Positive reaction to Soccer players career frankness

Stephen Bradley says he’s been taken aback by the reaction he’s received to recently speaking of how his promising football career in England never took off.

Around the turn of the century, Dubliner Bradley — in Oslo this week as manager of the Irish team at the FIFPro tournament for out-of-contract players — was regarded as a major prospect when he signed for Arsenal as a schoolboy.

However, last November, he spoke candidly of how simply having too much too young led to indifference and ruined his prospects of a top-level career before he was out of his teens.

He enjoyed success in the League of Ireland, before retiring from playing at the end of the 2013 season, aged 29.

He spoke out because he feels more players need to talk about their difficulties at cross-channel clubs, but he remains disappointed at the lack of better support mechanisms.

“It wasn’t a big deal for me to speak about it,” said Bradley, who now combines coaching at Shamrock Rovers with scouting for Arsenal in Ireland. “The reaction has taken me by surprise, because people who know me closely know how I feel about it and I’d opened up about it to them. My thing on it is that more people need to open up on it. That’s the only way we are going to solve it.

“I’ve had emails and phonecalls from Premier League players, Championship players, who said they read it and how good it was. I didn’t expect that.”

He added: “I went away 15 years ago and nothing has changed. Is someone else going to be saying the same thing in another 15 years, or are people going to do something about it?”

Referring to Oslo, Bradley said that, though half of the 16-player squad travelling today have contract offers, they were all eager to come.

“We want to give players as much playing time as possible. We’ve players who can play in different positions. Many of them have said to the managers who have offered them deals that they want to go and see if they can get anything from over here.”

Ireland compete with Sweden, Finland and hosts Norway in the shortened trial games tomorrow.

Ireland squad: Adam Murphy, Lee Stacey, Michael Barker, Mick Leahy, Aidan Price, Alan Kehoe, David Elebert, Craig Walsh, Eric Foley, Peter McGlynn, Ian Turner, Jamie McGlynn, Daryl Kavanagh, Emeka Onwubiko, Conor Murphy, Jordan Keegan.