“Predestined” is probably the most overused term in the restricted football vocabulary. An adjective constantly placed on every immature player whose bright future is already being traced, either for a feat or for a series of positive games.
Out of place for many players, certainly not for one: Theo Walcott . Yes, he certainly was as close to reflecting that word, predestined. Walcott was born in London on March 15, 1989, but grew up in the small town of Compton, near Newbury, where he played for AFC Newbury and later at The Downs School secondary school. In his first and only season at Newbury, Theo managed to score over 100 goals, before moving to Swindon Town and then to Southampton . He already had his eyes on Nike who managed to enter into a sponsorship contract with the young footballer, who was only 14 years old at that time .
The story of the wonderkid, in reality, is all in the records of precocious battut i, one above all the debut in the senior national team , on May 30, 2006, against Hungary, in the penultimate friendly before the German World Cup.Walcott has turned 17 for three months, hasn’t played a minute in the Premier League yet, nor with Arsenal – the club he moved to five months earlier – nor with Southampton. The youngest Englishman to play a match with the Three Lions jersey enters 65th in place of Michael Owen , who is still the youngest English scorer ever at a World Cup, in France ’98. Eriksson could not have chosen a better, more suggestive change to formalize the passing of the baton between two generations.
He could not even have chosen a more appropriate opponent for this historic first cap: Diego Armando Maradona and Lionel Messi made their debut in the national team against the Hungarians .Walcott will be called up for the World Cup, but will not take the field . He is 17, there will be time, they say. They say badly, actually, because now that he is 31 years old he has never (or yet) played a single World Cup match . Yet since 2006, England has taken part in four editions.
It cannot be said that he did not leave a trace, certainly: in Wenger’s Arsenal he played 399 games and scored 108 goals , in the Premier League he travels over 340 coins and with the current Everton shirt he embellishes the number of he. He has won three FA Cups and two England Super Cups again with the Gunners. And in the national team,
Cose sparse: during the retreat for the 2006 World Cup,told the English press that he was a huge Liverpool fan , complete with details about the celebrations for the Champions League victory in Istanbul, the previous season. And then he also became the youngest player ever to achieve a hat-trick in the national team : and on 10 September 2008, England was back from the failure to qualify for the European Championships in Austria and Switzerland, gained in an internal match against Croatia. In Zagreb the rematch takes place, and Capello’s team wins 4-1. Walcott’s three goals are his first for England and his record as the youngest English player to score a hat-trick and still unbeaten today .
We would have said that he is predestined. Precisely.
Source: Transfermarkt | Wikipedia | Eleven Magazine
