Salernitana defender William Troost Ekong opens up on being kicked out of Tottenham Hotspur academy
Serie A outfit Salernitana defender William Troost-Ekong, while speaking to E-Perform (h/t Salernitana News) has opened up on the tough challenges he faced in his career, which included being kicked out of Tottenham Hotspur Academy.
While the career of a professional football looks very fancy and wonderful from the outset, it is a rather cruel fact that most of the professional footballer aspirants do not make it out of the Academy.
It is the very few who reach the top level of professional football and even fewer make the jump from an Academy to a top tier one team.
Hence, many follow the path of journeyman in a bid to find their place and solace in another country and league with the hope to regain a career which started in an abrupt fashion.
Troost-Ekong’s story is such with the player sharing the struggles he faced post getting kicked out of the Spurs’ academy and making a name for himself in different leagues. The 29-year-old was released by Spurs in the summer of 2013 but has done well for himself playing for a Serie A club.
“In dark moments the mental side is very difficult but important. They are the ones who score you: I was kicked out of the Tottenham academy, I caused a penalty in my first match at the World Cup, last year in the Premier League I decided games negatively by making some mistakes.
Looking ahead, you realize that it won’t be the last difficult moments of your career, there will certainly be others. This made me feel fearless, because when you find yourself in a bad moment and you feel that thing is your worst nightmare, you think you have nothing left to lose. When something negative happens to you, you tend to protect yourself so that that situation doesn’t happen again, so again your mindset changes”.
In the end, his story does reek of the values of resilience and consistency to do anything in order to make it to the top.
It is a befitting reply to many who tend to take the attention of professional footballers to just a very few and fail to take into account stories of hard work and mental strength, as seen with the Nigerian defender.
There are players with limited potential who are able to survive in Europe’s top five leagues with sheer hard work whilst there are some players with huge potential who fail to live up to the hype.
An example of this could be none other than former Spurs midfielder Dele Alli, who was deemed for stardom and currently sees himself out of contention from the likes of Besiktas and Everton.
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Football is such a crazy sport that a direction in which a career progresses can reach varying lengths, both positive and negative hence all professional football aspirants should be aware of the downside in addition to the upside of the game.
