My son Charlie was scouted by QPR last week. I say ‘scouted’, but that’s not quite accurate since he’s only six. Rather, a man claiming to be a member of the club’s coaching staff suggested I bring him along to the QPR pre-academy in Willesden.
At first, I was suspicious. The man in question teaches football at the local leisure centre and I was worried that this ‘pre-academy’ would turn out to be an expensive, fee-paying affair with no official links to QPR.
When the man first introduced the idea, I had to ask if he’d got the right boy. Charlie’s quite small for his age and not exactly lion-hearted. His method of winning the ball is to go in for the tackle, fall over, accuse the other player of committing a foul and then demand a penalty, no matter where the ‘foul’ has occurred. He then positions the ball inches from the goal, takes a massive run-up and, as often as not, falls over when he makes contact. To my untrained eye, he doesn’t look like a future star of the Premier League.
The ‘scout’ insisted that he’d got the right child and assured me no money would change hands. All I had to do was turn up to the pre–academy on Monday, let the coaches take a look at him and, if they liked what they saw, bring him back for an hour’s training every week.
Once I’d established that the whole thing was genuine, I began to fantasise about the possibilities. If Charlie is earning £100,000 a week by the time he’s 18, he might buy his dear old dad a Bentley -Continental for Christmas. Better yet, I could become his agent and take a hefty slice of all his earnings and transfer fees.
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