Odoi wakes up to smell the coffee

IF FULHAM happen to be playing in your town and you are having a coffee on the day of the game, you might spy a slight, bespectacled man sitting quietly observing people at the back of the shop.

That will be Denis Odoi, who loves a coffee bar so much he slips out of the team hotel on match days to scope out the best caffeine emporiums.

Since Fulham were promoted, they have been playing in bigger cities with better coffee bars, he reckons. Though he insists there are plenty to be found in Championship towns, from Bolton to Bristol.

Coffee is a bit of an obsession for the 31-year-old Fulham defender even though he didn’t really like the drink until five years ago.

When he eventually packs up playing he might open his own shop. But in the meantime he knows all the good coffee bars in west London, from Teddington to Southfields to Surbiton.

And the Belgian believes the away bars in places such as Liverpool and Manchester are a very good reason that bottom-of-the-table Fulham should do all they can to stay in the Premier League, starting against West Ham tonight.

“When we play sometimes I like to away see if there are good coffee shops in the area, in the big cities we play at now – but you can find good coffee shops in Championship towns,” said the defender.

“I’m thinking of opening a coffee shop. But I would need to manage it and I don’t have the time right now.

“I like to go and sit and talk to people, watch people. When I arrived in England that was my hobby, looking up decent places to go for a coffee. Places like DropShot in Southfields or Woof in Teddington. A decent coffee.”

He’s a bit of an individual. When Odoi is not in the team, which he was not at the start of the season after being banned for being sent off in the play-off final win over Aston Villa, he cycled to games from his home by the Thames to the Cottage to watch.

Fans would stop him for a chat as he pedalled in Bishops

Park. “I don’t take the bike if I’m playing,” he says. “If we train at the Cottage I take it – along the Thames, it’s a nice ride.”

Memories here of another former Fulham cyclist, the German full-back Moritz Volz, who also pedalled to matches.

But if this gives a picture of a whimsical man, someone who does not quite get the urgency of Fulham’s fight to stay in the Premier League, of a team who have won only two games and let in a frightening 40 goals, you could not be more wrong.

Odoi, currently in talks over activating the extra year in his contract, which runs out this summer, revealed that new manager Claudio Ranieri has issued a ‘my way or the highway’ warning to his players.

And Odoi has warned his team that quality alone will not be enough to save them. Fulham’s players, he says, have to be prepared to sacrifice themselves.

The former Anderlecht defender, who joined from Lokeren two years ago, said: “We have the quality in our squad but is quality alone going to save us? No. Quality is far from everything. Last year people might have said Cardiff did not have the quality to go up but they had character, will and work ethic. That’s what got them promoted.

“It’s not just about quality. It’s about sacrificing yourself on the pitch. There have been teams that had really good players and still got relegated.”

Ranieri won his first game after being appointed, but has picked up only one point from the past three. Odoi added: “What he did with Leicester winning the title was remarkable. Did they have the quality of Manchester City or United that year? Probably not. But that didn’t matter.

“He said to us he has an idea of how to play. Whether it’s a good idea or bad it does not matter; what matters is that everybody follows it. Everybody has to be on the same line. He made it very clear. We get with him, or we don’t play. Because he does not have the time.

“In our situation, before you know it it’s too late. This is a period where we need to grab points and wins. We are all very aware here of the consequences if we don’t.”

And with that he retired for a latte.