for everyone. Photograph: McNulty/JMP/Rex/Shutterstock
If Michail Antonio feels a little nervous in the company of his England team-mates, he should treat Wayne Rooney and friends to a wonderful ice-breaking anecdote.
It dates back to November last year when, hoping to do a good deed, West Ham United’s joint chairman, David Gold, retweeted an “appeal” posted by one of the club’s fans asking that awareness be spread about a “missing” man.
Accompanying the tweet was a picture of Antonio, the right-winger who had apparently morphed into an “invisible” man, remaining virtually unseen by the Hammers supporters following his £7m signing from Nottingham Forest that summer.
Indeed, until late November the 26-year-old – who was playing non-league football for Tooting and Mitcham seven years ago – made only one appearance for Slaven Bilic’s side. During 2016 everything changed, with Antonio becoming central to Bilic’s blueprint. Despite sometimes being deployed at right-back he ended last season having scored nine goals for West Ham, eight with his head.
If that is a compelling statistic for a midfielder – and as England manager Sam Allardyce seems set to adopt a meritocratic, data-driven approach to selection – it was also no fluke. At his previous club, Nottingham Forest, Antonio attached end product to extraordinary pace and incisive crossing ability by scoring 15 times in 49 appearances.
With his powerful athlete’s physique leavened by a surprisingly delicate touch, it is no surprise Bilic was so keen to persuade Gold to recruit a winger who had joined Forest a year earlier for £1.5m following two quietly impressive seasons at Sheffield Wednesday. That breakthrough period at Hillsborough came after four frequently frustrating years with Reading where his penchant for constantly drifting infield, neglecting to take on his marker and frequently wayward finishing irked fans.
“Michail’s game really matured during his first season at Wednesday,” says David Prutton, a former Hillsborough midfield team-mate. “He really grew up – and really endeared himself to the lads. He has plenty of time for people. His non-league experience gives him perspective and grounding and his temperament is going to stand him in good stead now.
“His attributes make him a tremendous team-mate – he’s just so quick, strong and direct. At Wednesday he was a tremendous outlet for us; he could carry the ball 40 or 50 yards.”
Wednesday club officials echo such sentiments. They recall a “very pleasant young man” always willing to volunteer for media duties, who arrived with “explosive pace” – and the sort of rawness that made him liable to “put the ball anywhere but the place he intended”.
At Reading Antonio scored only once in 28 appearances and spent endless months touring the country on loan, taking in stints at Cheltenham Town, Southampton, Colchester United and, initially, Wednesday. John Ward, Colchester’s manager at the time, lamented Antonio’s habit of “knocking it on to the A12”, complaining “Michail’s our shining light but his finishing is very wayward”.
Martin Allen, then Cheltenham’s manager, always suspected that some concerted polishing might carry Antonio a lot further than many imagined. “He was very pacy with a long throw,” he recalls. “A good athlete and a down-to-earth lad, too. I was a bit surprised when Reading let him go – and I thought they could have got more money for him.”
Living out of a suitcase on the nomadic, unglamorous lower‑division loan circuit would horrify most England counterparts but, to a Londoner who had begun his career combining work as a lifeguard at his local leisure centre with playing in front of 200-strong crowds for Tooting and Mitcham, it represented a lifeline.
If there were times when Antonio regretted abandoning plans to train as a PE teacher he did not show it. Checking into a series of anonymous provincial hotel rooms for prolonged stays was sometimes a little soul-sapping but all his temporary employers saw was a player ever-present at training and possessing a zealous determination offset by rare, appealing humility.
Michail Antonio has been selected by Sam Allardyce's first England World Cup qualifying squad. Well done Michail. dg pic.twitter.com/B7ZdAYJ6Ob
— David Gold (@davidgold) August 28, 2016
Whereas a decision to concentrate on football rather than table tennis – a sport at which he excelled as a child – proved straightforward, his mother’s refusal to allow the 14-year-old Antonio to join Tottenham Hotspurs’ academy – she deemed it too far from their south-west London home – proved more painful.
In March this year the winger, who has two small children, made a similarly big call in rejecting overtures to represent Jamaica. It was a gamble vindicated when Gold tweeted another close-up of Antonio’s face, this time accompanying a message congratulating him on Allardyce’s England invitation.
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