Don’t close the book on Niasse fairytale

Our man inside the game has never quite understood why some players make it and others don’t

Someday somebody should write a football book with no happy endings in it. No proud pictures of the nine-bedroom mansion, the cars in the drive, the stunner wife who wants to develop her own perfume and the kids who have names that would attract schoolyard bullies if the names hadn’t been given to them by footballer fathers.

Everybody knows these stories in some shape or form. Every pro does. On the way up there was always somebody better than you. A nailed on cert to make it. When the scouts came to your place they were looking at him. When the rumours went around they were about him, when the manager gave a teamtalk it was about him, whether he played for you or for them. He was making it. You were hoping for the best.