This morning, the World Preliminary Round in North America ended the final round, with Jamaica winning the second game of the third stage of the World Preliminary Round with a 2-1 victory over Honduras thanks to goals from Naturalized Player Ravel Morrison.
Former Manchester United academy player Morrison's soaring goal was also his debut for the senior national team, an English player born in Manchester who has been selected for England's youth teams at all levels, but his career has been bumpy in the last decade.
Because Morrison is of Jamaican descent, in 2020 he accepted an invitation from the Jamaica Football Association to become a national team with many players who have grown up in the English system in history (Antonio, Andre Gray, Bobby Reed and other players are all naturalized). Prior to today's match, Ravier had played 11 games for the Caribbean coastal team without goals and assists, and today he finally scored the winning goal.
Why did the player, who reached the ceiling of Manchester United's youth academy in Ferguson's talent, fall into this?
Ferdinand: If you cash in on the talent, it can be worth 100 million pounds
"Sadly, however, there are some players who, although they have similar experiences to Giggs and Ronaldo (born in the blue-collar class, growing up and experiencing hardships) are equally talented, but they are not determined enough to get out of the shadows of childhood and overcome their own demons. Ravel Morrison is perhaps the most tragic. Of all the young men I signed, he was the most talented, but he was always causing trouble. It was very sad to sell him to West Ham United in 2012 because he could have been a very good player. However, in the past few years, he has been constantly causing trouble off the field, so we have to endure the pain of cutting love. Since then, Ravel has shown no signs of maturing, and West Ham United terminated his contract in 2015. ”
This is what Ferguson himself wrote about Morrison in the book Leadership: A Summary of Life and the Manchester United Years (PUBLISHED IN 2015, Chinese translation published in 2016), co-authored by Sir Alex Ferguson and Sequoia Capital Chairman Sir Mike Moritz.
For other Manchester United players that year, Morrison's overflowing talent was also visible to the naked eye.
Ferdinand said in previous years: "I thought he was going to be a £100 million player, there were no such players in the Manchester United squad at the time, and even now I have not seen such a player at the club. "Morrison's talent is incredible, he's the most talented young player I've ever seen in my life. He's better than Joe Kerr of that year, I've never seen a player so chic on the pitch, and in the 2011 SQUAD that won the FA Youth Cup, both Pogba and Jesse Lingard were fans of Morrison. ”
Gary Neville in 2020 made a similar point: "Ravel was only 13 years old and I still vividly remember sir Alex Ferguson as the most talented academy player he has seen at Manchester United since he said Ravier was Giggs. ”
Similar reviews abound.
Rooney even said that when he joined Manchester United, Morrison wore the crotch Vidic three times in a minute, when he was even a mile better than Pogba and Jesse Lingard. Manchester United coach Murenstine, who has coached Cristiano Ronaldo into a top goalscorer, once told the media talksport: "When I first joined Manchester United in 2001, I met Morrison of the U9 team and I saw in him the closest thing to Paul Gascoigne. If Ravier had 75% of Ronaldo's mentality and motivation, he would have become incredible. ”
However, Murenstine also added, "The most frustrating thing is that we went to great lengths to develop Morrison into a real professional player, and we had millions of conversations with him, each time nodding his head to show that he understood, and then he continued to do the same." ”
Knife robbery, sneaker theft, beating ex-girlfriend and her mother
The manchester United youth team mentioned above won the 2011 Fab Youth Cup, and just a few months before that, I Morrison pleaded guilty to two charges in court, one was a knife robbery (although the target of the robbery was his friend) and the other was intimidating a witness before trial. "I don't know what I'm doing wrong, I don't know that intimidating witnesses is a crime." Many years later, Morrison told the Times.
Although the judge ultimately granted a lenient sentence, he did not throw Morrison in jail, but only sentenced him to a 12-month suspended sentence and a £2,000 suspended sentence. But Morrison didn't get to the bottom of it.
Last year, Ferdinand said in a live connection with Morrison that he was abandoned by Manchester United for stealing Ferdinand's shoes. "I was very young and only got a youth team-level salary. Seeing that your sneakers are worth £250 each, and two pairs are £500, I can take my whole family to a Chinese restaurant for a big meal or some consumption of the same level. ”
How could Sir Alex Ferguson tolerate repeatedly falling below the line? Even with the same top talent as Giggs and Ronaldo, Ferguson eventually endured the pain, and in January 2012, he swept Morrison out of the house, and his transfer fee to the Hammers was only 780,000 euros.
Morrison has since been loaned to Championship side Birmingham and returned to West Ham in the first half of 2013-14 to play in the Premier League for half a season scoring 3 goals and assisting 2 times, showing great strength, especially in the game against Tottenham.
But the good times are not long, the reason why the thorn head is a thorn head, it is because they have a restless gene in the body, in 2011 Morrison revealed that he had ADHD, it turned out that he was polyamorous. In the summer of 2014, just after a season of upswing (his value rose to a career peak of 4 million euros), he was arrested by the police for beating two women. Later, the Daily Telegraph reported that Morrison had beaten his ex-girlfriend, Leon Manso, and her mother. Seeing this, you must think of Greenwood, and I hope that Aoki will not follow in Morrison's footsteps.
In addition to these off-court incidents, Morrison never stopped causing trouble on the court that year.
In England's 2013 U21 win over Lithuanian youth, Zaha and Morrison had a direct infighting on the pitch, which Zaha recalled last year, "He drove me crazy, he thought he could pass like Luo Xiao, and the rest of us were nothing." He got the ball and just juggled himself, he couldn't pass the ball, he wanted to connect the other 6 people, and let us line up the audience. I was fed up with asking him what he was doing? Then he suddenly pushed me, and then I questioned if he was an idiot and pushed him back. ”
(The solo highlight against Lithuanian youth team Morrison has been viewed 1 million times on YouTube so far, and in addition to the infighting with Zaha, he also staged a very good goal in this game))
Pogba also had an unpleasant encounter with Morrison on the pitch, and in 2020 Pogba said in an interview: "At that time we were training, every player knew how strong Morrison was in possession, he dribbled a lot of people, then I snatched his ball away, and then he got angry and kicked me directly. Then we had a verbal clash and were ready to do a big fight in the locker room. Although the two did not fight in the dressing room and became friends because of Morrison's embrace (Ferdinand also said that Pogba admired Morrison at that time), Morrison's selfishness and easy emotional loss on the pitch were exposed.
Since then, Rooney has also recalled that he put his mobile phone in the locker room to charge, and then came back after training to find that the charging cable was unplugged, and was charging the old BlackBerry mobile phone of youth team player Morrison, and the hot-tempered Rooney immediately smashed Morrison's mobile phone. Although Morrison later said that he had asked Vidic to help him charge his mobile phone, no one can tell the truth now.
Reduced to mediocrity, will he still have a chance to complete redemption?
After West Ham squandered his last talent and the trust of the team, Morrison was unable to wait for West Ham to renew his contract. Morrison joined Lazio on a free transfer in 2015, and he failed to gain a foothold in Serie A, scoring no goals in only four appearances. In later years, Morrison continued to experience a turbulent football career, leaving his footprints on the turf of Mexico, Sweden and the Netherlands.
Last summer Morrison moved on a free transfer to Championship side Derby County, the manager of which was the same big brother Rooney who smashed Morrison's phone that year. While the team was penalized for too many points for bankruptcy and was destined for relegation this season, Morrison appeared to be a true pro here at the urging of Wayne Rooney, at the age of 29.
Morrison has scored 3 goals and assisted 3 times in 30 Appearances in the Championship this season, what does 30 appearances mean for Morrison? That means the most league appearances in a single season of his career. If you look at some of Morrison's videos of his matches in the Championship this year, you'll see that he's still special on the pitch and still has the ability to change the game.
Before Ferdinand and Morrison live-streamed the show, Ferguson shared an anecdote about Morrison with Ferdinand. Ferguson said: "I have always cherished this matter, and the morning after Morrison's debut, he came to my office door, wrote me a letter, and thanked me for the opportunity to make his debut. I was dumbfounded, Leo, this boy had a kind heart, and he was just beaten by his own background. You know, no player has ever done this before him. ”
Years later, after hearing Ferguson describe his goodness and past, Morrison said he was moved, saying, "If I could go back in time, my life and career would change 90 percent." ”
(In the recent Derby County match against Barnsley, Morrison was in great shape, scoring twice plus a world wave to hit the crossbar.) The first GIF, Morrison," let the ball run and break the goal, making people understand a little bit of why people call him a genius in the first place)
Yes, in fact, Manchester United's coaches have never completely looked down on Morrison. Former Manchester United coach Mullenstein pushed the team to bring in Morrison when he was in charge of Fulham, but ultimately failed.
As Dutchman Murenstine suggested in an interview with Talksport a few years ago, all Morrison has to do is seize every day, put all his energy into it, let his potential work in the next few years, and he can still leave something in football.