By Jonathan Wilson/The Guardian
In November 2003, Lionel Messi made his debut for Barcelona in a friendly to inaugurate Porto’s new stadium. He was 16 years and 145 days old, and the third youngest player to play for the club. The youngest had been Paulino Alcántara in 1912, the second-youngest Haruna Babangida in 1998.
The contrasting fortunes of the three say much about the difficulties of predicting which players will make it. Messi has gone on to be one of the greatest payers in the history of the game. Alcántara was – until Messi came along – Barcelona’s record goalscorer (and he gave up the game at 31 to become a doctor). Babangida never played a competitive game for Barcelona, won only one cap for Nigeria and ended up drifting through Metalurh Donetsk, Olympiakos, Apollon Limassol, Kuban Krasnodar, Mainz, Vitesse and the Austrian second-tier side Kapfenberger before retiring in 2012.
So while there is considerable excitement about Martin Odegaard, who looks set to sign for Bayern Munich, it must be tempered by the acknowledgement that being a great 16‑year-old does not mean you’ll be a great 18-year-old, never mind a great 20-year-old or 26-year-old.
His promise is immense: there may be something slightly disturbing about the Bayern Munich chairman Karl-Heinz Rummenigge describing somebody who has just turned 16 as “a beautiful bride” and hoping that his club will be the “fortunate groom”, as though Odegaard were some medieval princess being touted round the courts of Europe, but it is easy to see why he has the elite so excited. Odegaard is technically gifted, plays with great imagination and brio, and seems remarkably mature.
In October, winning his second cap for Norway, Odegaard, then aged 15 years and 300 days, became the youngest player in European Championship history when he came off the bench in a qualifier against Bulgaria. He has already started 15 games for Stromsgodset and made a further eight substitute appearances. As yet, the attention seems not to have fazed him.
Initially the stories were of a grounded kid with supportive, devoutly Christian parents – and there can be little doubt that Odegaard has had an easier upbringing than, say, Nii Lamptey, Tema-born and who was named player of the tournament at the Under-17 World Cup in 1991. He had been abused by his parents and had taken refuge with a club in Kumasi.
He ended up fleeing Ghana in the boot of a car to join up with an agent in Lagos, who negotiated his move to Anderlecht. Naive and isolated, he was exploited by a series of agents and officials before Ron Atkinson helped sort out some of the issues at Aston Villa. By then, though, Lamptey’s early sparkle was already beginning to be dimmed by injury. He ended up retiring in 2008 having played fewer than 200 club matches in his entire career.
Odegaard’s father, Hans Erik, was a footballer himself, playing for Stromsgodset and Sandefjord. He is now assistant manager of Mjondalen, who were promoted to the Premier League last season for the first time in 22 years. Who better to guide a teenager through the professional game?
More recently, though, there has been disquiet. The last six months have felt like an extended marketing exercise. Odegaard has done at least a dozen major interviews and has trained with or at least visited Liverpool, Arsenal and Bayern Munich. Perhaps that is a sensible move, ensuring he has as much experience as possible and could make an informed decision as to where he wants to go – the equivalent of going on university open days.
And, equally, if he is confident doing interviews, why not raise his profile? The complaint that footballers live in a bubble and never actually engage with the world is common enough; if one is seeking to connect with the public, should he really be discouraged? The way his father gave his permission for Martin to be included in the databases of Football Manager, tweeting a picture of himself holding a cardboard sign, suggested an encouraging willingness not to take things too seriously.
The only proof of whether Odegaard’s advisers have got it right will be how he performs over the next five years or so. What they have done is ensure he will make his debut for the first team sooner rather than later – he will not molder in the reserves of a big club as so many young talents do – but at the same time they have inflated the pressure on him.
In that regard, the most apposite analogy is probably less Lamptey than another player born in Tema, Freddy Adu. He was 14 when he made his much-hyped debut for DC United, but his career never ascended beyond the 11 games he managed for Benfica. He was given every chance, played 87 games for DC United before the age of 18, but Adu has played only 87 more in the eight years since he left for Real Salt Lake. He is now failing to get a game at the Serbian club Jagodina.
Is he a wasted talent, or was he just never that good in the first place, a physically precocious and skilful teenager who never developed a tactical intelligence? He is still only 25, promise unfulfilled.
From the outside, Odegaard looks to have all the attributes to be extremely successful. He may be a Messi or he may be a Babangida, although the likelihood is he will be somewhere in between. Application and luck will play their parts, but it is also simply the case that players develop at different rates. Those who come through first are not necessarily the best.
