10 YEARS ON
BOY WONDER JOHN BOSTOCK IS MAKING A NAME FOR HIMSELF . . . IN FRANCE
ABLUSTERY day by the Thames and John Bostock is back where it all began. London Nautical School, Blackfriars, is where he studied when he was first identified as a teenage football talent extraordinary enough to attract the attention of Barcelona.
Bostock was only 15 when he made his first-team debut for Crystal Palace in October 2007 and
Sportsmail photographed him in the playground. He was a great story when he moved to Tottenham for £700,000 and he still is.
It’s just that now he is a good story for a different reason.
In the week that England’s Under 20s reached a World Cup final in South Korea, Bostock’s history is not one flecked with glory.
He played for his country at Under 16, Under 17 and Under 19 levels but his career shows just how difficult it can be to make it and how uplifting sport can be when you finally get your reward.
Until recently, Bostock had no trouble naming his best moment in the game. ‘ Making my debut for Crystal Palace was the realisation of a dream,’ he smiled. ‘My dad was there, in the same season-ticket seat he had always sat in. It was an incredible day.’
Finally, almost a decade later, Bostock has trumped it. Last month the 25-year-old midfielder walked on to a stage in Paris to receive an award as the best player in the French Second Division.
For a player tipped for greatness when he joined Tottenham in 2008 it may seem a modest achievement but for Bostock it says the search for meaning, for progress, for success and even for footballing self-worth is finally over.
‘My wife Sia has seen all the tears over the years and she has always believed in me,’ said Bostock. ‘So for her to be invited with me to the French player of the year ceremony was fantastic for us both. That was groundbreaking for us because at last we could see the progress.
‘Once upon a time, I could have walked away from football. It definitely could have happened. The end of the Spurs period when I wasn’t wanted there and wasn’t wanted anywhere else, the dream I had was hanging in the balance.
‘Since then it has been small steps, small steps, small steps to try and get back, to build a career, a life I can enjoy. On that stage, I was there at last.’
Back at his old school this week, some pupils looked a little blank when told about the guy doing the keepy-ups in the playground. Others knew his name very well.
To recap, the move to Tottenham didn’t work. Bostock — a winger back then — never made a league appearance and loan spells at Brentford, Hull, Sheffield Wednesday, Swindon and Toronto didn’t work, either.
A young player once labelled as the future of English football suddenly didn’t seem to have much of a future at all. ‘In England, because I had that “wonder kid” thing from young, I was always trying to prove it, doing my tricks and flicks. I was trying to look special in every game. I didn’t know how to cut that out and nobody told me to.’
Ultimately, a move to Antwerp in
2013 was the game- changer. Bostock was on a contract of only £50,000 a year in Belgium’s second tier but manager Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink gave him an opportunity to play and that was all he needed. A season there, two at OH Leuven a division higher and then, a year ago, a switch to Lens.
‘Confidence is the No 1 word in football,’ said Bostock. ‘I didn’t have any when I left Spurs. You are what you believe you are and back then I was nothing.
‘There were no takers in England. The whole pressure of that situation had taken all the fun away from me. So I had a choice to either quit or start again. So I had to start again. From Spurs to second division Belgium, was like, “Whoa!”.
‘I knew I had a certain level of talent but when you don’t get the opportunity to display it you start to ask, “Well, am I a good player or not?”. I had those questions for so long but that belief and passion, when I took away the politics of the game, was still there. I was still a kid who loved the game so I decided to get that pure mentality back.’
His season actually ended badly, with Lens missing promotion by a point. That hurt, but you wouldn’t know it. Bostock is a bundle of energy and positivity. He is also, by some margin, the most well-mannered footballer I have ever met.
The chances are that he will leave Lens this summer, probably for a French Ligue 1 club, but in some ways that doesn’t matter. What matters is that a kid who came perilously close to being spat out of the game is thriving at last on the back of self-will and character.
Father to a little boy now, Bostock and Sia have moved house 13 times. They still don’t own a house in his native London. They stay with family or take an Airbnb rental.
‘I am lucky that I have married my best friend who believes in my talents,’ he said. ‘Not all players have partners who do that.’
So Bostock is not resentful of the path he has had to take. He is not jealous of players he knows — Harry Kane from Tottenham and Nathaniel Clyne from Palace.
‘England has some great talent and I want them to do well,’ he said.
‘Football is the most beautiful game but when you are in it then it’s the most challenging in the world. You find out very quickly that it’s a cut-throat business. You learn there is no respect for you just because you are from a big club. But I want to see English talent flourish. I don’t look at it and think it should have been me.’
Certainly, there are wider lessons to be learned from his experiences. The kids in the England squad in South Korea may feel they have made it already. Bostock is proof that it sometimes takes longer.
‘I am left-footed but in 90 per cent of my loans I was played on the right wing. I had never played there before but England is a vicious place to play, with managers always under pressure.
‘So I tried my best but it wasn’t home and some of my loans weren’t logically thought out. They just labelled any experience as good experience but that’s not true. It can be really detrimental.
‘I came from Spurs, a club where the football was perfect. To go on loan to a club where they don’t play any football, you are not going to progress are you? So it took a long time to find a home, somewhere I felt needed. Antwerp and Jimmy Floyd was the start of it. He has been my mentor, really. He put me in centre midfield and I have grown from there. That was where I started to learn who I was as a footballer. I learned about my game and finally I realised I was still good at it. Finally.’
Bostock already has enough stories to write a book. If he ever did, one chapter would no doubt be titled ‘Swindon’.
‘I could play under any manager in the world now because I played under Paolo Di Canio,’ laughed Bostock. ‘I didn’t know people like that actually existed in the game! If we lost, we would be in on a Sunday to watch the 90 minutes. But a Di Canio 90 minutes is maybe two and a half hours.
‘Smash the screeneen when he sees you do some-something bad, pausee it, question you, smashash the screen again. n. But if you hit a TV V screen really hard that part of the screen won’t work any more.
‘So he would keep smashing it and in the end there would be no o part of the screen en that you could actuctually see the gameme on any more. Just a tiny corner.
‘Before a game I like to relax so I would have some music on and maybe just be moving a little bit as I put my shinpads on. He saw me and just went crazy, “You are dancing before we go to war? If you want to do that, go and dance in the toilet!”.
‘His team talks were like, “We are going to grab this serpent by the neck, we’re going to strangle it”. We did get results to be fair. We were so fit. He trained us like dogs. Coming under someone like that and seeing that mindset was incredible. I haven’t met anyone like it since.’
Sadly, Bostock has not been back to Palace since the day he signed for Spurs. Former owner Simon Jordan’s ungenerous tweet on learning of Bostock’s recent award pointed to Palace’s disappointment when he left.
At his old school, however, the love for their ex-pupil is clear. In many ways, he is the perfect example for youngsters to follow. Don’t give up, try your best, stay dignified. His old PE teachers have been to every country he has played in — bar Canada — to watch him.
So where will they be heading next year? Any chance of a return to England? If he did come home, how would he cope with the inevitable return of the spotlight?
‘I don’t know what will happen next season but I do know there is interest from other clubs in first didivisions across EuropEurope,’ he said. ‘If I leavleave, I will go anywhwhere that is best fofor me. ‘As a young kid iin England all you think about is England. But ppeople should look at other countries, too. ‘ Of course I wowould love Englandland but that’s not the bbe-all and end-all now. ‘When you are young you want to read the articles and look at the stats. But I have this silly saying that goes, “If you only get encouraged when they say you are great, you will be discouraged when they say you ain’t”.
‘So I don’t turn my head too much to what outside people say. You can lose yourself.
‘Now I am older and more mature so if it came down to coming home it wouldn’t be too much of a problem at all.
‘I am just happy to sit here as a footballer — a proper footballer.’
‘I could play under any manager in the world now because I played under Paolo di Canio!’