I love it here... lose a game back home and all the mad fans come out!
Ecuador’s Superman Enner Valencia on why he’s happy to be at West Ham
IN the village of Ricaurte, in northern Ecuador, close to the Colombian border, the Valencia family will this morning be crowding into the family farmhouse. Parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews and grandparents will all be there and all eyes will be fixed on the Boleyn Ground in east London.
‘There’s loads of them,’ says Enner Valencia, now of West Ham but once of that parish. ‘Loads! They all gather there to watch my games and they always call me afterwards. I think they transmit all their happiness to me.’
The man dubbed Superman in his home country is not the first Ecuadorian to succeed in the Premier League – indeed, he could be facing his compatriot and namesake Antonio in West Ham’s meeting with Manchester United today. Enner arrived at the same time as Swansea’s Jefferson Montero and he follows in the footsteps of Agustin Delgado and Ulises de la Cruz.
But he is the most celebrated. His rapid rise to global prominence has been extraordinary. Little more than a year ago he was still playing with Emelec in Ecuador before earning a move to CF Pachuca in Mexico in December 2013. He scored against England in an excellent display in a pre-World Cup friendly and added three more in the World Cup finals as Ecuador were narrowly eliminated in the first round. The 25-yearold moved to West Ham in the summer and last week was linked with a £15million move to Chelsea.
Nowhere has this ascent been more positively received than in Ricaurte, though it was not always that way. He was the archetypal boy, chastised by his parents for the frequent occasions on which he would skip school to play football.
‘I was always with a ball, or with a bottle, or with whatever we came across, always trying to get a game going,’ he says. ‘Loads of times I bunked off school to play. I told my parents I was going to school but I never got there. I went to play football. I’ve always been passionate about this game. My mum and dad were always telling me off about this. But my love for the game was stronger than that!’
In other tasks, though, he was basically obedient. Coming from a rural family, he had farm chores to do, including milking the cows, and his father, Renberto, remembers he did his jobs dutifully.
And until 2014 his had been a gentle rise. He left home to join Emelec, a team in the south of the country, at the age of 18 and rose through the ranks, winning the title in 2013 and being the top scorer in the Copa Sudamericana, the equivalent of the Champions League, a feat for which he earned his Superman sobriquet.
VALENCIA was also the Mexican league’s top scorer in his six months there. Suddenly he became the focus of a nation. During the World Cup, Ecuadorian TV was running live feeds from his family home to relay the atmosphere to the nation.
His arrival at West Ham, along with Diafra Sakho, has propelled Sam Allardyce’s team up the table, injecting frightening pace of which United will be wary this afternoon. It has also brought him to the attention of Champions League clubs.
He almost missed his chance of the move to England after the World Cup, though. West Ham had contacted Pachucha in Mexico and fees were being agreed. The trouble was no one could track down Valencia, who was back in Ricaurte.
‘I was with my family. I’d switched off the phone and wasn’t taking any calls,’ he says. ‘In the end West Ham sent someone over because they had been calling over to Mexico to tell me to come and play in England.’
London seems to suit him. He lives in Canary Wharf, in the same apartment block as goalkeeper Adrian. ‘He has helped me a lot with the language, helped me at the club, helped me with getting used to being in England. He’s always there to help with whatever I need.’
However, Valencia is a keen learner. Unlike many foreign footballers new to England, he attends English classes every day. And what he likes most about London is the chance it gives him to assimilate. He can use the Tube or go out for a meal with his Ecuadorian wife, Sharon, without it being a major event.
‘It’s a lot easier over here compared to Mexico. If you go out in London, people know you and ask for a picture, but always politely. But in South America, in Mexico – no! They all crowd round and it’s photo after photo. The culture is completely different.’
Not that there is much time for socialising at present. Sharon gave birth to their daughter, Amelia, on Christmas Day, so nights are disrupted at present. He has a second daughter, Beira, who is three and lives in Ecuador.
But fan culture is somewhat removed from his experiences in Latin America. He was well aware of the passionate reputation of West Ham fans – embarrassingly for the club he had seen the film Green Street, a fictionalised account of West Ham’s hooligans. In real life the fans are somewhat more civil than their Latin American counterparts.
‘It’s completely different in Ecuador and Mexico. A lot tougher! You lose a game and you’ve got to be careful when you’re leaving the stadium in case some nutter jumps out at you.
‘Here, on the other hand, if you lose a game, the fans are still there asking if you’ll sign a programme and that’s something really nice about English football. They’re a lot more friendly. The culture is completely different here.’
Having just settled into West Ham, he does not especially want to engage with the talk of Chelsea’s interest. ‘I found out about it from the social networks and from what my teammates were saying,’
heh says.
‘Nobody said anything definite to me. But if a team like Chelsea is interested in me, it’s a big compliment. It makes me want to keep on getting better.’
For now, though, there are more immediate challenges, such as the visit of Manchester United. His immersion into the local culture has continued apace in recent days. ‘I’m learning about the rivalries we’ve got here in West Ham,’ he says.
‘Some say the derby is against Tottenham, others say the matches against United are another kind of derby. So we’ve got to win it.’
If they do, you can expect the celebrations at Upton Park to matched by the fiesta in Ricaurte.