Premier League frontrunners’ former star tells of coaching a young sensation who has turned into top flight’s surprise of the season
VICTOR MOSES is the Premier League’s most remarkable star… an orphaned refugee who had to rebuild his life before he could follow his dream of becoming a professional footballer.
His emergence as Chelsea’s unlikely hero after switching from striker to wing-back is one of the stories of the season.
But it is nothing compared to his real-life tale, which includes having to cope with his parents’ murder when he was 11 and moving from Nigeria to England as an orphaned refugee.
This inspirational triumph over adversity also contains an amazing coincidence, as Moses was once coached by former Chelsea captain Colin Pates.
Pates, a sports teacher who helped mould Moses’ raw talent at Whitgift School in Croydon, says it is wonderful to see his former protege playing so superbly as Chelsea top the Premier League.
Pates said: “He’s having a fantastic season, is playing really well and it really suits him.
“I would never in a million years have said he would be a wing-back. You just didn’t think that was the role he would have taken up and enjoyed.
“But he has developed, he’s proved a lot of people wrong and it looks like he’s absolutely loving it to me.”
Moses, 25, was awarded Man of the Match in Chelsea’s 1-0 win at Middlesbrough.
Antonio Conte’s side have gone on a six-match winning run without conceding since Moses was given his first Premier League start of the season against Hull on October 1.
It is a new high-water mark in his remarkable career – a career, and life, that threatened to be over before it had even begun.
Moses was just 11 when his dad, Austin, a Christian pastor, and mother, Josephine, were attacked in their home and killed in 2002.
He was playing in the street when it happened, kicking a football made together with tightly-bound tape.
Religious riots between the Muslim majority and Christian minority divided Nigeria and Moses’ father, who had his own church, was a target.
Moses was hidden by his uncle for a week after the murder before he was flown to England for his own safety to seek asylum.
He arrived in South London and knew no one. He was placed with foster parents and joined his first team, Cosmos 90, after plucking up the courage to ask if he could play with them.
The Tandridge Youth side were called “the worst team in the league” but Moses, playing centre-half, bagged eight in his first game.
It was in football, ultimately, where he would find happiness, according to Blues hero Pates.
The former defender has been a coach at Whitgift for 20 years and taught Moses for three of them.
He was awestruck by the young lad’s talent and says that even with the personal devastation, this unknown sensation came alive with the ball at his feet.
Pates, 55, said: “That side of Victor’s life was kept private and he never really talked about it. It’s not my job to pry into something like that.
“But he was a happy-go-lucky lad and I’d like to think he enjoyed his time at the school, he seemed happy and he certainly enjoyed his football here.
“We gave him a free role and he used to go out and enjoy himself. I’d like to think he had a good time here.
“He was very popular with the academic teachers too and he progressed well in all his classes. The teachers had a lot of time for him.
“You’d have to ask him what his favourite lesson was – but I think it would have been football! He was happy.
“The school had all the details about what happened to his parents and Crystal Palace, who he signed for, would have too.”
But all that is not to say Moses was immune from a rollicking on the three times a week he would pass under Pates’ watchful gaze.
Pates remembers one telling-off in particular.
He said: “Victor never had a tendency to be lazy but let’s just say you had to encourage him sometimes.
“At half-time I was having a go at him about working harder. Then my coach John Humphrey, who used to be at Charlton and was with him me at Whitgift at the time, I could hear him behind me sniggering.
“I turned round and said: ‘Look, you can’t laugh when I’m giving a team talk here’.
“And he said: ‘Yeah… but he has scored six goals and you’re telling him to work harder!’
“But the thing was, Victor was the type who would work hard when he had the ball.
“Now he’s developed a good work ethic but at school he worked a lot harder when he had the ball than when he didn’t.”
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