Chaos theory: How taking long road to the top made Michail a striking sensation

Sport

Jack Rosser

FROM right-back to record breaker, Michail Antonio has been on quite a ride at West Ham. His journey with the Hammers — from filling in here, there and everywhere, to tears at Newport Country in 2019 after another hamstring injury and finally settling as a No9 — is a microcosm of his career. Antonio has battled from nonLeague, overcome rejection but never shied away from a challenge and is now a feared Premier League striker. The 31-year-old’s path to the top harks back to an old era and has helped make him the player he is. Overlooked by Arsenal and Chelsea as a youngster, he did not come through the academy system but nonLeague Tooting & Mitcham United knew he was special when he was turning out for them while applying to universities as a teenager. “My first memory of him was how much skill he had, speed and the way he played the ball,” says Tooting chairman Steve Adkins. Antonio made the step up to the Football League with Reading before loans at Cheltenham and Southampton, where he was managed by Alan Pardew in League One. “Can you imagine how many Ian Wrights I’ve had put to me over my time?” says Pardew. “But I was from nonLeague so I have a soft spot for these players. He had a chaos factor about him that is needed in a football match, otherwise it is painting by numbers. He still has that. I think sometimes academies can take away that rawness and freedom, that chaos factor wasn’t knocked out of him.” Loans followed at Colchester and then Sheffield Wednesday, where Antonio really started to make a name for himself, before at Nottingham Forest he proved he was ready for the Premier League. Dougie Freedman, then Forest manager, says: “He was lighting the place up. He was the best player the Championship. I had Yannick Bolasie and Wilfried Zaha a few years before him and, in my eyes, he was equal to them at that time. So I knew this guy was going to go far.” After a spell at right-back under Slaven Bilic following his move to West Ham in 2015, Antonio has flourished under David Moyes. “Mich’s got a big personality,” says the Hammers boss. “He’s a big character and he probably just needed a little bit of real direction. I think he’s got it himself now and his family life and his home life have given him something nice and steady.” Antonio is targeting the 2022 World Cup with Jamaica and Moyes has challenged him to hit new goalscoring levels. Moyes says: “He’s probably looking back and thinking ‘Why was I not a centre-forward earlier? I might have scored loads more goals’.”