FOR a brief moment, Micah Richards' beaming smile subsides.
For a brief moment, the youngest defender to play for England is struggling, unsure still as to the path that has been put before him.
Troubled at the crossroads.
He says: "I see all my old friends from Leeds and people say, 'Why are you going back there?'
"I get accused of being something dodgy. If I stay in Hale, where I live now, I get accused of being snobby and big-time. I can't win."
It is all too easy to forget that Richards is still only 21.
That at 17 he landed in the Premier League.
That at 18 he debuted for England, and three years and a few lurid headlines later, is re-emerging.
Richards has grown up in public.
Richards is still growing up.
In public.
The spotlight which blasted into the life of a 17-year-old from a rough council estate in Yorkshire has rarely dimmed.
There have been times when he has not helped himself. He freely admits it. But the charge sheet contains no convictions or addictions.
"I have made mistakes," he says. "But I have learned from them, the hard way.
"I have had to grow up with everyone watching. People can hate me, people can love me.
"I've had low moments. There have been times when I went home and looked at myself in the mirror.
"I said to myself: 'Go on, get back on track and start playing again. I trained hard and got back in the team.
"I'm a lot more professional now. I have learned from my mistakes. I have had to make them to learn from them.
"It is the rollercoaster. I have been on it since I first started playing for City's first team.
"I try to keep myself in the right position. I don't really come out of my house now. That's the best place to be. I trust myself more. There is loads of stuff I can't do.
"The only thing I really do is go to training and come home and relax and focus on football.
"I swore on live television but I was 17 and very excited - I'd just scored against Aston Villa. It was one of the best days of my life.
"I'm just a normal bloke like everyone else. I treat every person with the same respect. I have not changed.
"When football is finished I can do what I want then. But it's a short career. It only lasts 15 years. I have to put the graft in now.
"There was a release in playing the game two years ago. Then my confidence was sky high.
"I have matured but I'm still young. I know now what I can and can't do, even the little things. It is about keeping my nose clean at all times, I have learned that.
"There will be times in the future where you might think I shouldn't really have done that, but I will have to learn form that error. However, it will be nothing like my old mistakes."
Rough
Richards commendably avoids the cliche. To blame his upbringing. To point a finger at a family in a genuine working-class area that had seven brothers and a sister and two working parents.
"A lot of people would say my childhood was hard, but to me it wasn't.
"The area in Leeds I come from is hard and you know what happens in a rough area like Chapeltown, but I enjoyed it. It suited me down to the ground. I have never had any problems with it, ever.
"I have a big family. My dad has always been a big figure in my life, he still is. I've always had brothers and sisters to look after me and my best friend Mark, who I've known since I was five.
"I think it might have been different if I didn't love football.
"If I was interested in other stuff I don't know, who knows? But because I loved football, it kept me on the straight and narrow.
"I saw friends who went off track. I had loads of friends who went to jail for different reasons.
"A lot of people talk about young footballers who have flash cars and slag them off but if they had come through what we have come though, they would do exactly the same.
"We have come from nothing, really nothing. If you can buy yourself a nice car and a nice house, of course you will do it. They would do it too.
"There is nothing wrong with it. I have earned this."
Naivety
It is hard not to warm to Richards, whose naivety is transparent.
He is the kid who would have been caught copying at school... after the first 10 to do it escaped scot-free.
He is the bloke who would get questioned in the pub. After those involved in a free-for-all had long since left.
He trusts.
It is a hard characteristic to slaughter someone for.
All he really craved was the domineering personality of a manager whose wing he could still one day come under when he was first thrust into football's brightest beam.
"Sir Alex Ferguson is the best example of how to look after players," he added.
"David Beckham, Ryan Giggs, the Nevilles, Paul Scholes, they all kept their feet firmly on the ground and that is because he made them. They had one manager at Manchester United. I have had five at City.
RICHARDS: I took my foot off the pedal
RICHARDS: I took my foot off the pedal
"Stuart Pearce was sort of like the father figure to me in the game but when he left I didn't really have anyone who said 'this is the way to go'.
"I sort of took my foot off the pedal a little bit when he left.
"That was the natural disappointment of losing someone who was guiding me.
"Stuart is unbelievable. When I go to the Under-21s and if I'm not playing well, he will come and talk to me. To me he is one of the best managers I have had.
"Sometimes I get talked about as not working hard enough. Every day I work really hard.
"When I had a problem I would talk to Pearcey. I know I'm getting older. Since he left I have not had that relationship with a manager. It may have affected me. I have learned now that it can't."
Revealingly, Richards is shy, unsure even. He is still a young 21, on the inside at least.
He was picked up and gawped at from the 29th game of his professional career, when England came calling.
"I'm not confident off the field," he concedes. "I'm more shy. A lot of people think I'm a bit of a show-off and that but I don't know where that comes from. I'm quite a shy person.
Rollercoaster
"I made my Premier League debut at 17, my England debut at 18. I was out of the team two years later. I'm trying to get back in, short term as a right back, then as a central defender, with managers liking me and managers hating me! It was very hard to keep my feet on the ground when the England call came.
"Playing in the Premier League is hard enough and then it's England.
"A lot happened. It was hard to take it all in. The call came in and I thought, 'I'm not too sure here!'
"You can't do anything. I was just a kid. A lot of decisions I made back then were wrong. But I don't regret anything I've ever done. It's part of the rollercoaster, isn't it?
"When you're 18, and playing for England, there is nothing better. That is all a kid wants to do.
"You feel a bit invincible.
"'I'm playing for England, there are posters of me on the wall' - it was like that. It was ridiculous. But I just loved it.
"Some would say it was too fast but I don't think so. I was in the team week in, week out and I deserved to be in it.
"But it was a big responsibility, I will accept that."
And then there is his alter ego, the ultra-confident defender with the physique of a middleweight boxer.
"There will be players that come in at City, experienced pros. But I will compete with anyone. I don't mind.
"I believe when I'm on top of my game, I'm one of the best.
"I believe I will achieve.
"Time will tell. The season before last I was linked with being the next England captain.
"And from there I went to not being in the team and thinking I can't do it.
"It is all about belief - that and playing well week in, week out and being consistent.
"I have learned not to get carried away with the good or the bad.
"I never took football that seriously until I played for the first team. I just used to enjoy playing the game. I went from youth to reserves to first team. I never realised I was any good until then.
"When I did it week in, week out, I thought, 'I'm not that bad, am I?'
"When I got in the England team, that's when I started realising."
His latest battle is to convince Roberto Mancini.
Mark Hughes was never quite sure, indeed only in the closing stages of his time at the club did he start to realise that Richards needs to be loved.
Pearce does, Eriksson and McClaren did. Ferguson, Benitez, O'Neill and Redknapp all could.
Capello, in a World Cup year, has still to have his pulse raised.
But for now it is about wooing Mancini.
Calm
"You know what, he came in and introduced himself to all the lads in the dressing room. We were all there and it's like the first day at school all over again.
"He shook hands with everyone, and by that I mean he had all the academy lads in there as well.
"That was really impressive. It's hard for youngsters at this club now, with the money we have.
"No disrespect to the other manager, but it shows he is willing to show faith in them. It gives hope to the young players.
"We have been known for good youngsters but it is getting harder because of the quality coming into the club. It is a good start.
"There is a quiet calm about him. He doesn't talk that much.
"He is very quiet, he looks like he's thinking. He seems to analyse people a lot."
Mancini is already rectifying the alarming fragility that cost Hughes his job. Training is now about the shape of the team. Eleven versus Eleven, Mancini picking the ball up for the weaker team and checking the shape of his first team, seeing if they are where they should be, trying to move the 10 outfield players together, making them less vulnerable, creating a unit.
"A lot of teams have good players but get broken down easily - we were like that," adds Richards.
"The great teams have compact shapes and know what jobs they are doing. They have 10 players behind the ball as soon as they lose it.
"That is what he has brought to the table. It is working. We are working."
He is working.
The Italian will find Richards, who still sees his future at Eastlands despite renewed interest from elsewhere, in better shape, physically and mentally, than at any point in his still burgeoning career.
There may still be the odd gaffe, but the boy from Chapeltown is a bit more streetwise.
http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/sport/667490/IVE-LEARNED-FROM-MY-MISTAKES-SAYS-MICAH-RICHARDS.htmlProbably worthy of it's own thread but he sounds like he's got his confidence back and see's his future at centre half, good luck Micah and the potential is defo there.
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