The post Jermain Defoe on improving with age, aspiring to be a coach and choosing a club for next season appeared first on St. Lucia News Online.
![Jermain Defoe established his own foundation in honour of his mother. * PHOTO CREDIT: HEATHCLIFF O'MALLEY]()
Jermain Defoe established his own foundation in honour of his mother. * PHOTO CREDIT: HEATHCLIFF O’MALLEY
It is a family affair at the Jermain Defoe Foundation football tournament in Romford.
As they spend bank holiday Monday seeking to raise funds for their work in St Lucia, the entire clan is busy helping. There’s Jermain himself presenting the prizes to winning teams, posing for selfies, signing junior football shirts. There’s his cousin volunteering as tournament co-ordinator. And there, next to the merchandise stand where signed adidas balls are selling fast, is the cake stall, staffed by his mother.
“She’s been up all night baking, that’s what my mum does,” Defoe says. “What’s her best cake? Come on man, they’re all good, she’s my mum.”
It is in honour of his mother, he explains, that he established the Foundation. Her family hails from St Lucia and in 2010 she and her son went there on holiday to discover it had been battered by a recent hurricane. The island’s one children’s home had been destroyed. Chastened by what he had seen, Defoe set to work.
“People talk about St Lucia they think of nice beaches, amazing hotels, a honeymoon destination. When I tell people the poverty, that a lot of kids live on the street, they don’t know. As a family we decided to try and do as much as we can.”
At the end of June, Defoe is heading to the island for the official opening of the Foundation’s children’s home, which has been built and staffed by money raised at events like this.
“Amazing how it’s gone,” he smiles. “The numbers here, there’s 32 teams, all brought their families, having a great time.”
Defoe was born just down the road in Canning Town, and he says he relishes mixing like this with the locals. “My mum always stressed the importance of being part of your community, of being grateful. I’ve been blessed in life, lucky to do what I’ve done. And I’m not going to lie, it’s fun to give something back. There’s no better feeling than seeing people smiling. I reckon it’s the cakes.”
Not that he will be trying any. Encouraged by his girlfriend, Defoe recently turned vegan. He reckons the diet beneficial, if challenging.
“It’s hard, I love fish,” he says. “But I’ve found not eating meat makes me feel lighter on my feet.”
He took it up because, turning 35 in October, he is prepared to do anything to maintain his scoring edge. And dispensing of animal products appears to have worked. His finishing prowess with Sunderland this season was rewarded with his first England cap in four years when he was called up for the World Cup qualifier against Lithuania in March.
“Roy Hodgson didn’t want me, I was realistic, I accepted it,” he says of an international career that appeared to have reached its natural conclusion. “But I always wanted to be back, always felt I could do a job. Now Gareth Southgate has come in I feel appreciated, valued again.”
He speaks in glowing terms of the new England manager, who has named him in the squad for the forthcoming matches with Scotland and France.
“Even if he never picked me again I’d always say nice things about him because of the way he has treated me.” Brilliant man management, Defoe calls it. And he gives an example:
“When we played Lithuania, I scored the goal, then I was chosen for the drug test. Everyone was celebrating in the dressing room, but he came out, found me in the drug test room and hugged me. I don’t care who you are, what you’ve done in your career, when a manager says well done, those are the best words.”
It was an emotional occasion for Defoe anyway. He walked on to the pitch holding the hand of Bradley Lowery, the terminally ill six-year-old with whom he has struck up unlikely friendship.
“The way he looked at me that day, the smile: it’s such a good feeling that you could bring something to his life. Everywhere I go people ask after him. [Sunderland manager] David Moyes took us to New York mid-season and people were coming up to me saying ‘how’s Bradley?’ Part of you feels it’s good that we have helped raise awareness of the illness. But it’s also really sad. When you see a six-year-old suffer like that, it’s so hard to understand. He’s hardly had a life. I pray for him every day, just ask God to heal him.”
It was no surprise when, after the game, Defoe dedicated his goal to the boy.
“I’ve scored a lot of goals, but that goal was something else. It was Mother’s Day, Bradley was with me, I felt I had to score. It was something I was craving so bad. I’d rehearsed it so much in my mind when it happened, it was like, wow, this is meant to be. When I got the goal, I just felt blessed.”
Scoring goals has always been his currency; one, he admits, which has only increased in value through his career.
“The older I’ve got, the buzz from scoring goals has grown and grown.” Especially now, after a brief sojourn in Toronto, that he is back scoring in the Premier League.
“I went on holiday to Canada,” he smiles of his season in the MLS. “I missed the Premier League so much. I missed the intensity. I missed the pressure. When people say to me, ‘this is a big game, you have to score’, I like that. I liked the fact people were saying I had to score for England to justify the manager bringing me back. I like it when I have something to prove. You get that little bit of fire in your stomach.”
It is a fire that delivered 15 goals in a Sunderland shirt last season, an astonishing haul given the side appeared doomed from the outset.
“Actually, being in a side at the bottom makes you sharper,” he reckons. “I know in a game I might not get anything more than a half chance, so I’d better make the most of it. You’ve got to be ruthless.” His single-mindedness, he insists, has only increased with age.
“Sometimes people say to me, why did you go there at that moment just as the ball was coming and I go: I don’t know, I just did it. It’s instinctive. I’ve practised so much over the years, I’ve rehearsed it so many times, it’s natural. That said, it’s like any sport: the more you practise, the more natural you are.”
Wherever they come from, his goals will not be for Sunderland next season. Following relegation, he is moving on a free transfer. And while he has not yet announced his next destination, with Bournemouth and his first club West Ham among those apparently keen, he says the decision has been made.
“When you’re scoring goals, let’s be honest, clubs are going to want you. I’ve had a lot of interest. But I’ve got an idea where I’m going. When it comes to July everyone will know. I know where I want to go to kick on again. I don’t want to stand still.”
In a clue to his destination, he says the manager has been a crucial part of his choice.
“Partly it’s how he wants to play, but mainly it’s: is he comfortable trying to improve me? Some managers just let senior players get on with it. I don’t want that. I want to be challenged.”
Indeed, he says he has become ever more interested in how managers operate.
“I’m like a sponge, I think about stuff. I think: if I was a manager how would I play this? I think of the bosses I’ve had, I like what he does, I’ll do it like him or I definitely won’t do it like that. I’m thinking like that more and more. I’m in my car on the way to the ground, thinking, I wonder what team the manager’s going to pick, this is what I’d pick. I suppose I’m heading in the direction of being a coach.”
But not, he insists, for a while yet.
“I want to be in Russia [for the 2018 World Cup], 100 per cent. If I continue scoring goals, then I believe the manager will take me. But obviously I’ve got to keep scoring.”
Though before that there is a more pressing matter to attend to at the Jermain Defoe Foundation Football Tournament: checking on the cake sales.
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(1)The post Jermain Defoe on improving with age, aspiring to be a coach and choosing a club for next season appeared first on St. Lucia News Online.
The Selection Panel of the West Indies Cricket Board has named the West Indies Under-19 squad for tours of South Africa and Zimbabwe.
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The Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Agriculture Inter-Commercial House Futsal League competition continued on Wednesday May 31st 2017 with ended the group stages of the Competition.
The Semi Finals of the SLFA/GIFL Guardsman Under 13 Football took place at the Grand Revierre Field on Monday 5th June.
