This week marks the fifth anniversary England’s Under-17 World Cup triumph in India. We already know about Curtis Anderson was the hero goalkeeper and saved and scored a penalty to win the shootout over JapanThe mini soccer a 17 year-old can play Phil FodenIt was everywhere.
This is Part Two, as told by those who were there.
Steve Cooper(team manager, now at Nottingham Forest).
Phil Foden (Manchester City).
Rhian Brewster (then LiverpoolNow! Sheffield United).
Angel Gomes (Manchester UnitedLille, now
Jadon Sancho (Borussia DortmundManchester United now.
Callum Hudson-Odoi (ChelseaNow on loan at Bayer Leverkusen).
Joel Latibeaudiere(Manchester City now Swansea City).
Steven Sessegnon (FulhamNow on loan at Charlton Athletic).
Timothy Eyoma (Tottenham HotspurLincoln City is now.
Tashan O.-Boothe(Tottenham now on loan to Lincoln City, Stoke City).
Curtis Anderson(Manchester City, now Lancaster City).
Jonathan Panzo(Chelsea now on loan at Coventry City City from Forest).
Jon Alty(former FA-physio).
Ian Brewster(father of Rhian).
[‘It was life-changing’ — England stars tell story of how they won U17 World Cup – Part 1]
England’s quarter-final pitted them against the United StatesAt The Fatorda, Goa, the game ended in a 4-1 victory with a hat trick for Brewster.
Latibeaudiere: “We wanted to beat the USA so badly. We shared the same hotel, and they were so arrogant walking around as if they were running it. In 15 minutes, we were up 2-0 and then had fun. We were just scoring and scoring.”
Rhian Brewster: “My mum came out for the USA game and stayed until the end. She was late to land. She was already walking in when I scored my first goal. She started jumping up and down and threw everything she had in her hands. It was a good timing. I decided I wanted another two.”
Ian Brewster “Rhian hadn’t scored for a few games. He had facetimed me the night prior. I said, ‘You’re playing well, son, but you’re there to score goals — it’s about time you joined the party’. The next day, he scored a hat-trick.”
Alty: “Did you know there is a dog out there called ‘Brewster’? It belongs to Jonathan Power, who was the team’s doctor. Rhian had missed some chances in the initial game. Rhian was quite upset when he arrived at the medical room. So the doc said, ‘I will make a bet with you — if you finish top scorer here, I’m going to name my new dog after you’. Rhian went on a scoring mission after that, didn’t he? So the doc kept his word and now has a dog — a cockapoo, I think — named after him.”
Gomes: “The way Steve Cooper coached us created more than a team. It was more like a brotherhood or a family. Every game was a great experience because we were so relaxed. The tunnel would show other teams that they were looking ahead. All of our players would be talking to one another. That wasn’t arrogance, it was just confidence. It wasn’t like we were going to play a massive game in the World Cup. It was like having a fun time with your friends. Then we would go out there and do the business.”
Anderson: “He (Cooper) is the greatest coach I’ve ever hadFrom every angle. From a coaching point of view, he was unbelievable.”
Sessegnon: “He’s one of The best, if not the best, at preparing for games. We weren’t there to only hope for the worst. It was always about winning it. Steve kept reminding us about why we were there: to win it, and win it well.”
Foden: “After one game, me and George McEachran found it hard to sleep. It was 2 AM. We were very hungry so we ordered room service. It’s a moment that always sticks in my brain because the manager saw the food being delivered to our room. He could have gone insane! We had a great time laughing about it because he was such an amazing human being. ‘Lads,’ he said, ‘you should have just told us and we would have got you something — instead of eating badly, just let us know next time’. He’s such a great guy.”
England’s semi-final against BrazilGuwahati was originally scheduled to host the match, but both teams were unhappy with the pitch conditions and moved to Kolkata.
Latibeaudiere: “We had to fly back on the same plane as Brazil. They were all at the front of the plane, we were all at the back and we were playing them the next day — that was a weird one.”
Anderson: “I was just standing there for the first 10 minutes of that game thinking how ridiculously good they (Brazil) were. They were one of the best teams we ever played, moving the ball so quickly you could barely follow it.”
Oakley-Boothe: “That was the first time in the tournament we were properly rattled. They had a one-on-one early on and I remember thinking we hadn’t really touched the ball. They were pushing us and playing around with us as we got closer. I remember getting in at half-time and the assistant coach, Mike Marsh, had a few words with us.”
England was 2-1 ahead at the break despite the early scare. Brewster had scored two strikes, while Wesley scored for Brazil. It was evident that the coaching staff believed there were opportunities for improvement.
Eyoma: “I wouldn’t say Mike was the bad cop (to Cooper’s good cop) but he did tell us the truth.”
Oakley-Boothe: “Some take that (being shouted at) personally…”
Eyoma: “But you have to be brutally honest. You’re there to win a World Cup and it’s something you’ll remember forever. We needed that tough love.”
Oakley-Boothe: “It was the first time we had been shouted at in a very long time. We were never used to being behind, or anything like that, so it was like, ‘Wow!’. And it worked.”
Foden: “Brazil were one of the favourites, being such a great football nation. We were able to defeat anyone once we beat them. That was the game that stood out to me.”
Gomes: “From the semi-finals onwards, it was like a switch went on. Concentration levels increased. Things that you would normally do, we probably didn’t. It became much more serious.”
Panzo: “We would go into some games where we would win by two, three, sometimes more, and we used to say, ‘Who is going to score today?’. That’s true. But when it got to the semi-final, it became serious because we started to realise, ‘This is what we dream about’. We were like, ‘Cool, let’s have some fun but do it the right way’.”
Latibeaudiere: “Brazil were definitely the best team we played in terms of quality. However, I felt that we wanted it more than they did. Rhian was one example. He wanted to score so badly that he was never going to miss those chances.”
Gomes (laughing). “I forgot Rhian scored a hat-trick in that game as well!”
Rhian Brewster: “I was in paradise. It was paradise! The important goal was the third. It was 2-1. My legs were done. We just broke away and scored. I wanted to celebrate. I went straight to my bench. I wanted everyone to be excited. We had 10 minutes left and I was thinking, ‘We’re so close to a final’. It was an incredible feeling. The celebration for me (running to the dugout) was because of the moment.”
(Photo: Jan Kruger – FIFA/FIFA via Getty Images)
Latibeaudiere: “Rhian was a massive character in the changing room. He was the one playing the music. He was the one who got up and danced. He would grab the boys if we needed extra energy. It was a camp lasting seven to eight weeks and you get tired of seeing people. But people like Rhian made it so much easier.”
England was the last opponent on a humid evening in Kolkata’s Salt Lake Stadium. Spain.
Latibeaudiere: “A bit like the USA, they (Spain) were so arrogant and thought they were going to win. We just felt, ‘Nah, it’s not happening this time’. It was all we wanted. Everything went perfectly leading up to the match. Everyone was 10 minutes early for meetings, everyone was 10 minutes early for training.”
Gomes: “We watched a video before the game. Our parents left messages. Some of the lads were even crying. I was emotional — a lot of the lads were. The song was playing loudly. The lyrics were: ‘Whatever it takes’. It was properly intense.”
Latibeaudiere: “It was Gareth Southgate, Harry Kane, Marcus Rashford, Jesse Lingard… a lot of other players, too, telling us how much they wanted us to win. Then we were given envelopes and, inside each, there was a message from our families, telling us how proud they were.”
Panzo: “It was touching. We’d been away a long time, at that age, in a different country. Many of us became emotional. My uncle and sister were the ones I saw on my video. I hadn’t seen them for a while. I was like, ‘Wow, they are with me’. It takes you off guard…”
Sessegnon: “I remember Harry Kane came on, motivating us. When he’s doing that, you know everyone is watching.”
Borussia Dortmund also released a video of Sancho after the group stage.
Latibeaudiere: “Jadon also sent us a video of him, in his England shirt, trying to get us motivated. That gave us an extra reason to win it.”
Sancho: “I wanted to support the boys because I still felt like a big part of the group.”
Rhian Brewster: “Nothing much changed in the build-up to the final. I still remember going to the game. All of us had our headphones on. We were all concentrating.”
Gomes: “I made the playlist for the changing room. It included 14 songs. To get the boys going, I made a mix. I’ve still got it on my phone.”
Rhian Brewster: “Angel is Captain Fantastic!”
Latibeaudiere: “Coops just had a way of bringing everyone together. He understood how important it was to have a close-knit group. He wanted us to be free and move forward. He didn’t coach us like robots. He had his system, he wanted us to do certain things, but we had the freedom to play.”
Rhian Brewster: “When we were warming up, the stadium was filling up. By the time we got out for the game, it was loud, it was packed.”
Gomes: “It reminded me a bit of the South Africa World Cup with the noise of the vuvuzelas.”
Rhian Brewster: “The fans weren’t even close to the pitch. First, you had to cross a racetrack, then there were billboards and finally fencing. Although they felt far away, the sound made it seem like they were very close. Normaly, you can’t see the crowd. We all knew where our families were, so it was strange. They had signs and photos and flags of us. Everyone’s family got them done out there. You knew where to look in the stadium because they had those signs.”
Latibeaudiere: “We had three or four chances straightaway. I remember thinking, ‘This is the best we have ever started’. Then, they had one shot and scored. When the second one went in, I was like, ‘Surely not?’.”
Ian Brewster “I was watching on television with my best mate. We were 2-0 down and, even then, I remember saying, ‘I still think we can do it’. Rhian received one just before halftime, and all of a sudden we were running around the sitting room, jumping on chairs. I felt like a little child. We were screaming, going mad. Then, we stopped screaming and got stiffened up. ‘Right, we’re going to do it, we’re going to do it’. We were that confident.”
Rhian Brewster gets one back @England‘s #YoungLionsJust before the half-time! 🦁
Could there be a comeback? #FIFAU17WC pic.twitter.com/2tqK6lOg94
— Eurosport (@eurosport) October 28, 2017,
Latibeaudiere: “Going into the changing room at half-time, everyone was like, ‘We’ve got them, we’ve got them’.”
Gomes: “At the break, I remember telling everyone, ‘We are going to win’. This was the team talk. The gaffer didn’t really need to discuss tactics. I told everyone we were going to win and everyone jumped on the same energy.”
Alty: “There was zero panic. Coops was the main source of much of this. He’s such a great man — the best manager I have ever worked with. I can’t sing the praises highly enough for that man. He entered, relaxed, and that set a tone. If he had been in a flap, the players would have got in a tizz, too.”
Rhian Brewster: “The only thing Coops said was, ‘Come on then’, with a smile on his face. It wasn’t said in an aggressive way like, “Come on boys, fucking hell”. It was just, ‘Come on then’, as if to show them that we had the game. I remember looking at the Spanish players’ faces coming in at half-time. They were nervous.”
Sessegnon: “The good-luck messages really helped, too. We looked at each other and we were thinking, ‘We’ve got to do this for each other and our families’. We were not going to surrender at 2-0. We had to step up and fight.”
Foden: “Even when we were 2-0 down, I could see it in our faces. ‘We’re still in this game, we’re going to bring this back’. We all gathered in a circle. We were all being honest with each other, not putting anyone down, just honest — ‘We need more from you, and you, and you’. That was the kind of character the team had built.”
Hudson-Odoi: “We looked back at the Euros final (which they lost to Spain a few months before) and said to ourselves, ‘We can’t let this happen again’. There was a sense of, ‘We really have to win. It is essential that we give 100% of our effort every step of the way. No matter how tired we are, we have to run the extra mile, the extra shot, the extra sprint, the extra tackle, whatever it is, just to win’. That’s how we changed the game.”
The equalizer was from Morgan Gibbs WhiteJust before the hour. Gibbs White had been also on the scoresheet against USA, but was not in the team after Sancho left the tournament early.
Latibeaudiere: “I spent two or three years with Jadon at City. He’s a great guy. After living in Germany for so long, I felt like he finally got a chance to visit his friends again when he entered that tournament. We all felt excited that he was going to make it. There were many questions about his ability to attend the tournament. It was sad that he had to go. We all went to see him as a bit of a send-off.”
Alty: “Morgan had played only 23 minutes of under-21s football in nine months before he set foot on that trip. His navicular bone (a bone in his foot) had suffered a stress fracture. Wolves were brilliant in letting him go because, in my experience, a lot of clubs wouldn’t have let it happen. Between us and Wolves we had a plan to get him back into match form. We thought the squad was strong enough to carry Morgan and it was a case of, ‘Even if he feels some pain and has to go home and we’re a player down, he’s worth the risk’. In the end, he played a lot more than we had planned.”
Sessegnon: “When we made it 2-2 there was a different feeling. We could see Spain crumbling, we could see on their faces they didn’t know what had hit them.”
Rhian Brewster: “Then we went 3-2, then 4-2. I was like, ‘This is it… oh my days!’. My body was in pieces. It was hard to believe, but I was so tired. The fifth goal is the one I can remember. Phil was in when a ball was played above the top. I watched. I couldn’t move. As a striker, you should go and follow the midfielder and try to get the rebound but I just stood there and watched.”
Eyoma: “I started celebrating from the bench when that goal went in, I knew I was getting the medal. I was buzzing.”
Oakley-Boothe: “I came off around the 90th minute and I remember thinking, ‘We’ve just won a World Cup here’. Crazy!”
Ian Brewster “It was like time stood still. I couldn’t believe what I had just witnessed. Rhian has written a new history, which I believe is something that I will always tell people. When he is old, and has children of his own, he can look them in the eye and say that daddy, or grandad, won the Under-17s World Cup, which England had never done before, and he got the Golden Boot with eight goals.”
Rhian Brewster: “Take me back!”
Anderson: “I didn’t know my parents were coming for the final. They flew out the previous day, but the flight was delayed. They arrived in India just two hours before kickoff.
“They got to the ground just before we went 2-0 down. I remember my dad saying they’d travelled all that way for 24 hours, hadn’t slept and turned up to see England 2-0 down. Someone told me after the game that they were here, and then I could see them in the stands when we did the lap of honour.”
Sancho: “Obviously it was tough for me to miss the end of the tournament, but I was so happy for everyone. I felt part of the group and that I had contributed my part. I’ve got loads of great memories, just being away with everyone and experiencing it all. Playing in front of crowds of that size, seeing the atmosphere, and getting the goals against Chile in the first game to get us off to the start we wanted.”
Gomes: “When it was time to pick up the trophy — I don’t think anybody knows this — Joel Latibeaudiere took off the captain’s armband, gave it to me and said, ‘You pick up the trophy’. There’s a picture of me on his shoulders that shows what the team spirit and togetherness were like.”
Latibeaudiere: “Just before the tournament began, we all got together to discuss the captaincy. Angel was the captain of the team to the Euros. Marc Guehias vice-captain. Angel already had that experience, so I didn’t want to take that off him.
“Off the pitch, Angel was such a good captain — a leader. He was a role model for everyone. He used to make sure everyone sat together at dinner, that we were all mixing and socialising and there weren’t just set groups, like from London, up north, the Midlands — because it was easy to get like that.
“He didn’t play in a few of the World Cup games and on those occasions, I took the armband. I was respectful to him every time he came on and so I handed the armband to him.
“Then, after the final, everyone wanted me to pick up the trophy because I’d captained most of the games. But it didn’t feel right. It felt more like we were leading the team together than each individual, which I thought was right. That picture is at St George’s Park, actually. It’s still up there now and every time I see it I always have a smile on my face.”
England’s players had turned their shirts back to front, so their names were emblazoned across their chests — and that did not go down well with everyone.
Sessegnon: “A lot of people weren’t happy about it and took offence but we meant no harm. People react too quickly. It wasn’t a deeper message. Some people tried to make it seem like we were larger than the country, but that was not what I saw. I’m sure we used to do it when we were younger with Fulham and won tournaments. We didn’t mean anything by it, we just did it.“
Latibeaudiere: “We got a lot of stick for that, didn’t we? Danny Murphy, the television and radio pundit, said some things. We did it because the age group before us (England’s victorious Under-20s’ World Cup team) did it, so we just thought, ‘We’ve got to keep it going’. It was good fun.”
Rhian Brewster: “That night, we were too young to drink. Although we were supposed to go to sleep, many of us were still at the hotel bar. We listened and sang along to music. We had a sugar rush from all the Fanta and Coke and other fizzy drinks that we were finally allowed to drink.”
Panzo: “I stayed in my room. Me and Callum went on Instagram Live.”
Sessegnon: “I was in a room with Joe Bursik, we played Playstation.”
Panzo: “I have a tattoo on my arm. It’s a trophy with the World Cup and the date. It will always be with me.”
Oakley-Boothe: “My medal is in a frame with my shirt.”
Eyoma: “Mine’s not in a frame but I’ve framed my shirt and it’s got everyone’s signature. On the odd occasion, I’ll go to my wardrobe and just wear my medal to feel what it’s like again.”
Anderson: “I’ve got a frame above my bed with my shirt, two pictures, an engraved plaque and my medal in it. Although I still have my gloves, I may have to get rid. And I’ve still got my boots because unfortunately, my grandad passed away during the Euros, so I wrote his initials on my boots for the World Cup.
“It was very hard for me to get that news at the Euros and when I found out I was playing at the World Cup I wanted to mark his life. Before each game, I would touch the bar and tell him a few words to get me started. It’s something I continue to do. I did it at World Cup, and it made me feel calm. It was great to win it knowing my grandad was looking over me.“
Foden: “When we got back home, everyone was asking to see my (Golden Ball) trophy. I took it down to St George’s to show everyone. Everyone wanted to see it. I went back to All my rootsTo show everyone I knew (in Stockport). Everyone was dead proud.”
Cooper: “We had played Spain, Brazil, Mexico, Chile… Brazil in the semi-final, Spain in the final. The challenges are never easy. We came back stronger players, better coaches, and better physios for the experience. We came away knowing we had achieved something brilliant.”
Contributors: Gregg Evans and Daniel Taylor. Nancy Frostick, Raphael Honigstein. Paul Taylor.
(Photos: Getty Images. Design: Sam Richardson).
