LIFE GOT A BIT MESSI FOR ME
VERY few players can combine a life on the world’s biggest stage with that in the lower league, but Andre Boucaud’s career has been full of contradictions.
If anything, the higher the standard of the opposition, the more he feels at home.
“I was playing in League
Two for
Dagenham and then for the Trinidad & Tobago national team, playing in front of guys who were playing all across Europe, in the Champions League, in MLS,” Boucaud, who won 47 international caps for his country, told The NLP.
“That used to bother me, to be honest, but after a while I just got used to it.”
The summer of 2014 was perhaps the epitome of this stark contrast. In June, Boucaud played against Argentina in a World Cup warm-up match, locking horns with Lionel Messi, Javier Macherano and Angel Di Maria, among others.
A month later, while Messi & Co took on Germany in the World Cup Final, Boucaud was on trial with Dagenham & Redbridge.
Reputation
“I don’t think I reached where I could have, or I should have,” admits Boucaud, now looking forward to life at Maidstone United in National League South next season.
“I can’t put a finger on why that was. Maybe when I was younger, I had a bit too much to say, as such. I don’t know. Maybe people took me wrong.
“But football is about opinions, and it’s not just what you can do on the pitch. Sometimes, when one person says something about you which isn’t that great, the rest of the football industry follow without even knowing you. I think that’s maybe what could have happened with me.”
Many who have watched Boucaud play over the years, for the likes of Peterborough United, Kettering Town and York City, will have wondered why he wasn’t competing at a higher level.
A clever midfielder, with great touch and technique, Boucaud has dictated games at all different levels, but never higher than the third tier on these shores. As a young prospect at Queen’s Park Rangers, he was courted by Tottenham Hotspur, and feels that a desire to leave Rangers was unfairly held against him.
“From there, I just felt like they kept saying bad things about me.,” he added. “In a lot of walks of life, and football also, once they tar you with that brush, it’s hard to shake it off. Everyone wants to say this and that, but it’s not the truth.
“A lot of people will be going through the same problems that I had growing up. It’s just not right.
I don’t want to put it down to race. I don’t know what it is. Sometimes we speak in a certain way, or we articulate our words in a certain way because of the environment we grew up in. We can’t help growing up in that environment.”
For Boucaud, life on a tough north London estate gave him a passion for football, but perhaps contributed to a troublesome reputation that he has struggled to shed. While he acknowledges that some of that was down to a lack of focus early on in his career, people continue to prejudge him.
All he can do is keep proving them wrong, as he did with one former manager when they first met.
Mindset
“People wouldn’t put me and John Still together because of how his teams used to play, but I enjoyed playing under him,” says the 35-year-old.
“I think he brought out a different side to me as well, which was good.
“When he came in at Dagenham, he wrote me off. He said, ‘No, you’re not for me.’ I just basically said, ‘No problem.’ I got my head down, worked hard, and changed it around. He signed me at Barnet and Maidstone. Football’s about opinions, but opinions can change.”
Boucaud is proud to have made a living doing what he loves for 18 years, but he knows that the end is near. Just surviving for so long in such a ruthless and competitive industry is an achievement in itself, and he’s learned a lot that he can pass on to the next generation.
“When I was younger, because I knew I had ability and I was a confident boy, maybe I thought that would have carried me through.
“Now that I’m older I know that you need to have the right mindset and work as hard as you can. The ability comes after.”