Bullying claims
Teenager’s well-being remains a serious issue and it is to be admired if he wishes to develop his career, but accusations and rows on Twitter are likely to create more problems
For those whose job it is to educate the teenage footballers at leading English clubs facing daunting odds to make it as professionals, one imagines that the case study of Bobby Duncan, Saif Rubie and Liverpool will figure prominently in their teaching for some years to come.
The claims this week from Rubie, adviser of Duncan, an 18-year-old Liverpool academy striker, that he is facing “deep mental health issues” are being treated seriously by the club, who feel that they have no option other than to take them at face value. As for the rest of this conflagration played out on social media, quite frankly, where does one start?
It is a cluster-catastrophe orchestrated by Duncan’s intermediary Rubie, who might be the first self-styled public relations expert obliged to delete his Twitter account in the wake of his own advice. It was Rubie who released a statement about Duncan in which he made a number of extremely serious allegations against the club and technical director Michael Edwards that Liverpool have strenuously denied. Rubie did not respond to a request to comment when contacted at the end of the week.
The state of Duncan’s mental health is not to be taken lightly, and the extent of that will have to be established by the club when they have the opportunity to meet him.
Rubie’s key allegation was that these issues flow from the club’s unwillingness to loan or sell Duncan, culminating in the phrase to which the greatest exception was taken: “Mentally bullying and destroying the life of a young man.” Not so much the proverbial nuclear option in transfer negotiations, but the full Death Star superlaser.
What, then, is the reality, and what were Duncan’s options of a move from Liverpool, at the age of 18, as a player who was starting his first full season in the club’s under-23s? There is a difficult truth to approach here which would be hard for any player – especially a cousin of Steven Gerrard. That being that Duncan, at his current level – even after doing a first-team pre-season
– was considered to be nowhere near contention.
Like all 18-year-olds, there is scope for improvement and he is regarded to be a decent finisher as well as a committed competitor. He may well surprise everyone and find a new dimension to his game that means he exceeds the more modest predictions for his career. Certainly this is not a player who is rated as ready to start games in Serie A for Fiorentina, understood to be one of the clubs Rubie claimed in his statement were ready to offer a loan deal.
The other were Nordsjaelland in Denmark, and one might reasonably ask what is wrong with an ambitious teenager trying his luck somewhere in Europe? Who would not want to pull on that purple jersey and live the Gabriel Batistuta dream in Florence for a season? The problem with Fiorentina’s offer was that, according to reliable sources, it was more like a trial than a loan.
English clubs have been reluctant to loan young players to Italy in recent years because those deals have typically come with so many conditions that are unlikely to be met. The most likely outcome is that the player returns after a year having played very little or not at all, with no benefit to the loaning club, sporting or financial.
The details of that offer, and the one from Nordsjaelland, were rejected on behalf of the club by Alex Inglethorpe, the academy director, and someone who can rightly be said to have his young players’ best interests at heart.
Inglethorpe, with the agreement of Edwards, felt Duncan could develop much better this season with the under-23s. He is some way behind fifth-choice striker Rhian Brewster (left) – nine months older than Duncan – who himself is behind Divock Origi for a place on the first-team substitutes’ bench.
A failed loan on the CV helps neither parent club nor player, in a game where perception still counts for so much. A reputation in the game is worth protecting and Liverpool also have to judge the best course for an asset for whom they paid £200,000. It is worth noting that Manchester City’s original price for Duncan, when he told them that he wanted to leave their academy last year, was £400,000, but there was no market at that level.
Duncan decided to leave City shortly after the club signed teenage striker Nabil Zoubdi Touaizi from Valencia. One wonders if the arrival at Liverpool from Fulham this summer of the fast-tracked 16-year-old Harvey Elliott – also part of the first team pre-season – might have had a similar effect. In terms of progress, Duncan only needs to look at the new contract given to Curtis Jones, also 18 and another local lad, to see that Jones, six months older, is regarded as much closer to the finished item.
It is frustrating for academy players at Liverpool that they are on a different site to the first team until the new training ground being built at Kirkby is finished. It can make that leap to the first team look even bigger than it is, although there is no doubt the standard required to play for the European champions is high. But even so, it is still hard to explain why player and adviser made such a monumental misjudgment this week.
Any intermediary with serious concerns about the health of a player is expected to raise that privately with the club rather than weaponise it in a public row. Curiously, Duncan’s official representation contract is understood to be lodged with another intermediary, Rob Segal. There is no suggestion he played any role in last week’s statement and the ensuing Twitter fireball.
It was a hard lesson for Duncan, who will have watched the whole episode unfold with horror. There is nothing wrong with a young player wishing to gain first-team experience away from the parent club mothership, or indeed cut his ties altogether. British youngsters have been doing it this summer: Arsenal’s Xavier Amaechi, also 18, departed on a €2.5million (£2.26million) move to Hamburg. At Everton, Scotland Under-21 striker Fraser Hornby, 19, went to Kortrijk on a loan move with an option to buy for the Belgian club.
In those deals there was something in it for both sides, and the levels required from the players involved were attainable. No statements were required, no rows, no Twitter accounts deleted. The lesson for all those young footballers watching Duncan this week being that if you have to resort to those kind of tactics then the chances are you are already doing it wrong.
Any intermediary with serious concerns should raise them privately with club