play for England, but it felt like it was all a big joke.
“A few months earlier I’d been playing Sunday League. Now I was in the Premier League, training with Alan Shearer, John Barnes, Stuart Pearce and Ian Rush. On my first day, Pearce was the first person to come over and he gripped me by the hand and wished me all the best. It felt very surreal. I’m not sure it ever sank in to be honest - and that was part of the problem.
“I had a small-town mentality and I never really saw myself as a professional. I wish someone had sat me down and explained what a massive opportunity this was, because I might have applied myself properly then.”
His first lesson was about manager turnover - he had three different ones in his first 18 months at the club - but fortunately they all seemed to like him. Dalglish signed James, his successor Ruud Gullit involved him in the first team in pre-season that summer, then Sir Bobby Robson took charge of the Magpies in 1999 and told him he reminded him of Gianfranco Zola.
Almost a year on from Robson’s arrival, James was still waiting for his senior debut, however. He had been described as an “unknown teenager” by the local paper, the Northern Echo, which did not even have a picture of him on file when Newcastle signed him, and that was still the case when he lined up alongside Shearer, Duncan Ferguson and Gary Speed for Newcastle’s 2000-01 squad photo.
There are plenty of familiar faces among the 34 players pictured, many still instantly recognisable to Newcastle fans now. James, hidden away at the end of the middle row wearing a slightly sheepish grin, is not one of them.
“I still didn’t take it all very seriously,” James says. “I didn’t even see that picture for more than 20 years but looking at it now, I know I still didn’t really feel as if I belonged there.”
A few weeks later that changed. Out of the blue he got his big chance when Robson handed him his Premier League debut, an 11-minute cameo off the bench to partner Shearer up front against Tottenham in front of more than 50,000 fans at a packed St James’ Park.
“As he sent me on, Sir Bobby kissed his hand, slapped me across the face and said ‘don't let me down',” James recalls.
“It was a fantastic day and a dream come true. I thought I’d made it. How wrong I was.”
While his friend’s career was taking off, Paul’s had hit rock bottom. He had failed to get back to fitness following his car crash despite doing extra training over the summer - “my body just wasn’t what it was” - and Darlington released him early from his two-year contract.
“I knew it was coming but I still broke down when I heard those words that it was over. You think that’s it, it’s final and there’s no way back,” he says now.
His attempt to pick up the pieces saw him follow a well-trodden path of rejected lower-league players by heading for Scandinavia, in his case Sweden, to try to rebuild his career overseas.
These days, Swedish side Ostersunds FK are a top-flight team well known for their recent Europa League run under Brighton manager Graham Potter. When Paul arrived 20 years ago, however, they were a third-tier team of part-timers playing at a ramshackle ground.
“Their stadium was an athletics track with one stand,” he remembers. “I was coming from a pro club in England so I made front and back-page news when I signed [one headline read: ‘Mission: Save OFK - there are high expectations for the determined Englishman’] and there were photographers waiting for me when I arrived at the airport. It was mad, but I didn’t last long.
“They wanted me to stay but I was homesick. It was only a tiny town. Darlington was small for me, coming from Liverpool, but this was even smaller. What did you do? We trained at night and there were only so many times I could walk around the town centre in the daytime. They tried to help me settle but I didn’t have anyone with me to tell me to stick it out.”
Through his agent he got offers to play in Scotland with Forfar or Queen’s Park but they fell through. “They weren’t paying much and said I would have to get a job up there too. I just laughed and said ‘doing what?’.
“I had mates in Liverpool and I knew I had options there for work - construction or whatever - and I'd be back in my comfort zone. So I went back home to my mum and dad’s house and joined the non-league game. That’s when football changed for me, and not in a good way.”
The recent journeys of Leicester City striker Jamie Vardy and Burnley goalkeeper Nick Pope from Stocksbridge Park Steels and Bury Town to the Premier League and the England team show it is possible to drop out of the Football League and get back to the very top. But there is a reason their route is seen as a fairytale – returning to full-time football is just as hard as getting there in the first place, even if you have the correct attitude. Paul admits he did not.
“I played clubs off each other,” he explained. “I was the same as a lot of the other lads I played with. Instead of trying hard to get back into the professional game I just tried to make as much money as I could. I thought I was being clever, but I was stupid really.
“To be brutally honest, most of the time my attitude stank. I fell in and out of love with football, and what sort of performance you got from me depended on wherever my head was at that particular point.
“I still had opportunities but I tossed them away. Howard Gayle hadn’t given up on me and he phoned me up one afternoon and said ‘you’ve got a game tomorrow’. He had fixed me up a trial with Exeter City, who were in League Two at the time, in a friendly at Walsall.
“The thing was, when I got the call, I was on my way into Liverpool for a few beers. Instead of turning around to go home, I carried on out - and I didn’t get home until late. I was foolish.
“Next day, I knew my fitness wasn’t good enough but I still thought I could have the game of my life and they would want me. That only happens in films, though. In real life, I didn’t play badly but I didn’t do enough to stand out. They didn’t offer me anything.”
Around the same time, James was about to make a similarly poor decision - also involving Exeter.
There are only a handful of photos showing him as a Premier League player, because those 11 minutes on his debut were the only ones he ever played in four years at Newcastle. He had left the Magpies aged 21, and a year later he had also fallen out of the Football League.
After taking some bad advice his descent had been rapid, and he found himself a long way from home as he attempted to deal with the consequences.
“I look back at that time as the biggest learning curve of my career,” he says.
“By then I’d had a couple of really good loan spells with Hartlepool but they couldn’t afford to sign me because of the ITV Digital collapse. In the summer of 2002, I still had a year left on my Newcastle contract but I thought I needed more first-team football.
“Anyone in their right mind would have said just see the year out and then find a club near the North East, but my agent got me a move to Exeter right at the other end of the country. I was with an agent who was just starting out, and he admitted a few years later he couldn’t believe he’d sent me there.
“It was a crazy decision and a very weird setup at Exeter. Michael Jackson was on the board and the magician David Blaine occasionally turned up too. They were friends with Uri Geller, who was co-chairman and used to bend spoons - he owned a car with them welded to it.
“We used to talk all the time on the phone and Uri once claimed he healed me of an injury when he rubbed my ankle. He meant well but he was very eccentric.
“The team was struggling at the bottom of League Two and so was I. My grandad died suddenly, my parents split up and I was on my own hundreds of miles away, grieving and trying to look after myself for the first time in my life. I didn’t do a very good job of it.
“I would not blame anyone but myself but what I tell young players now is one of the biggest things I’ve learned - that the people you spend most time with are the ones who have the most influence on you.
“At that time, though, I was around people who gambled a lot and did not have a very professional attitude. It wasn’t just a League Two mentality, it was a bottom of League Two mentality and I got sucked into it. Technically I was one of the best players at the club but no-one was demanding anything off me, so I knew I could get away with anything.
“My lifestyle was terrible. I was living like a student, going out a lot, drinking heavily and gambling thousands of pounds I didn’t have. I wasn’t enjoying myself and I’d had enough.”
The average length of a professional footballer’s career is eight years, and it didn’t seem that James would last that long.
When Exeter were relegated from the Football League in May 2003 he went home to the North East and decided he wasn’t going back to Devon. He was ready to quit full-time football at the age of 22.
Just as with Paul, the dream was over, or so it seemed.
The raw statistics about career length and player retention show how cruel a sport professional football is at all levels, and there is a growing awareness of the impact that rejection can have - a recent survey by ITV News found 88% of players aged under 24 who were released in 2020 suffered from anxiety and/or depression. Fortunately, former players are not left alone to pick up the pieces themselves anymore.
The transition footballers face when their playing days end early goes far beyond just considering a change of career. Oshor Williams, assistant director of education for the Professional Footballers’ Association and responsible for the union’s support schemes and training to help players prepare for post-football life, is one of those who is there to help.
Williams told BBC Sport: “The biggest attrition rate is undoubtedly among young players. Of all those entering the game aged 16, two years down the line 50% of them will be outside professional football. If you look at the same cohort at 21, the attrition rate is 75% or higher.
“In the modern era, some of them may have been with the same club since the age of nine, then suddenly it is over. It must be like your parents asking you to leave home at the age of 18.
“Also, you have been bracketed as ‘Paul the footballer’ for nine years, since before you were even fully formed as a child, then you are told this world is not continuing for you. It’s hard to take. But there is a lot of work being done to make these young people realise their identity isn’t locked up in their profession.
“Whatever their age, we never talk about having a ‘Plan B' because it should just be 'the plan’. We don’t call it a 'second career' either because if you phrase it like that to someone who is in a career - football - they may say ‘well, that’s not going to happen until I am 30’.
“The reality is it will probably happen long before that, whenever the phone stops ringing.”
By 2004, Paul’s Plan B saw him working as a postman but, under the guidance of a Premier League footballer taking his first steps in coaching, he got a glimpse of how his life might have turned out had he stayed in the professional game.
At 38, Kevin Nolan is now West Ham’s first-team coach, but more than 15 years ago - while he was still a player with Bolton - he became assistant manager of his uncle’s Sunday League team, Nicosia, who played in the Liverpool Business Houses League.
Nolan celebrates after scoring for Bolton against Manchester United in the Premier League
Nolan celebrates after scoring for Bolton against Manchester United in the Premier League
Nicosia was Paul’s team too and together they reached the final of the 2003-04 FA Sunday Cup. That might sound like a tournament for pub teams, but it is actually a prestigious nationwide competition for Sunday League sides, featuring many former professionals and some future ones.
What made it even sweeter for Paul was where that year’s final would be played - Anfield. Paul had never stepped on the pitch during his time on the Reds’ books, but he got there in the end. Nolan made sure it felt like a big occasion.
“I put the team in a posh hotel in Southport for the weekend and treated them like a proper professional side,” Nolan said. "Everything was done the way I would have done it if I was playing the game myself.
“I remember telling them beforehand that the biggest challenge on the day would be to handle the occasion. It’s at Anfield, it's the final of a national cup, all their friends and families are there watching. I’ve seen it at all levels - on the big occasions you have to take it all in, go out there and express yourself, beat those nerves and get into the game.
“We won 3-1 and Paul was brilliant - he played at left wing-back that day, put in the cross for the first goal and put us on our way.
“Winning the Sunday Cup is a fantastic achievement, it’s like the Champions League of Sunday football. I’d watched my dad and three of my uncles win in 1991, my cousin won it too. It’s something to be very proud of and I’ve never forgotten it, and I bet you Paul has never forgotten the day either.”
The victory meant Paul had reached the pinnacle of the grassroots game, but could it reignite his ambition to succeed at a higher level? Nolan saw the potential was still there, but it was hard to get his message through.
“The more time you are away from the professional game, the further away it feels. So for me to get a bite of playing at Anfield then, a few years on, was brilliant, just unbelievable,” said Paul.
“To win and get the cup and our medals in front of everyone in the Kop made it a magic day, easily the highlight of my footballing career. It didn’t get better than that.”
Should it have done? It is easy to become overly sentimental when you talk about footballers who didn’t quite make it. Talent is usually talked up, not down. You might be reading this thinking ‘he probably wasn’t good enough anyway' - so, how good was Paul, really?
Looking back, Nolan recalls “a good lad, fun and games - always the joker, all that kind of thing. But a wonderful left foot, that’s how I remember him.
“Paul was a bit overweight by the time he played for me but he got away with it because of his intelligence as a footballer - he always knew what players would do before they did - and that lovely left foot. He used to score some brilliant free-kicks and I also used to just ask him to put the ball in certain areas for our big lads to get on the end of.
“I always said to Paul back then that, if he got himself fit, there was no reason why he couldn’t go on and make good money out of the game. We had a lot of talented lads in Liverpool at that time playing Sunday League who had been at professional clubs when they were younger. I'd see them and think ‘if you could only get yourself fit and stop yourself going out on Friday and Saturday night, then you never know where you could get to’.
“That’s what I told Paul, that if he did the right things for six months there would still be opportunities for him. If he had done that, he would have been able to make a decent living out of playing - not for 20 years maybe, but for a good few.”
That didn’t happen, as Paul ruefully explains.
“I’d go out on the Friday when I played football for cash on Saturday and sometimes I wasn’t bothered whether we won or lost - or even if I played or was on the bench because I knew I still got my money if I didn’t come on,” he says.
"When I played with my mates for Nicosia, though, it was different. We were like a family. My attitude still wasn’t perfect - I still liked a night out before those games too - but when I played I gave 100% because it mattered more.
“I know it should have been the other way around but by the time I realised that, it was too late.”
Fortunately for James the penny did eventually drop. He belatedly found out how to become a footballer when Exeter’s new manager Eamonn Dolan persuaded him to give the club one last chance in the summer of 2003.
“He obviously saw something in me he liked,” James says. “I hadn’t gone back down there for pre-season and I came very close to packing it in, but he phoned me up and told me how much he wanted me back.
“Eamonn was the first coach to get hold of me and get me to take responsibility for myself as a professional athlete. He demanded more of me and expected more, and put the onus on me. Up until then, I wanted to be successful but I didn’t know how to do it myself.
“He helped me grow up, I guess, and realise what an opportunity I still had. I got a call-up for England C [international football for non-league players] and I had to stand up in front of the squad to introduce myself. Everyone was shocked when I told them I'd made my Premier League debut for Newcastle only a couple of years ago, but now I was playing for Exeter. I knew I had to try to get back up the divisions, and also that I still had time.
“To do it I had to eliminate some people from my life, which wasn’t easy, but I did it because I wanted to change. The next big step came when I joined Doncaster in 2004.
“Dave Penney signed me and he was great with me, but he also put me in touch with a psychologist and motivational speaker, Terry Gormley, and that’s when things really changed. Terry helped me understand how my mind worked. When I think back about when I first met him and how things changed instantly for me, it is unreal.
“I changed the way I thought and started believing in myself. Before then I’d been wondering why things weren’t working out for me, why I didn’t get on with certain people, or why they didn’t get on with me. I realised I could change all of that myself, and that mindset set me up for everything I have gone on to do in my life and my career.”
James has dedicated both to Doncaster, who he still plays for now, 17 years after he signed for just £30,000. There are no major medals in his collection, but he has played a huge part in their history and has won three promotions with the club he loves.
If you are still wondering what his surname is then you should go to Keepmoat Stadium, where ‘Coppinger - legend’ adorns a huge banner in the stands. There is talk of a statue if he goes through with his plans to retire at the end of this season, but he is not quite finished yet.
James turned 40 in January and only two men older than him have played in the Football League in 2020-21, Crawley’s Dannie Bulman and Newport’s Kevin Ellison, both 42. There is no chance he intends to see out his playing days quietly either. He hopes to end his 23rd season as a professional footballer with one last promotion and Doncaster are currently just outside the League One play-off places.
Whether this is his final campaign or not, James has already played more games - 686 - for Doncaster than anyone else, and he passed the landmark of 700 career Football League appearances earlier this season. Not bad for the man with the third-shortest league career of any player in Newcastle's 129-year history behind Elliot Anderson, who managed three minutes against Arsenal in January, and Antonio Barreca’s four minutes against Spurs in February 2019.
James only managed 11 minutes in the Premier League but that still ranks him eighth out of the 16 players picked to face Poland in November 1997. Whether you call that a success or a failure, it did not define him.
What comes next? It will involve coaching - James has opened academies in Middlesbrough and Redcar and already runs the teams his children play for. He also has his own company with Gormley mentoring players of all ages.
“I look back on my career now and I realise what a big part my attitude played in things that went right and wrong for me,” he says. "I wish I could go back and tell my 16-year-old self what I know now.
“Every now and again I think back to my days at Darlington and Paul, when he used to come around to my house and kick a ball with me and my dad. When we went to that England trial together, it was the start of a big adventure. I have learned so much and I want to pass it on.
“It’s the nature of football that the best players don’t always make it and it can be for any number of reasons, but what you have to do is give yourself the best possible chance. You can have big moments during your career that help you progress, of course, and those happened to me, but consistency is what you really need.
“I met a lot of players down the years who loved being able to say ‘I’m a professional footballer’ but they didn’t want to put the work in, they were not interested in improving themselves or affecting others. That’s what it is really all about.”
James Coppinger is near the end, while Paul Pomford is back where it all began.
In 2009 he decided to make a fresh start away from Liverpool - “I was getting in a bit of bother and I was going to end up in one of two places, and neither of them were nice” - and he followed the invitation of his old Darlington team-mate Carl Pepper to relocate back to the North East.
“He told me he could see the road I was heading down and he didn’t want me to live that life. I just thought ‘I’ve got to grow up at some point, there are only so many times your mum and dad’s door can be booted down’.”
At 40, he is working as a draughtsman and lives with his partner and two children near Middlesbrough, just down the road from James.
Paul stopped playing in his early 30s but football is still a big part of his life. He will complete his Uefa B badge when Covid restrictions ease, coaches South Park Rangers Under-15s in Normanby and is the club’s football development officer for all age groups, passing on some of the football and life lessons he has learned.
“When I look back, of course I would do things differently,” he says. "I have enjoyed my life since and in terms of football, I won everything I could on a Sunday and I did it all with my mates. I am really happy with that but I know what could have been and I would advise people given the same opportunity as me not to do what I did. Make sacrifices, make sure your attitude is right and listen to what people tell you when they are trying to help you.
“That’s what I try to teach the boys I coach now - the error of my ways. When I talk to them about James and myself, and how our careers could not have ended up much further apart, I tell them I’ve got a story about how you become a footballer, but it’s what happens next that is the most important thing.”
What happened to the rest of James’ first England Under-16s squad?
(OVER? = when they stopped playing professional football)
MATT MURRAY (Wolves, goalkeeper) 1 PL appearance, OVER? 29
Wrongly called Nathan Murray on the letter, he had joined Wolves aged nine and played one Premier League game for them - a 5-1 defeat by Blackburn. Highly rated but a string of serious injuries cut his career short. Now a pundit and agent.
MARK MALEY (Sunderland, defender) 0 PL appearances, OVER? 21
A former England Schoolboys captain who made his senior debut for Sunderland aged 17, he was forced to retire when he was accidentally shot in the eye with an air pistol pellet by Sunderland team-mate John Oster. Did a degree in corrosion engineering, and set up a company inspecting offshore oil rigs with drones.
GARETH BARRY (Aston Villa, midfielder) 653 PL appearances, OVER? 39
Retired aged 39 in 2020 after breaking Ryan Giggs’ record for most Premier League appearances. He won 53 full England caps and was a Premier League title-winner with Manchester City in 2012. Now a pundit.
MICHAEL LYONS (Derby County, midfielder) 0 PL appearances, OVER? 19
Left Derby without making the first team and accepted a scholarship at Loughborough University for a sports science degree. Stayed on for a Masters in marketing and management. Now a director of an international recruitment company.
LEON OSMAN (Everton, midfielder) ,352 PL appearances, OVER? 35
Joined Everton aged 10 and won the 1998 FA Youth Cup with the Toffees but sustained a serious knee injury in the final and was told his career could be over. It took three years and six operations before he recovered. Spent his entire career at Goodison Park apart from two loan spells and made his senior England debut at 31, winning two full caps. Now a pundit.
ADAM PROUDLOCK (Wolves, striker) 0 PL appearances, OVER? 28
Played 300 games in the Football League for eight clubs but the closest he came to the Premier League was as an 88th-minute substitute for Wolves in their 2003 Championship play-off final win. Now? Coaching children and managed North West Counties League Division One South side Eccleshall before leaving after four games of this season, after his side lost successive home matches 7-0, 8-1 and 10-1.
DANIEL HALL (Coventry, left-back) 0 PL appearances, OVER? 19
Helped Coventry reach the FA Youth Cup final in 1999 - but tore his anterior cruciate ligament in the second leg of the semi against James Coppinger’s Newcastle side and was sidelined for six months. Played in the Youth Cup final in 2000, then suffered the same serious injury to his other knee. Recovered and was told he would get a new contract if Coventry stayed in the Premier League in 2001 - they were relegated, and he was released. Dropped into non-league, where he was a stalwart with Rugby Town, who he later coached. At university, another ACL injury (he had four in total, two on each knee) scuppered his attempt at becoming a PE teacher and, after a spell working in a bank, he is now groundsman and football coach at Rugby School and runs a company supplying wedding decor.
PAUL RACHUBKA (Man Utd, goalkeeper) 3 PL appearances, OVER? 37
California-born keeper who kept a clean sheet against Leicester in his only Premier League appearance for United. He left Old Trafford in 2002 and played more than 350 first-team games for 17 other English professional clubs - including two more Premier League matches for Blackpool in 2011. Now an accountant in Manchester.
LEE CANOVILLE (Arsenal, defender) 0 PL appearances, OVER? 27
Played only 16 minutes in Arsenal's first team, as a substitute in a League Cup tie, but managed more than 200 games in the lower leagues for five different clubs. Now runs football coaching and mentoring companies and founded a charity to raise children’s self-esteem.
DANIEL SENDA (Southampton, striker) 0 PL appearances, OVER? 31
Established himself at Wycombe after leaving Southampton in 1999 and played more than 300 games for the Chairboys. Retired due to injury in 2013. Now assistant head coach at Leyton Orient.
NATHAN STANTON (Scunthorpe, defender) 0 PL appearances, OVER? 32
Played more than 500 games in a 17-year professional career in the lower leagues. Now kit manager at Scunthorpe.
LOUIS BLOIS (Norwich, left-back) 0 PL appearances, OVER? 20
Actual name Lewis, he was released by Norwich in 2002 without playing a senior game and had spells in Canada and non-league football. Now works in the sports turf industry and is Norwich City’s chaplain.
FRANCIS JEFFERS (Everton, striker) 119 PL appearances, OVER? 32
A wonderkid who made his Premier League debut a few weeks after this game, aged 16, when he came off the bench against Manchester United. His form slumped after he joined Arsenal for £8m in 2001 and although he scored on his England debut in 2003, it was his first and last full cap. Ended his career in League Two with Accrington in 2013 and is now a youth coach at Everton.
STEVEN REID (Millwall, right-back) 192 PL appearances, OVER? 34
Played Premier League football for Blackburn, West Brom and Burnley, won senior international caps for the Republic of Ireland and is now a coach with Scotland.
MATTHEW ETHERINGTON (Peterborough Utd, winger) 288 PL appearances, OVER? 33
Joined Tottenham in 1999 and also played in the Premier League with West Ham - where he received treatment for an addiction to gambling that saw him run up debts of £1.5m - and Stoke City. Now a pundit and head coach of Peterborough Under-18s.
Credits
Author: Chris Bevan
Producer: Philip Dawkes
Editors: John Stanton & Patrick Jennings
Sub-editor: Richard Dore
Photos: Getty Images, Rex Features, James Coppinger, Paul Pomford, Daniel Phipps-Hall, Arnie Baldursson/LFChistory.net, Northern Echo, Stephen Elliott/Teeside Gazette, Newcastle Utd FC