Several months ago, Ivan Toney was back at his family home. Everyone was sat around telling little stories and sharing memories with each other. His Mum made a comment about how she would skip meals so that he could eat well after football training.
It wasn’t so much the information itself that hit home, but the blasé manner in which it was shared as if it was nothing. It touched Toney deeply, he says. He always knew the sacrifices that his family had made, but sometimes you need age and wisdom to fully appreciate them.
“As children we’re naive,” Toney tells i. “We’re oblivious to certain situations. But when you grow up and become placed into those same scenarios, with children yourself, you start to realise what they had to do to survive. My parents never had what I have now when they were younger. In her head it wasn’t that big a deal, but looking back on it now it was vital to help me get where I am.”
Toney’s recent career projection is astonishing. He was loaned out six times in four years by Newcastle United, eventually sold to Peterborough United in League One. Three years ago, he had scored 36 career league goals; he’s scored 73 since. League One striker became Championship top scorer, became Premier League star. At the weekend, teammate Christian Norgaard said that Brentford’s players compared him to Didier Drogba. Toney points out that it wasn’t so long since he was playing as Drogba on FIFA.
The rise of Ivan Toney
- Northampton Town (2012-15): 60 apps, 13 goals (0.21 goals per game)
- Newcastle United (2015-18): 4, 0 (0)
- Barnsley (loans, 2015-2016): 21, 2 (0.09)
- Shrewsbury Town (loan, 2016-17): 26, 7 (0.27)
- Scunthorpe United (loans, 2017, 2018): 35, 15 (0.43)
- Wigan Athletic (loan, 2017-18): 28, 6 (0.21)
- Peterborough United (2018-2020): 94, 49 (0.52)
- Brentford (2020-present): 57, 35 (0.61)
via Transfermarkt
Rapid promotion to stardom can skew people. More money, more fame, more exposure; all are sold as desirables but come laced with danger. Toney has an answer for that. Who he was in League Two made him who he is in the Premier League. He will not change for anyone or be changed by anything.
“Money hasn’t ever and will never change the kind of person I am. I could be on high wages or I could be on nothing; I’m still going to be the same person. I’ve been down in League Two, in a cold changing room on a freezing Tuesday night when the heaters don’t work and because you’re a young boy you don’t have a seat so you have to put on your clothes where the drinks are. That might have changed now, but in a way nothing has changed. I’m the same old Ivan Toney from Northampton.
“I’m a role model now, not just to supporters and to young children but to my own boy. I have to set an example. But so many of us do. You see so many footballers giving their time and money, and it’s important that they continue to do it. People accuse footballers of being certain things, but look deeper and you’ll see the reality. They should think twice before they judge us.”
Underpinning everything is Toney’s family. That’s not just a throwaway line, a nice, warm cliché. Toney discusses how low he felt when he was sent out on loan to different parts of the country where seeing his family was difficult and a lack of regular gametime meant that football could not distract him.
That all changed at Peterborough and Brentford. Now Toney’s family can – and do – come and watch every game. His Dad, who he describes as his brother, is there. His sisters, with whom he says continuous banter is the key to a happy relationship, are there. But it’s his Mum who is the closest.
“I’m a mummy’s boy at heart,” he says. “It’s so important to have that connection and it means I’m in the best place as a footballer too. I remember being hours away from them all, and that was so hard. But that’s not just football, it’s life: if you’re around the happiest, most positive people then you will be the same.
“It’s all so surreal now. When my mum sees my name on Sky Sports and a graphic of me next to Mohamed Salah, she goes crazy! The amount of pictures she’s sent me that she’s taken on her phone of me is unreal. That shows the kind of background I’m from: nobody ever takes anything for granted. It just wasn’t expected. In her eyes I’m still ‘little old Ivan whose nappy she used to change’, as she reminds me. Now her son is all grown up and playing in the Premier League.”
Mum is also happy to coach Toney as well as support him. She tells him to “be a beast” on the pitch before every game, something that her son thinks is sensible advice when facing the best central defenders in the world. He says he learned to create an aggressive persona on the pitch in lower-league football to avoid being bullied, but that’s not really him: “Off the pitch I’m one of the nicest guys to be around. At least that’s how I see it in my head!”
Toney is an ambitious guy with no lack of self-belief. He has made this remarkably quick journey because of his talent, but also because he believed from a young age that he was good enough to make the grade. He has dreams of international football, either with England or Jamaica and sets himself short-term goal targets to drive him forward. But some things are bigger than football.
“The biggest part of my success now, the biggest motivation, is to make my family proud,” he says. “When you hear what they sacrificed, it makes you determined to do well so you can repay them. My Mum and my Dad never ask for anything financially; they don’t want that. They just say ‘repay us in goals. We’re coming to watch you, we’ve done everything we could for you to get where you are today, so repay us with goals.’ Over the last few years, I’ve repaid them pretty well.”
from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/3kzc1wW
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