Colin Sheridan: Let Adeleke and Ferguson enjoy the here and now
“Because children grow up, we think a child’s purpose is to grow up. But a child’s purpose is to be a child. Nature does not disdain what only lives for a day. It pours the whole of life into each moment. We don't value the lily less for not being made of flint and built to last. Life’s bounty is in its flow. Later is too late.” - The character of Alexander Herzen, in Tom Stoppard's The Coast of Utopia
On the 19th October 2004, the calamity of the Iraq War was quickly unravelling, Charlie McCreevey had just passed the baton of Minister for Finance on to Brian Cowen, and Arsenal (!) were top of the Premier League. It had been a couple of months since a profoundly underwhelming summer Olympics for Irish athletes in Athens. In Tallaght, Co Dublin, Rhasidat Adeleke - not long walking - had just turned two. Some 60 kilometres up the road from the infant Adeleke, a little baby boy by the name of Evan Ferguson was born.
Eighteen and a half years have elapsed, and it seems both like a lifetime ago, and to have passed in the blink of an eye. Today, Adeleke, 20, and Ferguson, 18, stand on the precipice of a type of greatness none of us could ever really imagine for ourselves, and certainly not for our kids, for whom brushing teeth is an achievement worthy of a dozen press releases and a shoe deal with Adidas.
Adeleke is already an elite sprinter on the world stage, something this country has never produced. Ferguson is one of the most talked about strikers in a Premier League littered with Haalands, Salahs and Kanes. Ahead of them both lies a stretch of road strewn with unexploded and entirely unpredictable emotional ordnance, crude instruments of obstacle designed to inhibit and encumber. Injury, appetite, agents, headspace, hangers-on, self-doubt, loneliness, loss of form, PEDs. Pick your poison. Both youngsters will need Kevlar to emerge the other side, unscathed.
We all want a piece of them, too. So starved are we of sunlight we close our eyes and bask in the glow of their recent, glorious ascension. Every record broken by one, every goal scored by the other, every endorsement from afar. Gary Linekar tweeted Evan Ferguson looks like a proper striker!!!!. After watching Adeleke, Michael Johnson warned the world “Look out”. We are strutting like a family of four through arrivals in Dublin airport, bedecked in shorts and slim-fit gilets, fresh from a week in Marbella. We absorb the heat Adeleke and Ferguson radiate as if we birthed them ourselves. Their promise lifts us, despite us playing no part in their journey.
We care little for the landmines, and think only of podiums and platitudes. How quickly might we bemoan their demise, or forget them altogether? And that, for the most part, is ok. That escapism is part of the beauty of sport. Of art. Of the pursuit of happiness. It is both a consequence of caring, and a sad byproduct of the fickleness of human nature. We use them. Their intoxicating potential is altogether too tempting a cocktail to sip, but there is another side to this we must consider; we should not mortgage today for the promise of a better tomorrow. How many examples do we want? Keith Gillespie? Len Bias? Freddie Adu? Andrea Jaeger? Martin Fagan? If you're unfamiliar with some of these names it's only because their flame extinguished - for a myriad of complicated reasons - long before they came anywhere near realising their immense potential.
What Adekele and Ferguson are achieving now should be enough for us, for today. Everything else is a bonus. For the two of them, in the worlds they live in and the tongues in which they speak, the sky's the limit. And what they’re achieving is against very high odds indeed. No disrespect to a young kid growing up in Dublin who goes to a private school, but their chances of making it as an international rugby player are astronomically higher than Adekele and Ferguson having comparative careers in athletics and association football.
Nike will be tracking Adeleke like a seagull circling a bag of chips. Two years ago she was a kid in Presentation College, Terenure. Today, she is one of the most recognisable female college athletes in America. Thousands of miles away from home, she will need to possess the dexterity of an alley cat to survive the viper's nest of professional sports. At least, in her current stable at the University of Texas, she is supported by the cloak of a collegiate family. Once she’s done, she will be all alone. Every stride she’s taken thus far suggests she’s able for it, but there are no sure things.
Ferguson is younger than the average Leaving Cert student. He is barely an adult, legally speaking, yet he bullied Chelsea defenders for half an hour on Saturday as if he were a veteran of a dozen league campaigns. There are whispers of a big-money summer move to one of the “Top 6”, of Champions League football, of a loyalty card at Salt Baes. Like Adeleke, he appears to have the maturity and work ethic of somebody who knows what’s coming. Alas, nobody does.
All the more reason that the two of them should find a way to appreciate what they have already achieved is more than many of us would in 50 lifetimes. They should try to enjoy the here and now.
Later is too late.
The success of the Apple TV series Ted Lasso has little or nothing to do with the absurdity of the show's premise, and everything to do with the heart of its characters. Lasso, played by Jason Sudeikis, is a journeyman high school coach who gets plucked from obscurity to manage Richmond AFC, a Crystal Palace-type Premier League club perennially flirting with relegation. Lasso’s appointment was not some administrative cock-up, but an act of sabotage by Richmond's owner, who wishes to sink the club to spite her philandering ex.
The clueless Ted knows next-to-nothing about “soccer”, but - and here’s the rub, folks - he knows a lot about people. Cue a lot of losing matches, but even more winning people over. Really, for all its implausibility, it’s no more absurd than what’s going on at Chelsea at the moment. Sure, Frank Lampard is no nice-guy high school coach with zero footballing experience, but Chelsea fans might well be wishing he was. Lampard’s managerial CV to date could generously read; poor at Derby, bad at Chelsea, worse at Everton, and now, incredibly, comically crap at Chelsea (again). He’s been prolifically impotent in a remarkably short amount of time. He’s like some silver spoon, blue-blooded problem child who keeps getting high-ranking jobs at the Kremlin and screwing them up.
Who is Chelsea owner Toed Boehly trying to spite by appointing Lampard? Why is he so doggedly trying to vandalise a project that was built on the very principle that literally anybody could manage them to trophies, so big was the war chest? At least the creators of Ted Lasso had the decency to explain why Lasso ended up in London, however unlikely the artistic intention. To many of us, Ted Lasso is very funny, but what is comedically possible at Chelsea under Lampard between now and season's end is potentially way funnier.
Hardly an original thought, but the energy of last weekend's opening Gaelic football championship fixtures is already sadly lost to the fact that some teams are facing five to six weeks before their next meaningful involvement. How, in a season that is suddenly so short, is there so much dead time? And how, after so much deep thought has been given to these revisions, are we still facing the prospect that - in the case of Mayo - losing a meaningful game against a local rival is potentially more rewarding in terms of rest and route selection?
For every kid who had their dad risk the ire of their mother by putting a snooker table on top of the dining room table just to shoot some stick with his kid, the World Championships at the Crucible in Sheffield is a holy, sacred thing. Lop-sided surfaces, tipless cues, boisterous crowds - nothing could disrupt this filial ritual. Long afternoons on the couch watching Tony Drago lose to John Parrott, followed by longer evenings trying to replicate the artistry in the front room of your house, was one of life's simple pleasures. From now till May 1, the Crucible is where it's at. A good time to be “working from home”.
