Taken from today's Times. Not a bad read.
He is wearing trainers that, far from being flash, have his name scrawled on them in marker pen. His voice is quiet, his fingernails are gnawed down. You might assume that Adam Johnson is too diffident to grab at opportunity. Be careful what you assume.
The biggest transfer of the January window, the £8.5m boy from the Championship, for whom the world’s richest club ditched Robinho, has ambition levels to match his new status. It’s just that they are tempered by a personality that is sensible and unassuming. It reminds you of Ryan Giggs. Roberto Mancini has already drawn the parallel in onfield terms. “I remember Giggs when he was young and the way he moved,” said Mancini. “Johnson is the same player.”
Johnson does not shirk from such a comparison, as many might. There’s no guff about wanting to be the “first Adam Johnson not the next Ryan Giggs”. In his gentle way, he has the self-belief to take on board the Giggs simile that was not, admittedly, made on the basis of overwhelming evidence — rather Mancini’s study of Johnson on video before he approved a signing that had been driven by City’s football administrator, Brian Marwood, and Mancini’s assessment of Johnson’s City debut. It was arresting, a match-winning performance against Bolton where the 22-year-old’s light-footed and gliding, yet brutally purposeful, wing play was Giggs-esque indeed.
Asked whether he models himself on anybody, Johnson says: “Yeah. Giggs, without a doubt. Anybody who has watched football for the past 10 years or whatever would know he’s been the best player in England. Growing up, he was my hero. I had all the videos and that. He’s been a lot of wingers’ heroes over the years I’d think. For the manager to say what he did . . . it’s an honour to be likened to somebody like that.”
Johnson was wooed by his idol’s club. He denies reports that he was given a tour of Old Trafford and that he held talks with David Gill, but it is believed he and Manchester United had serious contact in January. Not that he would necessarily have preferred a move there. “I came to City because you want to go to the biggest club you can in your career and I might not have got another opportunity to do that. There’s the quality of players who are here: I wanted to come and learn from them and the coaches,” Johnson says.
United and other suitors such as Chelsea were unwilling to match the fee City paid Middlesbrough, which was an extraordinary amount given that Johnson had just four months left on his contract. The exact fee has not been disclosed but it is believed to be in the region of £8.5m and could rise if he is capped by England. Johnson rebuffed three attempts by Middlesbrough to extend his deal — a further sign of his self-confidence. “It was a bit of a risk. My contract was up in summer and I could have got injured or anything,” he admits. “It was in the back of my mind a little when City came in. I thought life was too short to turn the opportunity down. I’d been on the same contract with Middlesbrough for four years and had never complained. In the end it (the transfer) had nothing to do with money, I wasn’t running my contract down because I was waiting for more. I could have got more by moving on a free.
“Knowing somebody was going to pay so much made me see City wanted me. I could have had more options in the summer, but would teams have been buying me for the right reasons? Because I’d have been on a free, teams might have said, ‘We’ll have him because he’s English and we can put him in the Champions League squad’.”
Johnson was influenced by another element. Fabio Capello has identified him, along with Joe Hart, Jack Rodwell, Jack Wilshere and Kieran Gibbs, as a group of youngsters who could be late World Cup selections. Johnson and Hart have the best chances of inclusion and both may be in England’s squad to face Egypt, named next weekend.
“With the World Cup coming up, stranger things have happened, so I thought, ‘Why not? I might as well go (to City)’. If I play well and there’s a few injuries and things, you never know,” Johnson says.
“It wasn’t a big factor but when I signed there were all sorts of little things in my head and I knew that playing in the Championship I wasn’t going to be seen as much. I needed to be playing on television most weeks and get talked about. It would be unbelievable to go to South Africa but I’ve got to concentrate on trying to play as well as I did on my debut. If I do, hopefully I’ll have a sniff of a call-up.”
He already feels like he has been at Manchester City “for years”, so welcome has the club made him feel. He has taken to his new area, moving into the footballers-and-WAGs Babylon of Alderley Edge, Cheshire. “Most of the lads live there, it’s quiet, out of the way. That’s what I’m used to up north,” Johnson says.
He hails from very different surrounds, Easington, County Durham, a former pit village once classed as the most deprived place in the UK. Filmed there was Billy Elliot — Johnson’s nickname at Middlesbrough. As Billy Elliot’s dancing feet marked him as special at an early age, so did Johnson’s. Despite being Stewart Downing’s understudy for much of his Boro career (something that frustrated him deeply) he was tracked by several big clubs soon after making his debut against Sporting Lisbon aged 17. Real Madrid was allegedly one. “Yeah,” he says with a smile. “I think there has been speculation since I was about 18. I have been linked with just about every club in Europe and it was very flattering but City are going places where they might be as big as Real Madrid one day.”
He denies colleagues dislike Mancini’s habit of changing City’s training times almost daily, saying that it avoids boring routine and that it worked for the manager at Inter Milan.
Johnson’s toughest opponent? “Ashley Cole.” Left wing or right wing (though left-footed, he regularly plays both)? “All top wingers these days play on opposite sides and are able to come inside on to the stronger foot, which I like doing.” Note: “top wingers”. Johnson may be low-key but his sights are set very high.
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