I wasn’t the best player but I was fitter, faster and could jump higher
WITHOUT being nourished with unstinting commitment, talent alone is rarely enough to succeed. When both commodities are combined in equal measure, the result can be something akin to a force of nature. Call Chris Cadden to the stand.
The Motherwell midfielder has a neat line in self-deprecation. Describing himself as a ‘decent player’ at the age of 15, you wonder how good the ones that got away in Lanarkshire at that time must have been.
Because in anyone’s estimation, the 21-year-old is looking like the real deal. Now a Scotland Under-21 international, he’s a player who can go just about as far as he wants to in the game.
If he remains coy over talking about his ability to manipulate a football compared with others, he has no such reservations about scoring the application that’s helped to get him where he is today.
‘I was always a decent player,’ recalled Cadden. ‘But I will tell you now, there were a lot of better players than me when I was 15.
‘So I made sure I could run faster than them, I could run more than them, I could try and jump higher than them. I made sure I could do them well. It’s worked well for me.’
It helps when it’s in the blood, of course. Cadden’s father Steve, a hardy but gifted player, was also on the books at Fir Park as a kid and won a league title with Albion Rovers. Twin brother Nicky had two seasons along the road at Airdrie before moving to Livingston.
Having expert advice imparted in the parental home on a daily basis, much of it unpalatable, has undoubtedly allowed him to sidestep so many of the pitfalls encountered by many his age.
Sunday, in the Betfred Cup final at Hampden, would be an opportune moment to repay the debt he feels he owes to his father and mother Avril.
‘You don’t understand until you get a wee bit older,’ he reflected.
‘Just going to training on Tuesday nights and they are watching you in the rain and cold — you don’t appreciate that until you get a bit older.
‘They have been massive for me and Nicky — I think Nicky would say that, too. My dad could be pretty harsh after games but it’s good to get a bit of criticism. The two of them have been brilliant for me. I think the family are running a bus to the game and they can’t wait for it.’ Optimism and realism are their twin companions for the day. If it goes without saying that anything can happen over the course of 90 minutes, Celtic still have the quality to win the game comfortably.
Cadden is well-versed in the talents Motherwell must nullify. In Kieran Tierney’s case, he’s been compiling the dossier for half of his life.
‘I was a year ahead of him at school and through football you get to know each other,’ he explained.
‘He lives around the corner from me. I dropped him a text the other day but I won’t be speaking to him before the final that’s for sure.’
No one could possibly claim Motherwell do not deserve this moment. After topping their section with a flawless record, they’ve eliminated Ross County, Aberdeen and Rangers from the competition.
‘I said before the semi-final against Rangers that we couldn’t go out just to make up the numbers and it is the same again here,’ stressed Cadden.
‘We have to perform to the best of our ability. We are going there full of confidence. Someone has to beat Celtic, so why can’t it be us?
‘We have beaten Aberdeen and Rangers to get to the final, so we are confident we can beat them. We got a wee taste of winning at Hampden and we want that feeling again.’
As a west of Scotland boy, Cadden knows well how it works. Motherwell were simply never going to get due credit for that spectacular triumph over Rangers. Not when the peg holding Pedro Caixinha’s jacket was about to fall out of the wall.
But the tone of fall-out from the game still stung. If there was absolutely no defending the broken nose sustained by Fabio Cardoso due to Ryan Bowman’s flailing arm, the suggestion that Motherwell had succeeded by battering Rangers into submission was inaccurate.
‘We like to play on the front foot and we are physical,’ conceded Cadden. ‘We got criticised after the Rangers semifinal but, I think if you look at the stats, we are sixth for yellow cards in the league. So we aren’t over-physical.
‘I didn’t care what people said after the game because all I worried about was making the final. After the game it was all about Rangers and how we made the final because they played badly. On the day I thought we were brilliant and we made them look average.’ A repeat performance will certainly give Motherwell a chance. And if Celtic do drop a level and show any post-Paris fatigue, they’ll have an even better one. Sixty-four domestic games unbeaten or not, there isn’t a single member of Stephen Robinson’s squad viewing Celtic as a challenge that cannot be overcome. ‘We are looking at them and thinking: “Someone has to beat them”,’ said Cadden. ‘Why not us? We can go through full of confidence. Why not us at the end of the day? We can do it.’