‘It’s phenomenal’: how six Londoners are on verge of glory with Montserrat

Players with roots on Caribbean island have helped transform its football fortunes and put a Gold Cup in reach

“You’d literally be playing out here and getting scraped up off the floor.” Bradley Woods-Garness is standing a few yards from one of the north London pitches that, when he was a youngster, tested mettle as much as skill. The five-a-side surface at Elthorne Park is now made of artificial turf, a far cry from the concrete that would shudder the bones of the Corinthian-Casuals forward and those who joined him. “There’d be scars all over your knees,” he says. “But we loved it.”

It is a chilly Sunday morning and, just behind him, a new generation is going through its own rite of footballing passage. Woods-Garness has returned with five of his oldest friends, all of whom cut their teeth in uncompromising surroundings here and at other venues around Islington. Each of them still lives locally. They could never have imagined it but all of them are international footballers now, playing for the same side, and they stand on the verge of something extraordinary.

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/2TTrpbA