The 'where are they now?' files

[Lee]

was just gonna post the same

David Raven now at Inverness Caledonian Thistle.

[Lee]

Toni Silva ( ) is plying his trade with CSKA Sofia.

He's only 20.

[Daniel 7]

Robbie Threlfall - the future of right backing for Ingerlund.

Just been released by Morecambe.

[rodo]

raul

http://www.frequency.com/video/raul-meireles-is-crazy-here-he-is/168049146/-/5-4355295

[Redspin]

David Raven now at Inverness Caledonian Thistle.

By coincidence I played in the same school team as his dad in Speke in the sixties. He was a very good player as I recall

[paulg]

Neil Mellor popped up on Soccer Saturday the other week, commentating on a Championship game.

[Chazza]

Diouf :spits: has been released by Leeds

[Exiled_red]

Diouf :spits: has been released by Leeds

I didn't realise he was still playing

[jono]

I'll be watching Dean Bouzanis play in goal for my Hyundai A League team the Western Sydney Wanderers as of next season.

[Shaggy]

Red Reet just mentioned him in another thread. Forgot all about him.

http://www.walesonline.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/what-happened-cardiffs-next-ryan-6335806

What happened to Cardiff's 'next Ryan Giggs': The incredible story of Manchester United starlet Ramon Calliste

Nov 24, 2013 12:25 By Chris Wathan

As Cardiff City welcome champions United, Football Correspondent Chris Wathan looks at what happened to Cardiff-born whizz-kid even Fergie believed was destined for the top.

Even a decade ago, Welsh football was desperate to find out just who would be ‘the next Ryan Giggs’. It looked like the search was over when Manchester United snapped up an exciting young talent from Cardiff who many were convinced was destined for the top.

Yet as Giggs gets set to face his hometown club with the champions this afternoon, his supposed successor never played a professional game. Football Correspondent CHRIS WATHAN looks at just what happened to Ramon Calliste.

Ryan Giggs watched on as the trophy was lifted in front of him. Salford, Giggs’ adopted home, had seen off the side from his family home, Cardiff, in their first English schools’ cup final since 1915.

But in one of the beaten players lay a greater hope, a hope that Welsh football, during a particularly success starved era at the turn of the millennium, was desperately clinging to.

Ramon Calliste was aware of the comparisons with the famous wing wonder who was watching on, even if he didn’t want them.

Spied by United’s South Wales scout Tony Hopkins while only just into his teens, when he was given a three-year contract by Alex Ferguson, Calliste’s Cardiff background meant he was always going to be fitted in to the profile of “the next Giggs”.

“I’m aware that people have spoken about me in the same vein as Ryan, but that’s only because I come from Cardiff and I’m with Manchester United,” said the boy who had gone from Fitzalan High in the Welsh capital to Old Trafford.

The fact United saw fit to invite the forward’s family with him, buying a house for his mother, brother and sister, said much that the analogy wasn’t being restricted to just place of birth.

“There was good reason for it,” says Clayton Blackmore, ex-United hero and, at the time a Welsh Schoolboys coach. “He was so exciting. I never saw him as a Ryan in terms of similarity as a player, but it was obvious to everyone he had great potential and a great opportunity.”

The fact that Calliste, now 27, was last known to be playing for West London Saracens, 11 tiers below today’s game between the two cities that connect him, tells you it was an opportunity he hasn’t taken.

“What happened? Only he could answer that question,” says Brian Flynn, Calliste’s former Wales Under 21 manager who, like Blackmore, reacts with a mixture of surprise and sadness when told of his recent appearances in the Middlesex County Division One (West).

This, after all, was a player who, in 2001, was named in Spanish sports magazine Don Balon’s 100 best young players across football; he was ranked at No.87, four places behind Dimitar Berbatov.

This was a player who had convinced plenty after arriving at United that he would be among the next crop of Fergie fledglings to make the grade, the Carrington schooling enough in most cases to guarantee a career, even if it is away from the Theatre of Dreams.

And yet Calliste never played a professional game, and arguably his most lasting legacy is to have become the subject of a challenging quiz question having become the first player since the 1960s to move from Old Trafford to Anfield.

“It’s not unusual for young players, for whatever reason, not to make it in football, but you did think there was something about Ramon,” insists Flynn, who knows a thing or two about spotting talent after his early tributes to Gareth Bale and Aaron Ramsey testify.

Those who played with him agree that he had a bit of stardust. Mention his name in Cardiff and there are plenty of tales about how good he was growing up, before the inevitable “what happened?” question emerges.

“He’s got the potential to be as good as Giggs,” said Peter Nicholas in 2002, Calliste 18 by then and the former Wales midfielder his age-grade boss at international level.

“And I know for a fact that Ferguson rates Ramon very, very highly and thinks he has got special talent. He won’t come out and say so in print because he doesn’t want his young players getting carried away.

“But listen, Ferguson’s no fool – he doesn’t give you a three-year contract if you’re no good and let’s just say he does have a habit of pulling out the odd gem of a youngster.”

United thought they had one. As did Wales.

“I remember watching him in a trial at Sophia Gardens and thinking he was like a gazelle,” recalls Blackmore. “If I remember rightly he had records at 100 metres and 200 metres so it wasn’t just that he was quick off the mark but he had this pace that would just keep going.

“When I saw him I thought he still had a lot to learn, most do at that age, but that he had this great, great opportunity.”

He wasn’t alone. Calliste was a relative star in the United youth team, part of the side in 2003 that won the FA Youth Cup with the “Class of 92” watching on.

Giggs supposedly had mentioned to others he believed Calliste had a chance but, two years later, Ferguson broke the news. United were releasing a raft of players after a decision to restructure their youth system; Caliste, at the age of 19, was among them.

“It has been a nightmare,” Ferguson said in 2005, the FA’s decision to swap Under-17 and Under-19 sides for one Under-18 side affecting player-heavy United perhaps more than others.

“But I think by the time you are 20-odd you have to be in the first team squad so we’ve had to release a few. Some have been tough decisions.”

Blackmore, now at United again as a coach of the academy’s Under-15 side, says whatever the reason for his axe, it wasn’t obvious.

“It happens and there can be so many factors behind it,” he said. “Not being quite good enough, a player in your position above you, your face not fitting, personal issues, only a few people could tell you. I think he was liked at United, so I’m not sure.

“But I do remember seeing him at an early age turning up in all his adidas gear looking as if he’d made it already. I don’t know whether that kind of thing had an impact, but there are dangers of having too much, too soon.”

If Calliste’s time at United was over prematurely, his chances of making it at a Premier League club were not. His release jogged the memory of scout Frank McPartland, who had seen him as a Cardiff schoolboy and persuaded Rafa Benitez to give him a chance at Liverpool.

“I was shattered by what happened at Manchester United. It was a real blow when I was released, a shock to the system,” said Calliste after signing.

“But when you get offered a chance like I have had, straight out of the blue, you take it. I grabbed it with both hands, it’s a wonderful opportunity for me.”

And yet all it proved to be was a year of reserve football before another conversation ending with “close the door on your way out”, the common perception being that he was simply signed to solve a striker shortage in the Anfield shadow sides.

He had turned down the chance of first-team football at clubs lower down the leagues to join Liverpool, with Flynn recalling one tale that saw his own doubts over Calliste first emerge.

“I took a call from a League One manager asking about Ramon and straight away I told him he was worth a look,” he said.

“The reply was ‘No, we’ve had him here and we desperately want to sign him – but he won’t budge from his wage demands’.”

Calliste, without a minute of football to his name, was asking to be top earner.

Flynn went on: “I would always tell all our lads I was there for them if they were released or needing to find a new club. I couldn’t get them a contract but I had enough connections to open a door, get their name in there, get them a trial.

“I would tell them to have a think about the kind of clubs they liked, if they wanted to stay in a certain area or whatever, and come back with a list of names across the divisions. When Ramon came to me he gave me a list of six Premier League clubs. He was a confident lad, but I remember wondering about him at that point.

“If you could look at reasons for a downfall, perhaps it was in that.”

Even when signing a one-year deal with Scunthorpe after leaving Liverpool in 2006, Calliste said: “It gives me a chance to work my way back to the Premiership.”

Cruel luck denied him the chance of showing whether that was ever truly possible. In a pre-season friendly against Brigg Town, Calliste shattered his ankle.

Out for for the majority of the season, his opportunity at the Iron was over and he floated from club to club on trial without getting contracts. Shrewsbury, Newport, Lincoln, Wycombe, even Levski Sofia in Bulgaria.

The suggestion was he never fully recovered from the injury and the slide did not stop, seasons at Farnborough Town and Cambridge City before the records dry up below the Southern divisions.

Currently involved in a luxury watch company but unknown if he is still playing for West London Saracens after his appearances for them last year, we were unable to contact Calliste to put his side of the story.

It is only left to others to speculate and wonder what happened. “Only he could tell you how much the disappointment of being let go by United affected him,” says Flynn.

Or perhaps how much the unfair expectation of being the next Giggs took its toll.

“I suppose it is part of the pressure that is on you when you play for such a big club as United,” Calliste said in 2002.

The fact he never did quite play for United is, as Blackmore says, “not only a shame, but a waste”.

[brightred]

That is so sad

[Kinell]

Former Liverpool and Atletico Madrid star Luis Garcia to play in Indian Super League

Champions League winner Luis Garcia has been unveiled as the marquee player for Atletico de Kolkata ahead of the franchise’s participation in the inaugural Indian Super League.

The 36-year-old had two spells with Atletico Madrid – joint owners of the Kolkata franchise – either side of a three-year spell with Liverpool where he won the FA Cup, the UEFA Champions League and the European Super Cup.

The former Spain international had announced his retirement from football earlier this year after spending two seasons playing in Mexico, but confirmed his participation in the Super League via his twitter account.

“I'm very excited to share with you my new challenge. I've decided to join Atlético de Kolkata,” Garcia tweeted.

The Indian Super League, which is set to run for two months beginning in September, will feature eight franchises and is the brainchild of the All India Football Federation and its marketing partner IMG-Reliance.

Each franchise is allowed one marquee player and FA Licensed agent Baljit Rihal of Inventive Sports believes Garcia’s arrival is the beginning of an exciting period in India’s football history.

“I think it’s a really important step for Indian football and more so because of Garcia’s links with Atletico Madrid,” the Asian Football Awards founder told Sky Sports.

“It’s also a really big statement of intent from the organisers because of the he fact he is also an ex- Liverpool player and Liverpool FC are very big in India.

“Being a Champions League winner himself makes this move huge because Champions League viewing figures in India run into the tens of millions and Garcia is a name that Indian football fans know.

“I think the announcement of further marquee players is imminent and I think there may well be some even higher profile names than Garcia.

“Robert Pires, Robbie Fowler, Hernan Crespo and Michael Chopra are the sorts of names that have been floating about.

“Garcia wasn’t even in the mix earlier and there is a lot more to come but I wouldn’t be surprised to see some high-profile players come that haven’t even been linked.”

Atletico de Kolkata have also confirmed former Bolivia national team boss Jose Antonio Habas will manage the club, which counts former India Test captain Sourav Ganguly as one of its owners.

Ganguly added: “Atletico de Kolkata is all set to epitomise core Bengali values and philosophy and provide the platform to nurture the raw talent available all across this state which produced some of the country’s best footballers in the past.

"We will strive to showcase the finest quality of football synonymous to an iconic club like Atletico de Madrid.”

So now India has joined the likes of USA, Qatar, China and Australia in attracting big name stars at the end of their careers (or post-retirement) to showcase and build their domestic leagues.

[rodo]

“Robert Pires, Robbie Fowler, Hernan Crespo and Michael Chopra are the sorts of names that have been floating about.

surely you added micheal ****ing chopra to the names

[RedReet]

Red Reet just mentioned him in another thread. Forgot all about him.

http://www.walesonline.co.uk/sport/f...t-ryan-6335806

I didn't realise he was so highly rated. Only reason I remembered him at all was because of a bizarre argument I had in work at the time.

[Lee]

Ramon Calliste


Craig Lindfield has recently signed for F.C. United of Manchester.