Having left
home at 16 to pursue football against his mum’s wishes, Brown Ideye is
thankful he can smile now. So much so he is able to give a highly
animated impression of her watching him play for West Bromwich Albion.
Squinting
to study an imaginary television back home in Nigeria, his arms flap
wildly. ‘Don’t kick him!’ he shouts, mimicking his mother Teresa’s
voice. ‘Ref can’t you see!’ he jabs his fingers.
‘Each
time West Brom play my mother is wearing my shirt, sitting down in
front of the telly, and she is like this,’ Ideye laughs.
Ideye's success story is one for West Brom fans and football supporters in general to truly admire
The Baggies striker left his home at 16 to pursue a career in football against his mother’s wishes
It is
quite some turnaround given she banned him from playing the game as a
14-year-old through fears he would get caught up with criminal gangs on
the streets of Lagos.
After
his father Joel died, she even sent him to her sister’s remote village
eight hours away to keep him from football and, as she saw it, trouble.
A
decade later Ideye, 26, is West Brom’s £10million record buy and, after
initial difficulties, beginning to make good on his pricetag.
He
faces Aston Villa in the FA Cup quarter-final on Saturday, looking for
revenge on the local rivals who triumphed in a dramatic Premier League
match on Tuesday night.
He
scored two goals in the last round to do more than any in the 4-0
destruction of West Ham United, and is allowing himself dreams of
Wembley.
A
May date at the grand stadium might present the chance for his mum to
support her son in person for the first time. ‘In summer it’s possible,
right now it’s cold for her,’ he says. ‘I want us to get to the final.
If we do then I can arrange it.’
Had
she got her way all those years ago, however, Ideye would not be a
Premier League player. ‘It’s hard growing up in Lagos,’ he says. ‘There
is always a story to tell in a city like that. My friends were involved
in crazy stuff. They were bad boys of the area. I was picked up once by
the police.
‘My
mum stopped me going out with them. She was upset. Each time I told her
I wanted to play football she would say, “No you’re going to be with
your friends”.’
Ideye
was sent to live with his aunt but eventually ran away to train with
his old coach and finally told his mum he wanted to make a 200-mile trip
to Bayelsa State to play regularly. ‘She didn’t accept. That’s how I
left. I went to Bayelsa State then Ocean Boys. Then bam, bam, bam.’
The
bams are Neuchatel Xamax in Switzerland, Sochaux in France, and Dynamo
Kiev in Ukraine, where he scored 33 goals in 74 games and earned most of
his 24 Nigeria caps.
Once
he had signed professional forms, Ideye patched up his relationship
with his mum. Tears flowed. ‘When I got the contract in Switzerland I
went back home, sat with my family and had breakfast, dinner, lunch,
everyone happy.
‘Afterwards
she called me into her room and said, “I’m sorry about everything, your
dad is late and I am the only person who can guide you. I looked at
what your friends were doing and believed if I left you that is how
you’d become.” I said, “I get that.” She started crying. She could not
believe she tried to stop me becoming what she is enjoying today.’
Ideye spoke frankly about being sent to live with his aunt in order to keep him out of trouble as a youth
Having
looked well short of his pedigree in the opening months of the season
and on the verge of a cut-price deal on deadline day to Qatar side
Al-Gharafa, a glorious spell of four goals in six days (three games)
followed.
Cultivating
an understanding alongside Saido Berahino and with guidance from Tony
Pulis, Ideye looks to have found his feet in England. ‘I took a lot of
time to adapt,’ he admits. ‘I was overwhelmed that I am the record
signing. I put a lot of pressure on myself. People are not patient.
‘The
game doesn’t turn out the way I want, I become frustrated, I keep on
pushing when I am supposed to calm down. Things were going so fast.
‘As
for the social media, you can’t expect everyone to like you. They will
say what they want. I don’t see what can shake me given what has
happened before.
‘It’s inspiration. They are pushing me to my success. I like people criticising me.
‘That one week turned out to be something I dreamt. I felt this day would come. Getting back to the Brown Ideye people know.
‘One day the people who are saying, “He’s no good” are the same people who will say, “Don’t let him go.”’
He denies he would ever have gone to the Middle East in a £3.8m deal. ‘I do not have to run to anywhere.’
He
hopes to be running in celebration at Villa Park, performing the
somersault tumble that marked his last goal. ‘I always did that when I
was a child,’ he says. ‘When you’re excited you find yourself doing
things you don’t plan. The fans love it so I will keep on doing it.’
He
also wants to make Tim Sherwood reassess his belief that West Brom are a
‘good little club’, a throwaway comment not intended to disparage that
has irked their supporters.
‘I
think it’s not the right thing to say,’ says Ideye. 'But I guess if he
sees us as a small club and Villa as a big club and on Tuesday we lost,
then he will have the upper hand to say what he wants. To make him
realise West Brom is far higher than Villa we have to win. We have a
game where we can redeem our image by winning.’
Defeat
on Tuesday night stung, particularly as it was Ben Foster’s error in
the final minute which proved costly and that Alan Hutton’s high
challenge on Berahino was not met with a red card.
‘Ben
is a great guy, a lot of people make mistakes in football,’ says Ideye.
‘He apologised to everyone, but it is already done. We accept it.’
On
Hutton he adds: ‘I didn’t really see it at the time but I was watching
Match of the Day, I called my wife and said, “Look at this”. I feel a
little bit scared that a defender would go in like that.
‘It’s
the pressure of the game, everyone wants to go hard. But you still have
to respect the fact it is football. You have to respect each other. For
me I do not see that as a good thing. There are for sure going to be
tackles but not that high.’
The
image of Wembley provides most motivation though. ‘The Villa game was
just a reminder for us that we could lose a game in that manner, it is
for us to sit up and know that to get to Wembley we need to work hard.
‘Every
game we play under Tony we give our all, sometimes we win sometimes we
lose. Saturday is no different. We just have to add more than what we
did on Tuesday.’
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