Lots of players are expected to have big futures but never justify the hype. Cris Freddi profiles some of the game's biggest underachievers

Edu, (Jonas Eduardo Américo)
The first ‘new Pelé’, he scored in his second international and became an immediately controversial figure by being included in the 1966 World Cup squad at the age of 16 but not playing a match while Brazil picked a string of knackered veterans. A skilful winger, he played in the 1970 & 1974 finals, but only against the weakest opposition (Romania & Zaire), and was always a peripheral figure despite winning 42 caps.

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Tipped to be a star at Everton, Graham Ennis remembers why Nick Barmby couldn't fulfil his potential

On the day Joe Royle signed Nick Barmby from Middlesbrough he made a curious admission: that he wasn’t quite sure where he was going to play him. Obviously then, he just kinda hoped that he’d get lucky and things would work themselves out. We all kinda hoped too. Choosing to ignore the fact that Royle had just off-loaded the highly promising Daniel Amokachi because he didn’t know quite where he fitted into his plans.

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Along with many more, he was compared with the Busby Babes, but Tony Kinsella thinks that Andy Ritchie could have laid claim to being that good

In the days before winning championships with kids became a formality, every new Wonderboy at Manchester United was viewed exclusively as a perspective on the bygone Busby era: Trevor Anderson was “the new George Best” because he resembled the maestro uncannily; Scott McGarvey “the new Denis Law”, fair-haired and Scottish; and Ashley Grimes was “the new Bobby Charlton” because… nope, can’t help you on that one.

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Boyd Hilton wonders what went wrong for a great Arsenal No 7

Once upon a time, in the era before Sky, before the Taylor Report, before Football Came Home, there was a great player for Arsenal who proudly and appropriately wore Liam Brady’s Number 7 shirt and earned the admiration of 50,000-strong Highbury crowds.

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More unlikely meetings between WSC readers and professional footballers

“While holidaying in Greece, I shared a hotel with Doug Alder, a Millwall and Brentford ‘left half’ from the ‘60s. He was playing a poolside game with his pals one night, of ‘trying to guess the pop celebrity’. Early in the game he said, ‘It’s on the tip of me tongue,’ and, ‘I’ll know it if I see the name.’ Several clues later: a dual nationality, a liking for tartan, an indirect link with the Small Faces, a hit with Sailing, a penchant for tight trousers and spiky hair, and still Doug couldn’t guess Rod Stewart. ‘Oooh, I know it. I can see his face.’

Apparently Doug now works in customs at Heathrow Airport.”
Jamie Sellers

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