“I’M TREATED LIKE THE BIN LADEN OF FOOTBALL”
For as long as I can remember I’ve been trouble, which is strange for a boy whose earliest memories are going to church with his mum as a toddler. In primary school, I’d tell the teachers to ‘go f**k themselves’ and often fight in the playground. Then in Year 6, I was permanently excluded for hitting a teacher with a dinner tray and almost breaking one of her hands.
Like for many kids, football was an outlet, but it wasn’t enough to keep me on the straight and narrow. Crystal Palace signed me when I was 10 and I played in the same team as Wilfried Zaha and John Bostock, but I lasted only two years there before they released me because of my bad behaviour at school. People often talk about street footballers who learn their skills on the concrete, but I learned a different trade in the darkest corners of north London.
In Year 7, while the other kids played football in the playground, I’d steal mobile phones from the blazers being used for goalposts. After school, I’d head straight to Finsbury Park and sell them to a group of Albanian men I’d met through various acquaintances. Later, I’d roam the streets to steal phones, and the money would just keep rolling in. My mum gave me £2 a day for pocket money, but I didn’t use it to buy sweets – I went to the bookies. I’d spend hours in a trance watching my cousin playing on brightly-lit slot machines, and then give him my money to gamble for me.
When I was 13, the teachers asked my mum to come to school and sit at the back of the classroom to try to correct my behaviour. It didn’t work. In Year 9, I was kicked out for good after burning my classmates with a Bunsen burner.
