As a sport, football has a bad habit of overhyping young players before they are ready to deal with the limelight. For every wonderkid who makes it, there are countless more examples of those who don't.
Talents like Wayne Rooney and Lionel Messi, who burst onto the scene as teenagers and manage to live up to expectations from there on, are few and far between. More often than not, careers go the way of Freddy Adu, the young American who was dubbed the next Pele but never came close to reaching that level.
For English football fans of a certain age, the name Sonny Pike may sound vaguely familiar. He, too, was once tipped for greatness, but his career did not pan out as hoped.
Sonny Pike's Rise to Fame as a Wonderkid
As a youngster, Pike was hyped to become the next big thing in football. He rose to prominence during the 1990s, as he caught the eye while playing for local side Enfield FC.
He quickly earned a reputation in the game, as some even referred to him as 'the next Diego Maradona, while others compared him to George Best. Adding to his fame, his father pushed for him to appear on TV shows and adverts. He featured in a McDonald's ad, spoke on TV shows, was sponsored by Coca-Cola and worked with agents, all in his early years.
Unsurprisingly, all the biggest UK teams were in for him when he was still only 12 years old, with the likes of Manchester United, Tottenham, Ipswich, Norwich and others keeping tabs on his talent. Such was his reputation that Dutch giants Ajax offered him a trial at the club.
He took them up on their offer. Years later, Pike recalled how he felt destined for greatness at this time of his life, saying, "All of the players from my bedroom wall walked out before my very eyes.
"There were the De Boer brothers, Jari Litmanen, Nwankwo Kanu, Edgar Davids, Patrick Kluivert, Clarence Seedorf, Marc Overmars, Edwin van der Sar and the captain, Danny Blind. No wonder they were the best team in the world at that time."
"I’d never been more sure that I was going to make it as a professional footballer. All I had to do was shoot for the stars."
He wouldn't be offered a contract by Ajax, though, returning to the UK after playing just two games on trial for their youth side. During his time in the Netherlands, Pike was followed by cameras, with the popular TV show Blue Peter filming his exploits. Looking back, he explained how that would eventually have a negative impact on his football, saying:
“I wasn’t too worried about the cameras being there at that age, because from the ages of 10 to 12-years-old I had got used to that then.
"It was only towards about 14-years-old onwards that it got too much for me and I struggled to concentrate on my football.”
Potentially adding to his troubles, he famously had his legs insured for £1million while he was still only 14. This led to more notoriety, sparking a horrible backlash from opposition parents during games. Pike recalled:
“Because I had long hair, they used to say, ‘he’s only a girl, break his legs.’ Not just that, off the pitch and at school, I got different treatment that didn’t help me either."
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Pike Banned Amid Poaching Scandal
Having not made it at Ajax, Pike signed for Leyton Orient in 1996. At the same time, his father met with a journalist and agreed to sign his son up for a documentary named 'Coaching and Poaching'.
This couldn't have gone worse, as the documentary was actually created to expose a poaching scandal. Pike featured for Chelsea, but by doing so, through no fault of his own, was caught out for breaking FA rules on tapping up.
After an inquiry, Pike was banned from football for a year, and he missed out on training with multiple other clubs, with his relationship with his father broken after the ordeal too. On what it was like during that time, he said:
“After watching that documentary, I came out of the pub and I stood in the middle of the main road in Edmonton, actually on a roundabout. There’s cars just whizzing around me and I just felt that’s what my head was getting like. ‘This is too much, enough of this now.’"
He spoke about how this ruined his relationship with his dad, noting: “Then a month later my dad turns up, I’d not seen him for a few weeks.
"As soon as he comes up towards me, the first thing I'm gonna say to him is, for the very first time, ‘I don't want to do this no more.’ He told me that he had some more work for me, some more TV stuff and I'm literally about to walk up to and say the complete opposite. He said, ‘if you don't do it, you ain't got a dad.'"
After his ban, Pike returned to football to have a brief spell at Crystal Palace that didn't pan out. still only 16, his love for the game had disappeared. Recalling his struggles, he said:
“I pretty much had a mental breakdown on the pitch. I came on for 15 minutes, I was given the opportunity and I just walked off. The pressure of me going on, it was just too much.
"I looked at the coach and just walked off. I broke down and I knew it was all over from then."
Pike would spend two years at Stevenage before completely giving up football at the age of 18. Incredibly, he hung up his boots having failed to actually play a single professional game at senior level.
He suffered from depression before managing to turn his life around as he became a taxi driver in London, while later coaching young players to help support their fledgling careers. He also wrote a book aptly called 'My Story: The Greatest Footballer That Never Was'.