“I WANTED TO GO ON LOAN TO ASTON VILLA LAST SEASON. PELLEGRINI JUST LAUGHED. I NEVER LOOKED BACK AFTER THAT”
Sliding Doors was released eight months before his birth, but Declan Rice still knows what it’s like to be Gwyneth Paltrow.
OK, not entirely. He’s yet to win an Oscar or marry someone from Coldplay. But, like Paltrow’s character in the 1998 film, Rice has had his own sliding doors moments – some more recent than you might expect.
Just 12 months ago, Rice’s career could have taken one of two very different directions. His fate wasn’t decided by a mad dash to catch a Tube train, however; it was determined by a single conversation with West Ham United manager Manuel Pellegrini.
By May, Rice had become a fans’ favourite with the Hammers, a full England international and a nominee for the PFA Young Player of the Year award, alongside Raheem Sterling, Trent Alexander-Arnold and Bernardo Silva.
Yet, had he got his way on that August day in 2018, Rice would have been playing in the Championship early last term, attempting to stop his manager from being hounded out by a fan wielding a cabbage. “I wanted to go to Aston Villa under Steve Bruce,” a 20-year-old Rice admits now to FourFourTwo.
Back then, Rice had the weight of the world on his shoulders. Today, he is markedly more relaxed as we visit West Ham’s Rush Green training ground on a summer’s afternoon.
We have made our way past a plethora of autograph hunters at the front entrance (they don’t seem as eager for FFT’s autograph, for some reason), and are soon offered a rare luxury: a lift from the car park to the training pitches via the groundsman’s buggy. We like to arrive in style.
When we arrive pitchside, we discover an exuberant Rice taking part in a keepy-uppy competition with Felipe Anderson and Manuel Lanzini, using only his weaker left foot. He’s all smiles as the banter flies among the Hammers trio. “I think I won that!” he chuckles, before sitting down with us in one of the dugouts.
