It was only recently that Declan Rice discovered that he was almost let go by West Ham United. The story of how, when Rice was 14, Chelsea allowed one of the most talented and exciting young players in the Premier League to slip through the net is well-known. But what is not known is that it almost happened again two years later.
Rice takes up the story. The story of how fine the margins can be in football, the sliding doors moments that can make or break a career but also the kind of iron will and determination – the ability, as he puts it to “block things out” – it takes to prevent that from happening.
“I’ve heard some things now that I am in the first team,” Rice says. “I’ve heard from a few coaches that I was actually going to be let go.” He senses my incredulity, adding: “Yeah, some coaches were fighting for me to stay, saying ‘he needs to be given a chance, he’s going through a massive growth spurt, he’s got the ability’. But other coaches were saying ‘no, but he can’t move, we don’t know whether he’s going to grow into it’. When you get to 16 you either sign a scholarship or you sign as a pro. I was the last (player) to find out that I was going to be offered a scholarship.”
In fact it came down to one match; one performance. “There was this game we played against Fulham and I was the only 16-year-old on the pitch,” Rice recalls. “Everyone else was 18, 19. I played centre-half. The other lads all had three-year pros (professional contracts) waiting for them and after that game [then academy manager]Terry Westley said they were going to make me an offer.
“I only got offered a two-year scholarship and that’s what made me even more hungry to push on and get a pro contract. Half-way through that Under-18 season I got a pro contract and, since I got that scholarship, I’ve signed four pro contracts at West Ham.”
There is a pause. “The story is incredible, really,” Rice adds. “Everything that has happened from being released by Chelsea, signing for West Ham, nearly not being offered a contract here to getting a contract, to captaining the Under-23s to getting in the first-team… It’s been an incredible journey and now I have played for England as well. A year ago no-one would have thought I’d do that.”
Rice laughs. The 20-year-old laughs and smiles a lot and not least because he has come an incredibly long way extremely quickly and only wants more. His appetite for work and improvement is legendary at West Ham. They say he never makes the same mistake twice on the pitch. He even smiles when talking about the 7am runs and triple training sessions manager Manuel Pellegrini insisted upon in pre-season.
“I don’t know why I am so happy!” Rice says. “I think it’s because I am young, the position I am in, I am really grateful for everything of course, but I play for West Ham, play for England – there’s nothing not to be happy about! I am genuinely excited every day.”
Rice is, in fact, quite literally now the poster boy of West Ham with huge advertising billboards showing his face alongside the slogan “New Season: New Dreams”. “It’s great to see more of me!” Rice says, laughing. “No, but it’s a massive shock. As a kid you are driven past these billboards and you look up and see superstars. Now I am driving around and seeing me. I’m getting loads of ‘What’s Apps’ saying ‘have you seen this?’ I am getting tagged and stuff. My mate has just sent me one a few minutes ago by ‘What’s App’ of a billboard of me in Australia. It’s about the Premier League and I’m the face of it! It’s crazy, to be honest, to even think about it.”
Is it pressure? “I just look at it and think ‘wow’,” Rice says. “I see myself as a key member of the side now and it’s got to stay that way. I known I’ve got to be on my game because my place is not guaranteed every week. The manager is watching and can change it in an instant. But with the season I had I don’t want to end up playing just, say, 15 games. Last season it was 34. My aim is to play 90 minutes in all 38 Premier League games. I want to play in all the competitions, every game. I am young enough, fit enough, I don’t get tired and I want to keep improving.”
The rate has been rapid. Rice recalls an early game against Manchester City – Saturday’s opponents at the London Stadium – when he played centre-half and was given the run-around by Gabriel Jesus. “I was 18,” he says. “He was going in behind, coming short, playing little passes. It was horrible, it was everything you don’t want as a centre-back but it was the type of game that you learn from and I learnt so much.”
Now it is Rice who, having moved into midfield and made such an impact, is a marked man. “Towards the end of last season I was starting to get man-marked,” he says. “Teams had been watching us and we build up from the back and we were away at Cardiff and in the first-half I might have touched it 10 times. I was being followed everywhere. It happened against Leicester at home and (James) Maddison was following me around. Your name starts to get about and if you have a good season and do well then people are going to try and stop that. It’s a compliment.”
But how does he react to compliments, the attention, the talk around him and not least about his future? “When the manager here compliments me that’s great to hear and gives me so much confidence,” Rice says. “But when you hear it from other people, even other managers, pundits, I try to block it out a bit more – mainly because although it’s nice to hear I don’t need to be focussing on that. I don’t want to get ahead of myself, I don’t want it to be a distraction: speculation, people talking about things, my future, I block it out.”
Once again he has used that phrase “block it out”. It goes back to when he was 14 and his father, Sean, got the call that Chelsea were not retaining him. “I blocked it out,” Rice says of the crushing disappointment. By 6pm that day he was training with Fulham and the next day went to West Ham once word went around that he was available. Southampton also wanted him but he chose West Ham not least because of their reputation for bringing through young players and because the Under-15 team were sweeping all before them.
Still it meant leaving the family home in Kingston and moving, Monday to Friday, across London to a new school and digs in Ilford. It developed Rice’s mental toughness even more. “I am so close to my mum and dad,” he says. “I was really homesick and even thought about packing it in at one stage – not packing in football but going back home and getting the train in at 6am every day. I was hating it.
“I hear stories all the time now of how my mum (Stephanie) used to call up her sisters crying her eyes out, saying she missed me. I would come home and dinner was there for me. It was hard to leave. It was just her and my dad there as my two older brothers had already moved out.
“But as I got older I matured a bit more and I am so happy I stuck with it because it has, mentally as well, turned me into the person I am today. I have just kept progressing and progressing and blocking out everything else and always giving it the best I have got.”
These are exciting times at West Ham and not least with a midfield that, pre-season, has seen Rice paired with Jack Wilshere behind a three of Manuel Lanzini, Felipe Anderson and new signing Pablo Fornals who he describes as “an unbelievable talent”. Does Rice regard midfield as where his future lies?
“It was a question that was thrown around last year by a few pundits, that I might go back to being a centre-back. I’d never rule it out, for sure,” Rice says. “I think I have the attributes to play at centre-back, I sometimes still train there, filling in, and I really do enjoy it – bringing out the ball from the back, reading the game. But the manager has me in midfield and I am relishing it. I feel like I can give a bit more in midfield and it’s where I want to carry on.
“I don’t really look at other midfield players. If I was to look at one it would probably be (Sergio) Busquets at Barcelona. He just stays in the centre of the pitch and plays it. He’s so good at what he does he just makes it look effortless. But I pretty much focus on myself when I watch clips – where I can get better, where I could have won a tackle, played a different pass. Things like that, things I can learn from so that when I go into a game I might do something different.”
That learning curve has been steep. So, going back to the billboard, what are Rice’s “new dreams” for this season? “There’s a real feel-good factor around the place, a real sense of momentum,” Rice says. “For me and for the club and with the players we have now signed I think we are good enough to be pushing for Europe. That’s a big dream of mine – to play in Europe for West Ham.”
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