It was a wonder goal that appeared to tick every box. Nick Tsaroulla had powered away from four Leeds players before hammering low into the bottom corner to set League Two Crawley on their way to Sunday’s 3-0 FA Cup upset win. It was the 21-year-old’s first goal in senior football and it was perhaps the greatest result in Crawley’s 125-year history.
But the truth is that the surface detail barely covers it. Tsaroulla’s story is heavy on extremes – on physical and mental torment plus the deepest wells of resolve. And it is underpinned by a shuddering realisation – Tsaroulla knows that he is lucky to be alive.
The car crash happened on 15 July 2017 as Tsaroulla, then an emerging left-back in the Tottenham academy, drove to the club’s training ground from his home in Winchmore Hill, north London. He remembers going round a “little mini-roundabout so I wasn’t even going that fast” and his Audi A1 crumpling upon impact with the oncoming vehicle.
“He was in an Audi Q5 so, like, three times the size,” Tsaroulla says. “It was head-on and, although his car was pretty much unscratched, mine was a mess. The doctor said that if I didn’t have my seatbelt on I would have died. Definitely. I would have been dead.”
If the seatbelt saved Tsaroulla, it also left its mark in the form of a serious stomach injury that, try as they might over the next 11 months or so, Spurs and various doctors could not figure out. Tsaroulla describes the pain as “neuropathic” – in other words, up and down the pathways of the nervous system – and it would stand in the way of his first attempted comeback.
“A lot of it was to do with nerves because I developed a burning pain in my feet,” Tsaroulla says. “I couldn’t really put on football boots or run. I tried to come back and, unfortunately, I developed really bad blisters on my feet, which then caused me to get cellulitis. A blister got infected and there was a big red line tracking up my leg so I was rushed to hospital and put straight on to antibiotics. I was out of football again.”
Then, he was out of Spurs. He had joined the club aged 12 and, in the 2016-17 season, he was a regular for the under-18s as they reached the FA Youth Cup semi-finals. He had even made a couple of starts for the under-23s.
It was 13 June 2018 when Spurs named Tsaroulla on the list of players they would release at the end of that month, upon the expiry of their contracts, and he talks about how they “didn’t want to give me another chance. The injury just needed time and, unfortunately with football clubs, like Spurs, time goes against me.”
Tsaroulla was 19, beset with problems in his abdomen and feet; seemingly on the scrapheap. “I don’t want to talk badly about Spurs,” he says. “They did everything they could, they sent me to all the doctors but, unfortunately, they didn’t want to keep me. That gives me a lot of drive, though – Spurs. For me to prove them wrong.
“I’m not going to name names of coaches and managers but they are always in the back of my head. They let me go and it was a weird circumstance. I never really thought it was because of the ability. But they’ve given me … I mean, I’ve already got enough fire inside me but they’ve given me a lot more. To continue for the rest of my career. Sometimes they say it’s not good to hold on to the down moments but I like to have it there. So on days when you can’t be bothered, you remember and it’s: ‘No. I can be bothered now.’”
Tsaroulla started to see a brighter future when he enlisted with the Isokinetic rehabilitation centre on Harley Street after leaving Spurs. He did all of his work with them and, by May 2019, feeling “as fit as I’ve ever been, running as fast as I’ve ever run”, he was able to earn a one-year contract with Brentford’s B team. “I cannot speak highly enough about Isokinetic,” he adds. “They just fixed me up. They are amazing.”
On Sunday Neil Kengni gave Tottenham a scare when his shot hit the bar in the 20th minute of Marine’s FA Cup tie. On Monday he attended a Zoom tutorial on health and safety for his apprentice plumbing course from his home in Manchester.
The 20-year-old Kengni said he was still digesting his moment in the spotlight, describing it as “a bit surreal” to be playing against some of the top players in the world whom he would normally spend his weekends watching on TV. He recounts chatting to Dele Alli and Lucus Moura, describing them as “sound guys”.
The player from the eighth-tier club says he is “gutted” that his shot didn’t go in though, as he replays the moment over and over again. “I think I hit it too high.” He hopes the Marine players still made everyone proud, despite the eventual 5-0 defeat by Spurs, adding: “We still kept on going until the last minute.”
Kengni’s family moved from Cameroon to the UK when he was 10, settling in Wythenshawe, famously home to United’s Marcus Rashford, another hero of his. “Watching him grow through football to become one of the best players in the world is amazing. And hopefully, in God’s hands, I can do the same.” So Kengni hopes to follow in his footsteps?
“Yes”, he says, “I‘m hoping to be a professional football … and hopefully still, you know, get my plumbing degree.” Maya Wolfe-Robinson
After two years out, Tsaroulla played 31 times for Brentford B in 2019-20 until the coronavirus crisis halted the game last March. He relished working under Neil MacFarlane and Sam Saunders and says that he “fell back in love with football” at Brentford, where he also learned “the mens’ game side of it”. But there would be no pathway into the first team and he was released when his contract expired in June.
Tsaroulla turned the focus inwards, working out alone in his local park although, after all that he had lived through, a shorter period without normal training held no fears.
“I read a great book – Relentless by Tim Grover,” Tsaroulla says. “It completely changed my mindset. I’d proved to myself that after two years out, I could get back in the game so six months [from March] with no training … I didn’t care. It might have fazed someone else but not me.”
Tsaroulla earned a one-year contract at Crawley in October after working with them for six weeks or so – the club have the option of a further year – and his focus now is on helping them to further glories.
“There can never be enough,” Tsaroulla says. “As it says in Relentless, there always has to be more. I just want to enjoy my time at Crawley and do everything I can for this club. Maybe everything does happen for a reason. I would have loved to have stayed on at Spurs and played there but those lessons and what happened … I was able to do what I did against Leeds.”
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