Only 18, he’s in world’s top soccer league
Hamilton native gets promoted to Wolverhampton’s game-day roster
He’s travelled a very long way in a very short time.
Take that literally or as a metaphor; both work well.
Three years ago, Hamilton’s Theo Corbeanu was patrolling the soccer pitch for St. Thomas More Knights and travelling to Toronto to play in the youth program of the renowned TFC Academy.
This month, he’s travelling to some of the most famous sports stadia in the world after being promoted to the first team of one of England’s 12 original professional league franchises.
“It’s so exciting,” says the 18year-old winger who is now a full-fledged member of the venerable Wolverhampton Wolves of the English Premier League, generally regarded as the deepest soccer league on the planet.
“I’ve been envisioning this my whole life. It’s been a rollercoaster ride since I came out of STM.”
After taking a calculated career gamble by leaving the Toronto FC program for a noguarantees tryout in Europe three years ago, Corbeanu has forged a rapid and remarkable upward trajectory through the ranks of history-drenched Wolverhampton; known simply as “Wolves” to the West Midlands masses who eat and breathe just for them.
He has yet to see action in the three games since he was promoted from the second team earlier this month as management gently acclimatizes him to the EPL’s relentless skill, pace and pressure, but Corbeanu is clearly a valued building block in Wolves’ near future. He has what Wolverhampton so often lacks — diverse scoring skills and an innate nose for the net — especially with star goalproducer Raul Jimenez sidelined with a serious skull fracture.
When Corbeanu first travelled to England he showed well in a trial with Leicester City, but on his agent’s advice, before committing to them he went to Wolves to make a comparison. Wolverhampton quickly offered him a “scholarship” for youth-team play and he scored in his first game for their U-16s. He graduated to U-18, then turned full professional with the second (U-23) team this year. He played only nine games for those reserves, but scored four times and that was enough evidence for Wolverhampton to sign him to a new three-year contract in October and summon him into the main matchday lineup.
If you don’t know soccer, we’re here to inform you that that this is big, big stuff … in the world’s biggest sport.
Wednesday night he was in uniform, but on the bench, during Wolverhampton’s heartbreaking extra-time loss at Manchester United’s storied Old Trafford grounds.
“It was so unbelievable I can’t even begin to describe it,” he said of the experience. “But I really wanted to play. I know where I’m at with the team, but no matter where you are, whatever age, you want to come on and are always frustrated and disappointed if you don’t.
“It’s good to see what the level is and get used to it, but I hope to make my debut soon. I’ve always believed in myself and I’ve got so much more to show because I haven’t even started yet.”
Actually, he’s shown a lot al
ready. Enough that John Herdman, the high priest of Canadian men’s soccer, chose him for January’s national team training camp and three “friendly” matches in Florida, if the pandemic doesn’t intervene. Herdman told Corbeanu that Canada Soccer is impressed by what he’s accomplished in England, and that he should be proud of himself.
Although Corbeanu was born here, his parents Dorina and Andi and older brother Radu (28) emigrated from Romania in 1999, which qualified him to play internationally for Romania. Over his two-plus years of international age-class soccer he scored regularly for Romania, including twice in his first match. But he left the Romanian program in 2019 because he wanted to remain eligible for Canada’s senior men’s team.
Radu Corbeanu, who played soccer in Hamilton, introduced his younger brother to the game through his favourite player, Thierry Henry, so the French legend and prolific scoring star Cristiano Ronaldo became Corbeanu’s idols. Radu is now his guardian in Wolverhampton where they share an apartment just a short walk from Molineux, which opened in 1889 as the first stadium ever built for a soccer team.
“You can just feel the history there,” he says.
You can’t feel the fans there, though, because during a pandemic there aren’t any.
“But they’ve sent me a lot of messages through social media,” Corbeanu says. “I get a lot of love from them. It’s great to see, when I haven’t even played any minutes of first-team football. They’ve seen me in the reserves and it’s good to know they appreciate me and want me to make my debut.”
Wolverhampton coaches have publicly praised Corbeanu’s thick arsenal of offensive skills and also his defensive work. He’s mature beyond his years and tall enough (six-foot-one) to win head balls and to deceive defenders who don’t immediately recognize the quick acceleration hidden in his long, smooth stride.
Corbeanu started out in Timbits soccer as a goaltender but soon fell in love with scoring goals rather than stopping them. He moved up to rep
teams with Mount Hamilton, then Hamilton Sparta, and then briefly at Saltfleet where he played for Ron Davidson, “my most influential coach then and I followed him wherever he went after that.”
He played at Davidson’s Givova Academy and eventually for Toronto FC’s star-developing youth academy, but he’d always felt an inner call to the big European leagues and, in 2018, he decided to try his hand or, rather, feet in England. He essentially departed TFC without telling them because he felt that, otherwise, it would be too hard to leave.
“You can’t do any better in North America than MLS and TFC is one of the very best places to be,” he said. “But my parents and I had talked about it and I wanted to make one of the top five leagues in the world. I didn’t want to leave Toronto FC except for a higher level.
“I didn’t know what the outcome would be. If it wouldn’t have happened for me I would have been in a real pickle. I could have missed a year, or more, so I took a big risk.”
So far, that risk is paying quick and high dividends.