Sky's the limit: After a brief stay at Fulham,
Smalling will be nurtured by Sir Alex Ferguson at Old
Trafford
When Theresa Smalling picked up the phone at home in
Chatham, Kent on Monday afternoon there was a familiar Scottish
burr at the end of the line.
Sir Alex Ferguson was calling to assure the mother of Manchester
United’s latest transfer target that her son, Chris,
would be well looked after in the North West.
‘I was so shocked,’ said Theresa, 53. ‘It was the voice. It was
like I was on TV.
‘He was just saying how impressed he was with Chris, how he’ll
be well looked after and telling me about everything they’ve got up
there.
‘I couldn’t believe it when Chris said about Manchester United,
although I wish it was the Arsenal. I’m an
Arsenal fan and Chris was when he was little. But I’m so
proud.’
Sir Alex’s direct approach may seem an old-fashioned anomaly in
the modern game, but Chris Smalling’s lightning rise from
non-League football to the Premier League champions in less than
two years appeals to the traditionalist in us all.
In the bar of the Cobdown Sports and Social club in Ditton,
Kent, where Smalling played for Maidstone United reserves in front
of a single ramshackle stand with peeling green paint, Bill
Williams, Tony Cornwell and Alan Walker laugh as they try to
express their pride using a series of well-worn clichés.
‘Rags to riches, Over the moon, A schoolboy’s dream. What else
can we throw in there?’ says Walker, 50, Maidstone’s first-team
manager and a former player with Lincoln City, Millwall and
Gillingham, as Smalling’s face flashes up on Sky Sports News.
‘To have two of the biggest clubs in the world (Arsenal and
United) fighting for his signature, well, you couldn’t ask for any
more, really,’ says Cornwell, 49, the reserve-team boss.
‘When you’ve been in football for a long time, sometimes you see
a little gem,’ adds Williams, 67, general manager and a former QPR,
Portsmouth and
West Bromwich Albion player. ‘The first one I ever had was Bruce
Grobbelaar when he was 17 or 18. You know that they are special
players. And Chris was one of them.’
We are family: Chris, aged eight, with younger
brother Jason at Ridge Meadow Primary School
It is easy to understand their excitement. Smalling’s rise, as
Walker puts it, has been nothing short of meteoric. The player, now
20, was born in Greenwich but the family moved to a semi-detached
home in Chatham when he was five. Smalling attended Ridge Meadow
Primary School, just up the road, and played for Walderslade Boys
and then Lordswood as a youngster.
A basket of daffodils and bluebells, a bottle of bubbly and a
congratulations card from one of Smalling’s old teachers were
delivered to his mum this week.
The staff at his secondary school, Chatham Grammar School for
Boys, which younger brother Jason, 17, still attends, were equally
pleased for their former pupil.
Head of PE Andy Anderson said: ‘Chris was a very good rugby
player, talented at basketball, judo — we took him paintballing
once and he was even good at that! We always said he could have
been at least county standard at everything he tried.
‘He was quiet, unassuming, well-liked. He was always
immaculately turned out and well spoken.
‘Sport dominated everything Chris did but he managed to hold
down a job as well – he was a waiter in a hotel.’
Booted and suited: Chris turns out for Walderslade
Boys at the age of nine
Smalling studied travel and tourism, media studies and
business studies to A-level, as well as economics at AS-level, and
achieved good grades in all his subjects. ‘There’s
a very level head on the shoulders of a very tall young man,’ said
head of sixth form Ken Burkett.
After showing promise in the local Medway leagues, Smalling
joined Millwall when he was 12 but travelling to London proved too
much by the time the player reached 14.
Ms Smalling, a single mum, didn’t have a car and, although
Millwall offered to help with the costs, she didn’t want her
teenage son travelling on his own.
‘We just couldn’t get up there,’ she said. ‘He would have been
perfectly capable of going on his own, but I wouldn’t let him. I
had to take him out. He didn’t play football for
nearly a year.
‘I was more upset than Chris, I think. He just carried on and
worked his way up, playing for school and then Kent. He really put
himself out there.’
One previous owner: Theresa Smalling with Chris'
old Renault Clio that he replaced with a Range Rover
At 16, Smalling joined local non- League club Maidstone United,
quickly progressed through the ranks from the Under 18s to the
reserves and then the first team, who play in the Ryman League.
Cornwell said: ‘He had time, he was an elegant player, he played
out from the centre of defence, he liked to pass the ball, he could
read the game superbly well.
‘His physical attributes are great (Smalling is now 6ft 4in) and
he’s quick.’ ‘And he had a wonderful Afro, didn’t he?’ interrupts
Williams. ‘We used to call him Shaft, from the TV programme in the
1970s.’
‘But we were playing games in the Ryman Premier and he was man
of the match every week,’ said Walker. ‘He was absolutely
outstanding. He could play anywhere across the back four and even
played in midfield at Under 18 level. But central defence is his
best position. He reminds me of Rio Ferdinand, the way he plays,
much more than Nemanja Vidic.’
Pointing to the future: Bill Williams and Tony
Cordwell at the site where Maidstone want to build a new
stadium
At 17, Smalling was called up for England Schoolboys,
which brought him on to the radar of scouts from Middlesbrough,
Charlton, Reading, Fulham,
Chelsea and
Arsenal.
Mother and son liked what they saw when they visited the North
East and Smalling nearly signed for Middlesbrough, but the promise
of a three-year deal much closer to home at Roy Hodgson’s Fulham
proved more attractive.
The Cottagers’ senior scout, Barry Dunn, now head of recruitment
at Millwall, had got his man — or rather, boy.
Yet Smalling’s desire to play for his country at amateur level —
and Maidstone’s reluctance to stop him — meant he never signed a
contract with the non-League club.
When Fulham came calling in the summer of 2008, the Premier
League club therefore had no legal obligation to pay Maidstone a
penny.
Williams said: ‘Because of the relationship between the two
clubs (Hodgson is a former Maidstone player), Fulham gave us what
they call a training compensation agreement, which is registered
with the FA.
‘At the time it was a great deal and we appreciated it. However,
in the general scheme of things, it isn’t so good. In your wildest
dreams, nobody thought somebody would pay that amount of money
(£10m) at this stage in Chris’s career.
‘It would have been nice if we had had a 10 per cent sell-on,
which we asked for, because we’ve been striving for 15 years to
build a stadium in the town and that money would’ve done it. I
think they call it Sod’s law, don’t they?’
Smalling still sometimes picks Jason up from school in the Range
Rover he bought when he signed for Fulham — his mum now uses the
blue Renault Clio he drove as a 17-year-old — and spends weekends
in Chatham with his old mates whenever he can.
This, of course, will all change when the England Under 21
defender joins Manchester United at the end of the season.
His mum, whom he still visits regularly, says she will miss him,
but she isn’t averse to the idea of a move up north.
‘I’ve been in this house about 14 years. I wouldn’t mind moving,
though!’ she said.
