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Former West Ham whizzkid Joe Cole knows a thing or two about the pressures being levelled on the stick-thin shoulders of JJ Gabriel at Manchester United.
Rarely has a teenage talent attracted such fervent admiration. And this is the social media age we are talking about; where so-called ‘wonderkids’ are thrust into the limelight on the back of one eye-catching goal or a weaving solo run on the Saturday morning pitches of reserve-team football.
Even by the insatiable standards of modern football consumption, the excitement and the obsession surrounding JJ Gabriel is something else.
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Joe Cole, who rose through the ranks at West Ham United in the 1990s, is better placed than most to dispense advice to the 15-year-old Man United prospect.
Sir Alex Ferguson offered Joe Cole a trip on the Red Devils team bus to the 1994 FA Cup final, such was his determination to snatch the youngster from West Ham’s claws.
JJ Gabriel, unfortunately for the Hammers, has already slipped through their grasp.
Ex-West Ham starlet Joe Cole says JJ Gabriel must shut out the noise at Manchester United
Last month, his father shared a few clips – via the Talent Hunt3r on X – showing Gabriel weaving through defenders in a West Ham shirt.
The London-born Gabriel spent time in the feted Hammers academy before moving north. Before making the move Cole would have made himself had Sir Alex got his wish.
Photo by WM Sport Media – MUFC/Manchester United via Getty Images
“That’s the strange thing. Now, we’re used to it. Kids are used to things going viral,” Cole tells Martin Tyler on the Joy of Football podcast, highlighting the difference between his era and the youngsters of the camera phone generation.
“There’s a kid playing at Manchester United now who’s 15, JJ Gabriel, but that’s come off the back of the kid being on Instagram for four or five years. We’re so connected now.
“When it was me, it was like whispers. It was like ‘Chinese whispers’. I think it was off the back of being such an unusual player.”
Scorer of 18 goals in 21 games for Man United’s Under-18’s this season, Gabriel dominates footballers much older and supposedly far further along in their development on a weekly basis these days. It seems inevitable that, with his 16th birthday still seven months away, Gabriel will become the Red Devils’ youngest-ever debutant sooner rather than later.
Cole understands the ‘expectations’ placed among young Premier League talents
Joe Cole was 17 when he made his West Ham debut alongside his icon Ian Wright in an FA Cup clash with Swansea City the other side of the Millennium.
Cole already had his fair share of admirers. Liverpool wanted him as well as Man United. But he did not have fans and pundits poring over his every touch, weekly performances broadcast live onto TVs and laptops up and down the land.
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“How did I cope with [the expectation]? I just worked out something that really helped me when I became a player; once you step on the pitch, that was always my safe space,” explains Cole, who went on to win three Premier League titles with his boyhood club Chelsea as well as earning 56 caps for England.
“I knew I had expectations. I knew that it brings people wanting to see your demise, or wanting to see you not do well; There are certain elements of that across society. I understood all of that.
“But the moment I played football, it was always my safe space. That’s why I always wanted to be on the pitch.
“I was always uncomfortable with the attention I got off of it, so I had to become a sort of personality that I probably naturally wasn’t. You get forced into the limelight a little bit.”
JJ Gabriel, training regularly with Man United’s first team and seemingly only months away from cementing his place in the history books, would do worse than to take Joe Cole’s advice on board.
West Ham are likely to face Gabriel, once a wearer of their claret and blue jersey, when the Under-18s face Man United in the Premier League Cup semi-final on Wednesday.
The Hammers won the trophy last season when beating Reading in the final thanks to a brace from a forward now in ‘unstoppable’ form; Josh Ajala.
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