past two weeks, its been frustrating and happy 'GO' Away Manyoo and Chelski Fan, congrats for this 2 team, nice and efficient play.. to coupe with my feeling, i stuble with an article that i found quite interesting. with all the JOHN TERRY OUTSIDE THE FIELD STORY's ... A story contrast to JT a.k.a Chelsea Skipper a.k.a ex-England Skipper(Capello send him DOWN,DOWN,DOWN..ahahaha) a.k.a The Playboy Dad...
SORRY CHELSEA DIE HARD FAN..let SONG play the Music..
Alexandre Song hits the right note for resurgent Arsenal
HE HAS walked into an interview room at Arsenal’s training centre. Aged 22, born in Cameroon, raised in France, nurtured by Arsène Wenger, he creates a first impression that will last. It comes from the clothes, classy and stylish but not loud. With its stripes of different and dark hues, it is the jacket that strikes you and it sits on him as if it belongs. It welcomes you to the world of Alexandre Song.
It is not just the gear. There is openness and an absence of suspicion not often encountered at this level of football. But perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised. Three years ago he spent half a season on loan at Charlton Athletic when Alan Pardew was manager. “I am certain he’s one of the most popular guys in the Arsenal dressing room,” said Pardew recently, “because he’s that kind of bloke. People naturally take to him.”
There is something there, for sure. He played his first Premier League game for Arsenal 10 days after turning 18 and though he was well built and energetic, he didn’t look an Arsenal player and didn’t seem first cousin to a Wenger player. No left foot, an indelicate touch and without anything that could be mistaken for creativity. When he tackled, which he did often, you thought Bolton might pay £2m for him.
Yet, remarkably, he has come through. Last season he became an Arsenal player. This season he has been a good Arsenal player. He is now the team’s defender in midfield, a role made for his broad shoulders and lack of ego: who better to move the piano to where Fabregas can play it? Cool at the beginning, Arsenal’s fans have warmed to him: “One Song, we’ve only got one Song,” they regularly sing.
As he begins the story of his young life, Alexandre Song shows you what Pardew saw. He smiles when reminded of his extraordinary family. “Yeah,” he says, “I have 17 sisters and 10 brothers and we are very close. If I need something, I just have to call a brother or a sister and they come immediately. I’m lucky to be part of a family like that, you know.” He was born in Douala, Cameroon’s commercial capital, and his life hinged on the death of his father when he was three and the decision of his mother Catrine to move with her younger children to Paris when he was eight. She wanted the opportunities France would offer and believed education would liberate her children.
Alex was a particular case. She knew he struggled without his father because of the questions and his crying. “It was little things,” he recalls. “At school in Paris, my friend’s dad would come to pick him up and I didn’t have that. Because I had no dad, I had nothing. When I asked my mum, ‘Why is it like this?’ she just wanted to protect me and not tell me anything.”
Catrine tried to get him to give up football and concentrate on his studies. She might just as well have asked him to stop breathing. At 13 he was noticed by François Ciccolini, a youth team coach from the Corsican club Bastia, who offered the teenager a place in his club’s academy. The boy was keen, his mother less so. Eventually, Catrine was persuaded.
“It was a difficult change for me, I stayed in the house they had for academy players but after training, François collected me and we did things together. In the first month, I missed my family and wanted to return but he persuaded me to stay,” says Song. “We are still in touch, he calls all the time and comes to see me play for Arsenal. I just want to say to him, ‘Thank you.’ I miss my dad, but he has been another one.”
The hurt of his father’s passing almost 20 years ago has not gone away. I ask his dad’s first name and he bows his head, places his right hand over his eyes and rubs away tears. After about a minute he says: “I can’t speak anymore of my dad because it makes me too sad. I am sorry. It is very difficult for me.” In the summer of 2005, he agreed to a season on loan at Arsenal.
“Coming to Arsenal at the age of 17 was more difficult than going to Corsica at 13. There, I had someone; when I came here I didn’t have anybody, I didn’t understand the language, the food was very different and I had no confidence.
“I lived in a hotel and when training ended I would go to my room and spend all of my time on the phone. To leave everybody you know in France and come to a new country, that is not easy. But it got better because I realised I had the boss [Wenger]. He would speak to me all the time at training and that gave me motivation.”
England improved once Olivia, his Cameroonian girlfriend, moved from Paris to be with him in London. “I moved from the hotel to a flat, I still couldn’t speak English, didn’t know how to pay bills but Olivia knew so much more than me and her English was much better than mine. She is now my wife and she has been very good for me.”
They had their first son when Alex was 19, and since then there has been a second son. He wants his boys to have what he missed and they have given meaning to his football life. “Everytime I come on the pitch at Arsenal, I look up to the stands and see my son [three-year-old Nolan] and that tells me I have something to do on the pitch.” His performances have certainly not suffered by starting family so early.
“People say to me, ‘You are too young for this, you are 22, you have a wife and two children’. And I say, ‘It is my life, I am very happy with it and I don’t want anything else. Before my son goes to pre-school in the morning, he plays with a football in the kitchen because this kid, he really loves football.
“And he says, ‘Daddy, daddy, come and play’. I’m tired in the morning but if I say no, he will start crying, so I don’t say no. He has so much energy, he can play non-stop, all day, and if I can help to make him happy, that makes me happy. I know what I missed when I was a boy and that is what I want to give him.”
Pardew believes he was always going to get there: “We had a tremendous run with him in 2007, his ability to break up play, to switch things. The last game Charlton played in the Premier League was at Anfield, a 2-2 draw. Liverpool had [Steven] Gerrard and [Javier] Mascherano in midfield and Alex was the best player on the pitch. After he went back to Arsenal, I felt he was kept too long in the background because they were playing [Mathieu] Flamini in midfield.
“As a kid, you couldn’t help but like him. Nothing he would do could offend you. He had a cheeky way, well mannered and very amicable. He would be even better if training began at 12 o’clock because he likes his bed, does Alex.”
Song played on the same French youth team as Samir Nasri and was then named in a Cameroon national squad. Ciccolini advised him to stick with France but he chose to play for the country of his birth. “It was just my heart. If my head makes the decision, it is France, but my heart spoke to me and I said yes to Cameroon.” The Lions play their home matches at the Omnisports Stadium in Yaoundé. “Every time I’m there, I say, ‘Thank you, God’, because my life was saved. People in Africa don’t have opportunity. There are a lot of very good players who never get the chance.”
When he went to Charlton, many felt it would be the prelude to a permanent departure. But not the player himself: “I believed my future was at Arsenal because the boss made it clear that he believed in me.
“He would say, ‘I told you to come here because I watched you play and I know what you can do’. I have improved working with him. Now he will say to me, ‘Remember when you first came here, your first touch?’ And I say, ‘Yeah, boss, I remember’.”
Though he returned from the Africa Cup of Nations only last week, Song’s importance to his club is likely to be reflected in an immediate recall to the midfield for this afternoon’s encounter with Manchester United at the Emirates stadium.
His value comes from his physicality, his ability to win possession and the accuracy of his passing. He doesn’t try to be what he is not. You ask him if he’s ever going to get other Arsenal midfielders to commit to the defensive effort and, diplomatically, he pretends not to have heard the question.
“My role is important because I am the protector of the back four and I am first to take the ball from the back five. When I started in this position, I watched Claude Makelele on television because he’s a very clever player, always in the right position.
“If I hold my position, the other midfielders can go forward, and if the other team attacks, my job is to slow things down to allow the others to get back.”
What of his left foot? Does he find any use for it? He laughs. “Hey, I improve a lot, the left foot. Now I can give a pass with the left, I use it and I’m sure I will be using it more in the future.”
After having to listen to and read about the low life antics of John Terry and his family, how refreshing to read about someone who has honest values..made my weeks.
No comments:
Post a Comment