City took bizarre steps in pursuit of winger Sobhi
STOKE City went to such lengths to quietly sign Ramadan Sobhi that the chief scout pretty much had to watch him in disguise.
Ramadan’s two clubs in England meet this afternoon when Huddersfield head to the Potteries, with both having made a profit on a winger, now still only 23 and still combining potential with celebrity status back home in Egypt.
He was the kind of player who could light up social media by standing on a ball in a fiercely competitive derby match, who added more than 200,000 followers to Stoke’s Facebook page almost overnight and persuaded the club to launch their own official Arabic Twitter account.
It is far removed from almost any other transfer in Stoke’s history and, although it didn’t ultimately work out as everyone had hoped, he has still gone on to captain his country to the Olympics – and a Premier League return, in time, isn’t out of the question.
So it was worth Kevin Cruickshank’s undercover trips to North Africa.
“Our focus for recruitment at that time was primarily on Europe,” he said. “I went to Argentina a couple of times, but Africa was never a thought, with work permits as well as logistics for follow-ups and everything else.
“But I actually saw the video of Ramadan standing on the ball (for Al Ahly against Zamalek), did a bit of work, watched more of him on Wyscout and got (colleagues) Lee Maybury and Tom Sutton to have a look too. We all saw the potential so Mark Cartwright backed us to keep going.
“We knew he wasn’t going to be on many lists. Stoke, Newcastle, West Ham were always fighting for the same players. If we fancied someone you could bet he’d normally be in their books too so it was difficult to stay ahead. This one felt outside the box and we took the chance.
“But it wasn’t easy. The way we had to make contact in the end was through Hector Cuper, who was the national team manager and had the same agent as (then Stoke youth player) Sergio Molina.
“So I flew out to Egypt and it was bizarre.
“There was a stadium ban (a national six-year ban following a riot), a bit like now. I had to go with the line that I was part of the national team party. I made a three-hour drive to Alexandria to watch Al Ahly play in an empty 87,000-seater stadium and go in with three national coaches.
“I don’t look Egyptian and I certainly don’t sound it, so I had to keep quiet until we were in our seats when I could get the chance to ask, quietly, about his character and what he was like off the pitch.”
The second scouting mission wasn’t much easier when Cruickshank didn’t have the national party as camouflage. The kit man got him in and he pretended he was a friend of Martin Jol, the Al Ahly coach.
Cruickshank saw enough to arrange a meeting with Ramadan and his agent in a hotel away from prying eyes.
He said: “You could tell he was a big deal. There were posters of him everywhere. I think he had three different marketing contracts and when we were shaking hands he was surrounded by people wanting photos and autographs.”
That was another part of the package.
“At first we just saw the footballer,” said Cruickshank, “only as we did more research you realised that he didn’t just have more followers on Instagram than Xherdan Shaqiri – who we all knew as a big player – he had a million more.
“He’d done a big interview with the Egyptian version of Oprah and he was their second ever youngest international. There was a lot of hype.”
Stoke got him for just shy of £5m and sold him on to Huddersfield for nearly £6m two years later. Loan fees back to Al Ahly and then a transfer to Pyramids in September meant Huddersfield more than recouped that in turn.
But the deal wasn’t about making money, there was genuine ability.
“He was obviously skilful but so strong too,” he said. “The Premier League is a completely different level but he was an 18-year-old man, not boy.
“The pace of the Premier League did prove to be too much at that time but with his technique and skill he could handle himself.
“He actually played more games quicker than we had anticipated.
“We thought it would take six to 12 months for him to break in with a new language and new culture but, unfortunately, we were on a downward turn and that made things hard for him.
“He went to another relegation battle with Huddersfield when you wonder how things might have been different if he’d gone to play regularly and score goals in Belgium or Holland.”
Cruickshank works at Nurnberg now but still keeps a close eye on his Stoke. To be fair, he keeps a close eye on everything in football – but it’s Stoke’s results he’s looking for, rather than prospects.
“I really want to see Stoke do well, 100 per cent,” he said. “The last two years we were there were tough and there’s no denying that but the first three or four were great. We all really enjoyed it and we played some really good football.
“I still see the clips sometimes posted on Twitter of when we had Marko Arnautovic, Shaqiri and that Stokelona period. I look back on that with pride, it was brilliant.”