It was the biggest match of Andre Odeku’s career. A week earlier, the 18-year-old forward had been playing in the seventh tier of the English soccer pyramid. Now, he was lining up for Burnley’s Under-23 side in a trial game, with a view to signing for the then-Premier League club’s academy.
“Their scouts invited me for a week’s training,” explains Odeku. “I’d never really been on those kinds of pitches before: the grass was so lovely and flat; the ball moved so smoothly and intensely; there were Premier League players training right next to us. They liked what they saw, so they wanted to see me up close in a
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