Oliver Kay interview with Danny Cadamarteri

[ClaretTony]

In the Times this morning.


‘It was,” Danny Cadamarteri says, casting his mind back two decades, “a life-changing experience. You don’t dream of what happened to me. You couldn’t have a dream like that.”

He is sitting in Burnley’s magnificent new academy building, reflecting on the challenges faced by English football’s next generation of teenage wannabes and contemplating how dramatically the landscape has changed since his spectacular emergence at Everton in the autumn of 1997.

Cadamarteri’s was one of those too-good-to-be-true stories, breaking into Everton’s first team aged 17, scoring goals, eclipsing his fellow prodigy Michael Owen to be the hero in his first Merseyside derby at 18, and then learning the hard way that a professional footballer’s life is seldom as wonderful as that. Nine years later he was emerging from a six-month ban for a doping offence — “flipping Day Nurse,” he says, shaking his head — and signing for Grays Athletic. He was frequently cited as a reminder that not every hot young talent would go on to be an Owen, a Wayne Rooney or a Dele Alli. They could just as likely end up as a Michael Branch, a Federico Macheda or a Danny Cadamarteri.

He does not shirk from the reality that he delivered less than he promised in his playing career. If anything, in his secondary career in youth development, coaching Burnley’s under-18s, he has embraced that fact. When he tells young players about the need to improve, to hone their talent, to do everything to force their way into the first-team picture, to stay grounded, to keep faith in their ability, to take doping regulations very seriously, he knows what he is talking about — even if that involves drawing on negative experiences as well as positive.

Cadamarteri talks about the “unbelievable” facilities he has found at Burnley — and the recent upgrades only elevated the club’s academy to category two status, not category one. The quality of the provision for youth development has never been higher in English football, but neither has what the PFA calls the “attrition rate” — of those youngsters joining academies full-time at 16, three-quarters are out of the game by 21.

It was a different story 20 years ago. Liverpool had Owen and it seemed entirely natural that Everton had Cadamarteri — “just a kid from Cleckheaton,” as he puts it, but just as quick and, it briefly seemed, just as deadly in front of goal. He had already scored three Premier League goals by the time he turned 18, but it was his fourth, a stylish solo effort to defeat Liverpool at Goodison Park, that changed everything.

“I felt I was on top of the world,” he says. “My mum had come to watch the game and when we walked out of the Main Stand afterwards, there must have been 4,000 Scousers outside the main entrance. They picked me up and carried me off down the road, singing my name. It was surreal. I don’t think anything in my life could ever replicate that feeling. I went out that night and got thrown all over the city centre — lifted up, carried, kissed, cuddled, you name it. I woke up the next morning and thought ‘Was that a dream?’ I’ve got goosebumps now, thinking about it.”

That was as good as it got for Cadamarteri. It was his fifth goal in ten appearances for Everton, but the sixth took just under 12 months to arrive. By the time he left for Bradford City in early 2002, he had scored only 15. Across Stanley Park, Owen had just been named European Footballer of the Year. Whereas the teenage Owen was supremely polished, on and off the pitch, Cadamarteri seemed that much rougher around the edges. He says he “never lost my hunger” and felt that he suffered on the periphery of a struggling Everton team, but staying level-headed was not easy. There were off-the-field scrapes too including being found guilty of assault at Liverpool crown court in 2001. “I think I missed having someone in Liverpool to put their arm around me and say ‘Come ’ere you’,” he says.

As his career drifted towards an unsatisfactory conclusion at Carlisle United, his 11th different club, Cadamarteri began to wonder what next. Only coaching held any appeal, but he did not know where to start. He spoke to Andy Barlow, the PFA regional coach, who warned him it was ferociously competitive. As well as beginning his coaching qualifications immediately, he was advised by Barlow to seek every possible opportunity — academy, women’s football, even Sunday league — to gain experience.

Still a player at Carlisle at this point, Cadamarteri took the challenge head-on. He started going along to help out at Everton’s academy and Huddersfield Town’s development centre. On top of that, he began coaching Sunday league football at Howden Clough, in Bradford, and Leeds United Ladies — all while trying to battle back from injury at Carlisle. “I went to Howden Clough, who said I could do some under-14s,” he says. “I was planning this perfect session — 20 balls, bibs, cones, all the rest of it. That night about five lads turned up and I had two bibs, one ball, no cones. I had to throw something together and I phoned Andy that night and said it had opened my eyes to what coaching is. I have just thrown myself into it.

“It was quite extreme, doing all of that, not getting paid for any of it, while still a player, but it is all adding to my experience as a coach.”

That range of experience, more than his name, helped him to get a full-time coaching role at Sheffield Wednesday’s academy before this summer’s move to Burnley. He sees himself not as a flag-bearer for ethnic-minority coaches, but simply as someone striving to be the best he can be. “You hear some say it’s too easy for ex-players to walk into jobs, but I have friends — not just from ethnic minorities — who have struggled to get opportunities,” he says. “I can only go by my experience, which is that you have to work your socks off just for the chance to get on the ladder.”

The same applies, more than ever, to the players he is coaching. “You have to be honest about that,” he says. “I told the lads here when I came that the likelihood of them all getting into Burnley’s first team is very slim. That’s the harsh reality. Our job as an academy is to make every player better, to give them the best chance of playing professional football at some level and ultimately to make them better people. Not all will necessarily play the game at any level. They need to understand the importance of a good work ethic, discipline, a working environment — if not in football, then in whatever they do.

“I know where the kids want to get to. I’ve seen that life. I’ve lived that lifestyle. I like to believe that everything that happened to me in my career — good or bad — happened for a reason. I’ve started to realise that not reaching certain heights in my own career has made me the person I am now. That gives me the opportunity to guide these kids in a positive way.”

[CleggHall]

A thoughtful, realistic article, Danny sounds to have his head screwed on now! I'm sure we all wish him well.