Manchester United of England’s fast-goring Nigerian-born lad, Shola Shoretire has found a lid blown off all his secrets in the round leather game, as the man who mentored him during his early days in the game is spilling the beans over the youngster, megasportsarena.com reports.
The story goes back to Shoretire’s days playing as a kid under David Ballantyne in Newcastle United’s academy, such that the youth developer has startling first-hand information about the emergent star, especially after also running him through extra training sessions with his own talent development venture, Feet4Football.
Ballantyne has now taken his mind back to early days he enjoyed together with the lad fondly called ‘Geordie Whizkid ,’ and revealed a long line of assets, qualities and prospects of Shoretire, who had initially been on the books of Manchester City before moving over to their local rivals, Man United.
Ballantyne, who saw Shoretire’s development over two years before the youngster moved to City and then to Old Trafford at the age of 10, told Chronicle Live: “There’s always one or two you just think ‘Wow, yeah – he’s got a real chance of being a player’ and Shola was one of them.
“I can count on one hand how many I’ve said that about. To me, Shola was like a young Micah Richards at seven and eight, he was athletic, so quick and just so strong. He was like a ready-made athlete. He was phenomenal and just so quick.
“That stood out – he just had that natural speed. But no one could get him off the ball as well, he had that strength, and he was light, quickness of feet, light on his feet. Even at such a young age, there was a determination in Shoretire that not every aspiring youngster had.
“He was extremely hard-working and really tough on himself. If he couldn’t get something right straight away or hit every pass – he would get really frustrated with himself because he was a perfectionist.
“I knew he would make it somewhere – I was hoping it would be Newcastle but that disappointingly didn’t happen – but there’s one or two where you think ‘he’ll make it’ and it was like that with him.
“From a Newcastle point of view though – it’s frustrating to see the best players leaving the club. It’s another one who got away but back then we just couldn’t compete with Man City.”
