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Grounded Barkley just loves playing for Everton

Local boy focused on club and country

In his first sit-down interview with the national papers, Ross Barkley recounts his road from discovery to playing for the club he loves and the moment a doctor told him his career might be over following a compound leg fracture aged just 16.

Now 19 and already a full England international, Everton's latest young diamond has been drawing inevitable comparisons with Wayne Rooney, his idol Paul Gascoigne — “Gazza is a legend but I'd prefer not to be compared with other players,” he says — and Steven Gerrard, his mentor in the national team setup.

He is also the subject of equally inevitable speculation linking him with a big-money move to the likes of Chelsea and Manchester United but, unlike the young Rooney of nine years ago, Barkley appears perfectly happy where he is. Gerrard, of course, knows all about devoting an entire career to your local team and he has been impressing on the young Evertonian the importance of staying with the club he loves.

"[Gerrard] was good to me when I was on England duty. I sat next to him on the coach and he gave me loads of advice," Barkley is quoted by Andy Hunter in The Guardian. "He said there is nothing better than being a local lad from Liverpool and playing for the team I support, as he's done throughout his career.

"He told me that playing is the main thing, that going to another team and not playing is no good for my development. He said the big-hitters will be looking at me and be linked with me but that the main thing is I stay with the club I'm at, the team I support and the team I love, which is Everton. I love Everton and all I think about is playing for Everton."

Spotted on a local park at the age of eight and picked up by Everton three years later, Ross describes the lonely bus journeys he had to take to get himself to Everton's Academy training ground in Netherton while his mother looked after his sister and some of the other players were being picked up in expensive cars.

He paints a picture of drive and determination to improve through his teenage years, exemplified by his road back from devastating injury three years ago when, on the verge of making his first-team debut under ex-Everton manager, David Moyes, he broke his leg in three places in an accidental collision with Andre Wisdom.

"It was difficult for me and I was upset because I wanted to play for the first team at 16. I looked up to Rooney and he had played for Everton when he was 16 and I wanted to do the same," he says.

"I was upset and a doctor in Belgium told me I might not be able to play again. I phoned my mum and she said I would be OK, so I stayed positive and when I got back to England the doctors said the doctor in Belgium had got it wrong."

His mother, whom Ross cites as the biggest influence on his career, told him that all his hard work would pay off if he just stuck at it. "I used to say 'If I play for Everton one day' and she would always say 'No, when you play for Everton'," Barkley recounts.

That kind of gritty Scouse single-mindedness is something the teenager believes is somehow ingrained and explains why Merseyside has produced so many great players down the years. “All Scousers are a bit different to anyone else. We are aggressive and winners,” Barkley says in The Telegraph. “We want to win. It is a feeling. When I was a kid playing you'd get Scousers on the line shouting ‘get in, get in' and it gets you built up. Playing Sunday league is tough. I just think it's in our genes."

And The Telegraph's Chris Bascombe describes a down-to-earth teenager unperturbed by the burden of the hopes of a nation:

"[T]he most enduring and appealing component of... [his] first major interview with national newspapers, is how he is utterly uncontaminated from the foibles of the modern game.

"No rehearsed bland responses, no agents demanding copy approval and no hints of media training as he occasionally openly seeks reassurance his description of a complex, paternal relationship with former manager David Moyes will not be misinterpreted.

"Barkley is not just the likely heir of Goodison icons, but sees himself as continuing a tradition of supremely creative Liverpool-born players. Products of the toughening up initiations of schoolboy football the clean-cut academies struggle to replicate."

While Moyes gave him plenty of support during his recovery, including sending him and his family to Tenerife to get away from things while he recovered from injury, and handed him his Premier League debut in August 2012, it is under new boss Roberto Martinez that Barkley has flourished since returning from the disappointment of England's early exit from the U20 World Cup in Turkey.

"Roberto is allowing me to make mistakes so I can learn from them," Barkley said. "He's giving me information about where not to make mistakes and where I can afford to take risks and I'm taking all of that on board. I'd say the new manager trusts me more, but David Moyes helped me a lot. I used to go into his office and he'd always be honest with me.

“When the new manager first came he gave me a lot of confidence by telling me I'm going to be involved this season and stuff like that.

“He said he believes I am going to be a big player for Everton this season and for seasons to come. He sees me scoring loads for Everton and he was putting confidence into me.

“The way he plays helps me because I know I'm going to be getting on the ball and that's what I like to do. He speaks to me and I'm learning a lot from him.”

In addition to consolidating his position in Everton's first team, Barkley has sights set on being included in Roy Hodgson's squad for the World Cup Finals in Brazil should England qualify.

Quotes or other material sourced from The Guardian

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