‘I take it more seriously than Carew used to’
Joshua King is happy to fill the boots of Norway’s first black strike sensation, he tells Sam Wallace
Joshua King is still occasionally mistaken for an Englishman when people wonder why he has not been considered for Gareth Southgate’s squad and, with his name and his Mancunian accent, Bournemouth’s leading goalscorer for the past three seasons can understand why.
He has been here for 11 years, catching the accent from his friend Danny Welbeck and the other local boys at the Manchester United academy, which he joined at 16, living in Sale with his mother May-Beth and fellow scholar Magnus Eikrem. They were two of the hottest young talents in Norwegian football, snapped up by United, and while Eikrem is now back at Molde, King never went home.
He is one of the biggest names in Norway’s team, an Oslo boy from the district of Romsas, where his Gambian father Joshua moved at the age of 22. This was the age of free immigration into Scandinavia and it was not unusual to be a mixed-race boy in Romsas, where his best friends were of Turkish heritage.
They all looked up to John Carew, also the son of a Gambian father, who played in the Premier League and across Europe and was the first black footballer to represent Norway.
Chatting at Bournemouth’s training ground ahead of tomorrow’s game against Crystal Palace, King admits his relationship with the Norwegian media is not straightforward. He says they imagined a rift between him and his manager, Eddie Howe, earlier this year when what he had actually said was that he was disappointed with his own performance last season – he scored 16 league goals in 2016-2017, but eight the following year. He is learning to accept the scrutiny.
“There have been a few things, but I have grown up and learnt that less is more and to say less because they are trying to do anything to blow it up,” he says. “Anything from your tattoos, to where you go on holiday, to what car. They just try to ask stupid questions that aren’t related to football. Sometimes I react in the wrong way. It p----- me off. I have learnt to just answer football questions.”
If that makes him sound difficult then he is not – but at 26 he is a strong character who knows his mind. His father, also known as Chuku, moved to Oslo from Gambia, encouraged by an uncle who had found work in Sweden. Chuku had three different jobs but only missed three of his son’s countless games over 10 years, even if it meant sleeping in his car when they played tournaments in Denmark.
He worked during the day as a council repairman and by night he was a reggae impresario, bringing the likes of Damian Marley to perform in Oslo.
Indeed, by the time we get into this topic, Joshua is checking phone messages from his mum documenting the family history to make sure he gets the answers correct. He loved his childhood in Oslo – “10 out of 10, I wouldn’t change a thing” – but is he unafraid of analysing the country he comes from, as the son of an immigrant and also a citizen who has been away for so long?
We discuss the Norway team’s great rivalries. “That’s the thing, the Norwegian mentality is a bit weird,” he says. “Rivalry for them is more if they see Sweden, they will wish them well. It’s not like Scotland coming to England. When it comes to football, the biggest sport in Norway is skiing.
“When we play Sweden it is not a hate-hate relationship, it is more brotherly. I have played against Sweden and I didn’t feel hatred. There are so many Swedish people working in Oslo.”
Later we are discussing what it is like to be part of a new generation in northern European countries which, for the first time in their history, have racially plural societies. “I am not very ‘Norwegian’ in the way I think and talk,” he says. “Norwegians are very ‘A4’ – very simple. When I was younger and first got in the national team, I would say what was on my mind and they would enjoy that. So I was a bit of entertainment for them, for the Norwegian media. I have learnt to talk more now and not give them too many headlines.”
King can also turn his critical eye upon himself. He says that his five years at United were difficult because he was injured so much, making just two first-team appearances. There was too much partying, he admits, especially when he was injured. “The injuries messed up my mind. I couldn’t get all my energy out on the pitch. Sometimes I would get dragged out on the Saturday when I shouldn’t. I was injured and that wasn’t the best for my recovery, but I was young and I have learnt that now.”
He had loan spells at Preston North end, Borussia Moenchengladbach, Hull City and Blackburn Rovers until eventually Blackburn signed him permanently the day after he made his second United appearance as a substitute in a Champions League game against Galatasaray in December 2012. He had hoped to start the game and not doing so made up his mind. He had to stop with the loans and get out.
“I got four minutes, which p----- me off. I was a bit angry he [Sir Alex Ferguson] put Federico Macheda on in front of me. That p----- me off and the next day I signed for Blackburn. You move on in life.”
Bournemouth signed him when they were promoted and he has not looked back.
At the end of the 2016-2017 season he was linked with Tottenham Hotspur, where he would have been a second choice. At Bournemouth he starts every week as one of the lightning-quick front three with Callum Wilson and Ryan Fraser.
He says that the team know what went wrong in last week’s 4-0 defeat to Burnley at Turf Moor. They had been “too cocky” after a strong start.
His first response when asked about his dreams for the future is to get Norway to Euro 2020. His team-mates are playing at a good level across Europe, he says, and he knows that, along with Martin Odegaard, Real Madrid’s teenage prodigy on loan at Vitesse Arnhem, there will be responsibility on his shoulders to push the team on. He is happy with that.
When we talk about Carew, King says that the distinction between him and the retired one-time Aston Villa, Stoke and West Ham striker is that Carew will admit that he never made the most of his talent. “He’s said himself if he took football seriously he would have been even better – he could have been one of the best in the world, but he didn’t have 100 per cent focus.”
King feels differently about his own career, when it comes to Bournemouth and to Norway. He would like to play in the Champions League one day. “I want to walk out there and hear that music.” When he was a young boy, once a year his dad would take him to London to buy the latest football boots before they went on sale in Norway. “We used to have arguments in Niketown,” he recalls.
He is very proud of his dad, still a “workaholic”, and it is nice, he says, to see him with his own son, Noah. Chuku saved for two years in Gambia just to be able to afford to fly to Oslo, and all his hard work really has been Norway’s good fortune.
‘I was a bit angry when Sir Alex Ferguson put Macheda on in front of me. I left the next day’
‘I’d get dragged out on a Saturday night when I shouldn’t. But I was young and I’ve learnt that now’