From the bottom of Buckingham Street in the north inner city of Dublin, kids kicking a ball around only need to look up the long, sloping road to see the behemoth of Croke Park looming.
Not many children grow up so close to the home of the GAA, yet it is an area of the city largely untouched by Gaelic games and the success of the Dublin footballers, with the only flags lining the streets leftover bunting from the visit of Pope Francis last August.
Instead, the boys and girls of Buckingham Street dream of growing up to play professional soccer, and for many, that dream starts at Belvedere FC.
“Kids from this area, they are nearly all purely soccer,” says Vincent Butler, director of football affairs at the club.
Chances are, if you are one of the thousands of young footballers to have togged out in Belvedere colours, at some stage Butler has run the rule over you, having been involved with the club since it began in 1971.
Every weekend, there are Belvedere graduates lining out at all levels from regional divisions in Ireland right up to the Premier League, but currently, there is one name on everybody’s lips: Troy Parrott.
“He’s created a bit of interest, alright,” says Butler.
“There are not that many kids going to Premier League clubs now but you do get a few, like Troy. Sean Brennan is with Southampton, Kevin Healy is at West Brom and a few others.
“We have 18 players over there [Britain] at the moment, four of them wouldn’t have played senior first-team football [yet] because they are too young. The other 14 have played competitive first-team games this season. Matt Doherty and Darragh Lenihan are both doing well.”
On the occasion of Parrott’s 17th birthday last month, he signed his first professional contract with Tottenham Hotspur after hovering around the fringes of the first team.
Butler has been over and back to London to check in on his progress at Spurs, and was instantly struck by how much of an impression the Dubliner has made, with manager Mauricio Pochettino already expressing his confidence in the young player’s abilities.
“He’s a very nice fella, Pochettino,” Butler says. “I was being shown around the academy premises and met him on the stairs. He said ‘Oh, you’re the guy looking after Troy!’ A lot of other managers, you wouldn’t meet them, and they wouldn’t have any knowledge [of who you are] really.
“I knew Troy was doing really well because he was getting great reviews. Apart from getting views from Spurs you would hear it from other clubs. A scout from Man City said he was doing great and Chelsea were looking for him. I mean, if they got the chance they would have come in and taken him.”
Parrott first went on trial with Spurs at the age of 15, and within a few days Butler received a text from a member of Tottenham’s academy coaching staff to say he was “fitting in perfectly”, outlining how impressed the club were with the personable and confident striker.
“He got in straight away,” Butler says.
Butler was present last December as Tottenham took on Inter Milan in a Uefa Youth League game, Parrott scoring a superb goal from the edge of the box in a 4-2 defeat. The goal subsequently did the rounds on social media, generating giddy excitement among Ireland supporters desperate to see a natural goalscorer coming through given the senior team’s struggles to replace Robbie Keane, now working as an assistant coach to Mick McCarthy in the Ireland senior team. Yet Butler explains that there is much more to Parrott’s game than an ability to find the net.
“There was an Italian TV company over who covered the match against Inter Milan, and I’m not sure who did it, but they compiled a DVD just of Troy. The commentator is calling him ‘Parratta’, and it’s three or four minutes long. And he was just really good. The amount of things he did, he was superb.
“Troy has got good composure around the goal. He’s also very determined and never stops running in a match. He’s always looking for the ball. He’s brave, he’ll go for anything, and he’s dedicated.”
And it is that dedication, more than anything, which sets Parrott apart. Butler has seen many young Irish footballers go over to England and fail to adapt to their new surroundings, but he has no such fears for Belvedere’s latest protégé, who grew up in an area of Dublin which has had an unfavourable reputation over the years, with the lack of green space available often leading some to pursue less productive pasttimes.
That is one of the reasons why Belvedere place such a heavy emphasis on developing the technical skills of players, putting talented kids on the right path from the very start. Visit the Belvedere academy, and you can see boys and girls as young as four years of age being taught how to trap the ball, or dribble around a set of cones.
Yet too often other distractions have derailed promising careers, something which Parrott is already aware of.
When he was travelling back home to play in underage matches for Ireland, Tottenham offered him the opportunity to take a couple of days before and after the games to spend some time in Dublin. Parrott decided his time would be put to better use at Tottenham’s training facilities, so opted to travel back the day before games and return to London straight away. Living in digs near Tottenham’s training ground, he is picked up for training and dropped home every day, while on weekends he can visit an aunt who lives in London. Those little comforts can make a world of difference, and Butler has seen first-hand the importance that having the right set-up can make.
“I remember one [player] was signed by Liverpool and they had him in digs in Southport. It took him about two hours to get in every morning and then two hours to get back, and there was nobody living out there. He just went home eventually, never played football again,” says Butler. There are countless similar stories, from all around the country, of promising footballers who could have made it.
“Troy seems to like it and they all seem to like him, and that’s half the battle. All he has to do now is produce the goods and they’ll keep him there, and he’ll do well for them.
“Some people say that kids from that area might have great talent, but they don’t have the dedication or concentration. Troy has proved everybody wrong.”
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