At the time it got lost in the larger drama but Ben Godfrey’s Everton debut against Liverpool last October had one experienced observer immediately intrigued.
Kevin Ratcliffe, the captain and centre-back at the heart of Everton’s last title-winning team, was initially fearful for the young defender sent on after 31 minutes for the injured Seamus Coleman.
“When he came on, his positional play wasn’t the best in the first half and you’re thinking, ‘He’s looking short here’,” recalls Ratcliffe, yet those doubts disappeared swiftly. “They must have had a word with him as he changed – it was a different person playing in the second half and that showed me that if you tell him things, he takes it on board.”
Carlo Ancelotti himself recalled on Friday how Godfrey “adapted really well [in] that game” as he considered the progress of the 23-year-old, who, despite a £20m fee, arrived from Norwich City at the end of last summer’s transfer window to none of the fanfare that had greeted the trio of Allan, Abdoulaye Doucouré and James Rodríguez.
Yet his contribution has been equal to any of that trio’s. “We didn’t expect it,” Ancelotti admitted to i, adding: “He adapted really well and really fast.”
One Goodison source describes Godfrey as “mentally robust” and “unfazed” by such challenges as filling in in both full-back positions this season and this resilience sounds familiar to Richard Cresswell who first encountered him as a teenager at York City rebounding from rejection by Middlesbrough.
“You could tell as soon as he turned up he was wanting to prove himself,” recalls Cresswell, then head of football operations at Godfrey’s hometown club. “I know people hear this time and time again but I’ve never seen anybody put everything into every session like that.”
Overlooked too by Barnsley, Leeds and Sheffield Wednesday, Godfrey embarked on a two-year scholarship “with the mindset ‘I’ve got two years to earn myself a contract and I’m not going to waste a day’,” Cresswell explains. “It stood out from day one.
“By his second year Jonathan Greening had taken over as youth-team coach. He’d played with Rio Ferdinand and he said to me, ‘I can see him playing at the highest level at the back, there are so many similarities to Rio it’s ridiculous’.”
Today Ferdinand is a source of advice to Godfrey through the agency that represents him, New Era, yet just as significant as his composure is his competitive streak.
Cresswell cites the day he first trained with York’s senior squad. “A lot of boys go into that first-team squad and for some reason hide a little bit and aren’t as vocal. Ben was completely the opposite. He went in and his first tackle was like, ‘Whoosh’ – he lifted somebody off the floor and nearly started a scrap. I remember a couple of senior pros coming up to me and saying, ‘Who does this kid think he is?’. I was like, ‘No, he’s just trying to make an impact’.”
In an interview for Everton’s match programme last month, Godfrey cited the advice from his father Alex, a former professional rugby league player, that “the harder you go in, the less likely you’ll be hurt”. He also noted the “psychological side” whereby “if you put in a big challenge it knocks your opponent down a peg.”
A thunderous tackle on Arsenal’s Dani Ceballos in December was one such calling card, endearing him to Evertonians as much as the much-reviewed spectacle of him turning and shouting “f**k off” at Manchester United’s offside-pleading players as he celebrated Dominic Calvert-Lewin’s equaliser at Old Trafford.
None of which surprises Mark Wood, his former PE teacher at Archbishop Holgate’s School in York. Wood, who recently acquired new fitness equipment for the school gym thanks to a donation from Godfrey, says that “even from a very young age he was very competitive and vocal”. Then he would “dominate and control games from midfield”, which explains his “comfort on the ball when he comes out with it”. Godfrey’s athleticism stood out too: he still holds the school’s 400m record with a time of 54.05 which, notes Wood, “really is going some for a 15-year-old”.
This meld of speed and aggression persuades Ratcliffe that Godfrey, who may start in the middle against Liverpool on Saturday in Yerry Mina’s absence, is already Ancelotti’s best central defender.
Among all Premier League defenders the England U21 player ranks seventh this term for duels won (68.5 per cent in his case) and Ratcliffe adds: “The opposition play balls where you think it’s going to be a good ball and all of a sudden he opens up a gear and he just snaps it up.” Evertonians will wish for more of the same at Anfield.
from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/3bmMnFZ
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