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Adam Pepper

Cunny

By Cunny
in Liverpool FC

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Cunny

Cunny

Posted
Posted

my Everton mate reckons their brighest youth prospect, Adam Pepper, is rumoured to be joining Liverpool

It seems he had a look at Man U, Liverpool and Everton and liked the way he was treated by LFC.

 

I'm guessing he must be very young - anyone know anything about this lad?

Guest AdamS

Guest AdamS

Posted
Posted (edited)

Only that the name "Pepper" was meant to be the next Rooney a while back. Very highly rated indeed.

Yeah I've heard him referred to in those terms. Interesting...

 

I've just googled and found out he is still only 14 now. His agent is from SFX, the same one Rooney used to have. We have been sniffing around for three years plus as have a number of top european clubs.

Edited by AdamS
Tones

Tones

Posted
Posted (edited)

From Bluekipper 3 years ago

Leave the kid alone! Come back in 5 years to see midfielder, Adam Pepper (Evertonian) put the ball through for Wayne Rooney (Evertonian) to score the winner at The New Wembley Stadium for Everton. (24/06/03)

:D

Edited by t1971
Cunny

Cunny

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,985842,00.html

 

Is this boy worth £5m?

 

At 11 years old, Adam Pepper is already being courted by Manchester United, Liverpool and Arsenal, and astronomical sums are being bandied about by football agents. But he's not the only one. Oliver Burkeman reports on sport's growing obsession with youth

 

Friday June 27, 2003

The Guardian

 

 

Life offers few better examples of the variety of approaches that it is possible to take to the job of parenting than the cases of Thomas Junta and Ronnie Pepper, two sports-mad dads who both had high hopes for their offspring. Junta - as anyone watching US television early last year could not fail to recall - disagreed so violently with the judgment of his school-age son's ice-hockey referee that he beat him to death immediately after the game, repeatedly slamming his head into the ground in front of the shocked players and prompting a new wave of fears in America over "sideline rage" attacks by obsessively ambitious parents.

 

Ronnie has been pursuing a somewhat different strategy with his son Adam, the 11-year-old football ace revealed this week to be the target of a battle between Everton, Liverpool, Manchester United, Arsenal and several other top clubs, all desperate to sign the young Liverpudlian. The difference presumably has much to do with why Thomas Junta is now serving a six-to-10-year sentence for involuntary manslaughter and Pepper, a youth worker from Kirkdale in Liverpool, isn't.

"He's not in it for the money, and he doesn't want it all to happen too early for the lad," says the Peppers' agent, Peter McIntosh. And so, despite being on the receiving end of an awesome display of Premiership flattery - birthday cards from Ryan Giggs, a personal visit from Michael Owen, a pair of David Beckham's boots, and shin pads that formerly graced the legs of Ruud Van Nistelrooy - Adam remains defiantly unsigned.

 

If this admirably level-headed and protective approach to sporting parenthood seems increasingly rare, it is also increasingly essential. With economic competition, in football especially, unprecedentedly intense, the professional players of tomorrow are being hunted, and deluged with enticements, younger than ever before.

 

"It's a trend we've been seeing for a couple of years now," says Phil Smith, the football agent who represents, among many others, Arsenal's Freddie Ljungberg and Southampton's James Beattie. "You're put in the direction of good young players, and some of them have already been, how shall we say, got at. It's mainly newer agents, trying to get into the game - they can't get anywhere near established players so they do a bit of research and chance their arm ... Sometimes the parents are hoodwinked. Their backgrounds - they don't often come from an advantaged background, so they haven't necessarily got a family lawyer, for example."

 

But even Ronnie's protectiveness can only go so far. "I've stopped taking Adam to games now, because I just get pestered by agents and club officials all the time - they talk through the match," he said in the only interview he gave, to a national tabloid, before retreating into silence. "You can't blame the clubs," McIntosh says. "He's a good player, and if you had a star player like Beckham and suddenly he's got a pair of Beckham's boots - you can see why they do it. It's understandable."

 

Clubs and teams in many sports seem to be aiming younger, agents say, not least because the skyrocketing sums involved in buying fully-fledged players makes it a wiser use of resources to sign the most promising ones as early as possible, and much more cheaply. "When we signed up [the Everton player] Wayne Rooney," McIntosh says, "we waited. We knew him since before he was 14 but we wanted to let him come through in his own time, so he was 15 when he came to us." But that was then. At just 11, Adam is, McIntosh says, "very, very unusual ... but that's what's happening."

 

Ronnie's philosophy has much to do with the fact that he was himself a star player for Everton's boys team - a promising early career that didn't culminate in professional superstardom, despite the hype surrounding him at the time. "Ronnie was a real good footballer himself, and he's seen how it broke his heart and he doesn't want it to happen to his son," McIntosh says. "And they're a very close-knit family. They wouldn't want him going to Ajax" - the Dutch team also rumoured to have expressed an interest in Adam. "No money in the world could take him away from them."

 

Eric Hall, the flamboyant football agent not known for keeping his opinions to himself, has already been naming numbers in Adam's case, suggesting that he should be insured for between £1m and £5m, based on his likely astronomical earnings in the near future. "I'm not sure that does Adam any favours to talk about money like that," McIntosh insists, despite his obvious financial stake in the prodigy's success. "I've got grandchildren of my own, and I wouldn't want anyone thinking, oh, Adam's going to be making me £20,000 in a couple of years' time."

 

Things are already at a rather more hysterical stage in the US, where a 14-year-old soccer player, Freddy Adu, has already received a $1m marketing contract from Nike. "He's already wanted by clubs as far away as Italy," says Smith.

 

Taking matters to a more absurd extreme, there is the case of Mark Walker, a three-year-old who was caught on home video shooting 18 basketball hoops in a row - using a hoop 8ft off the ground, just 2ft lower than the pros. The size of his advertising deal with Reebok is undisclosed, but his ambition is certainly not. "It's a God-given talent," he told reporters, immodestly declaring himself "the future of basketball".

 

Adam Pepper seems unlikely to be making any equivalent statements any time soon. "I don't know what all the fuss is about," he has said, and it is a testament to Ronnie's approach to his son's vast talent that, McIntosh says, "all this stuff just goes completely over Adam's head. He could be playing against Beckham, he could be playing against his mate in the street. It's all the same to him."

Guest Joe C

Guest Joe C

Posted
Posted

He comes from a fine military background,his dad was a Sergeant.

 

Thought he was a doctor?

Guest 7777

Guest 7777

Posted
Posted

We already have a kid of a similar age called Adam Morgan who is very protected and highly thought of at Liverpool, scores goals for fun

Guest AdamS

Guest AdamS

Posted
Posted

We already have a kid of a similar age called Adam Morgan who is very protected and highly thought of at Liverpool, scores goals for fun

Oh if we have one player with potential lets not bother with any more then.

Guest 7777

Guest 7777

Posted
Posted

We already have a kid of a similar age called Adam Morgan who is very protected and highly thought of at Liverpool, scores goals for fun

Go easy Adam

 

I should have said also instead of already

Guest AdamS

Guest AdamS

Posted
Posted

Go easy Adam

 

I should have said also instead of already

And I should have added a ;)

 

 

;)

Hoff

Hoff

Posted
Posted

We haven't signed Adam Pepper - he has been training with all the north west clubs but has decided to come back to our Academy.

He hasn't officially been on any clubs' books.

Guest JimmyJames

Guest JimmyJames

Posted
Posted

We haven't signed Adam Pepper - he has been training with all the north west clubs but has decided to come back to our Academy.

He hasn't officially been on any clubs' books.

 

But we're in with the best shout when he does then?

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