Author Topic: Saido Berahino  (Read 2535221 times)

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KN22

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Re: Saido Berahino
« Reply #10750 on: August 13, 2019, 12:54:54 PM »
The initial period after the Tottenham saga you can have some sympathy for him perhaps but over time, with his apparent drug use, speeding, dis-interested attitude the only person to blame is himself.

He only really looked a decent player for 10 games or so really when he first broke into the team and he lived off that for a couple of years.

I guess he's a millionaire so probably isn't too bothered either way now.........not sure he could ever (mentally) be good enough for the top two divisions now? He may even fail to get a contract at all ?

You have hit the nail squarely on the head there Darbolina. Think back and ask yourself honestly, did he ever look like a top player?? I don't think he did personally and could never quite understand how a so called top player couldn't even head a ball correctly! We did extremely well to get what we did from Stoke. Had we agreed to the Tottenham deal however,  we would have really hit the jackpot based on what has happened since

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Re: Saido Berahino
« Reply #10751 on: August 14, 2019, 01:19:15 AM »
Levy was right. Talented but wayward hence the low offers which were heavily weighted on future sucess. After 2 indifferent seasons and a rapidly expiring contract we were very lucky to get what we got from Stoke. Truth is at any point Berahino could have easily gone off the rails and whoever was his club at the time would be in the same situation as Stoke found themselves.

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Re: Saido Berahino
« Reply #10752 on: August 19, 2019, 08:41:20 PM »
Just scored again for Waregem 2 in 2
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Re: Saido Berahino
« Reply #10753 on: August 20, 2019, 10:51:41 AM »
Interestingly (for me at least) Berahino's almost eight years older than his new club. SV Zulte Waregem were founded on July 1st 2001. Saido Berahino established a foothold on this spinning chunk of rock and dust on August 4th 1993. Weird to think that my nineteen year old son is older than the side Berahino now represents, especially given the heritage of the club where he started. Football, a game of ongoing contrasts and perspectives. Twisting my melon man, a 'day' late but never mind.......

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Re: Saido Berahino
« Reply #10754 on: August 20, 2019, 04:20:33 PM »
Berahino 2 in 2 games in Belgium, point to prove? or found his level?
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Re: Saido Berahino
« Reply #10755 on: August 20, 2019, 04:37:40 PM »
Berahino 2 in 2 games in Belgium, point to prove? or found his level?
There is no level that deserves this tagnut. He doesn't deserve to earn a living from a game he disrespects so much.

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Re: Saido Berahino
« Reply #10756 on: August 20, 2019, 07:31:44 PM »
Potentially a move to to Europe could help him, potentially away from the 'hangers on' etc.

KN22

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Re: Saido Berahino
« Reply #10757 on: August 20, 2019, 11:00:28 PM »
There is no level that deserves this tagnut. He doesn't deserve to earn a living from a game he disrespects so much.

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Re: Saido Berahino
« Reply #10758 on: August 21, 2019, 12:44:54 AM »
Cant we just close this topic and include him in the ex player thread if need be, would be nice if he was just a distant memory

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Re: Saido Berahino
« Reply #10759 on: August 21, 2019, 02:00:33 PM »
Cant we just close this topic and include him in the ex player thread if need be, would be nice if he was just a distant memory

No it won't be closed, the ex players thread is purely for news of where ex players have moved to, it is not for constant updates on who scores where, that has been made clear numerous times.

If you or others are not interested in a topic then you have the choice to ignore it.
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Re: Saido Berahino
« Reply #10760 on: August 21, 2019, 02:27:21 PM »
I saw a small article or comment somewhere that was saying the manager of Zwolte is known for his tough approach, and for getting players like Thorgan Hazard (Eden's brother) on the straight and narrow. Will be interesting to see how it plays out for Saido
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vrabbit

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Re: Saido Berahino
« Reply #10761 on: September 09, 2019, 08:09:57 PM »
I saw a small article or comment somewhere that was saying the manager of Zwolte is known for his tough approach, and for getting players like Thorgan Hazard (Eden's brother) on the straight and narrow. Will be interesting to see how it plays out for Saido

3 goals in 4 games (all starts) over in Belgium so far

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Re: Saido Berahino
« Reply #10762 on: September 10, 2019, 09:29:16 AM »
I saw a small article or comment somewhere that was saying the manager of Zwolte is known for his tough approach, and for getting players like Thorgan Hazard (Eden's brother) on the straight and narrow. Will be interesting to see how it plays out for Saido

There was an article in Brummie Mail with quotes from his new manager saying how pleased he is with Berahino, his ability, his attitude everything. Maybe the penny has finally dropped.

https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/saido-berahinos-new-coach-said-16794527
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Re: Saido Berahino
« Reply #10763 on: September 10, 2019, 09:34:45 AM »

I always thought his hangers on were the problem, moving abroad has hopefully put the distance between him and them and solved the problem. I wish him the best of luck in turning his life around.
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Re: Saido Berahino
« Reply #10764 on: September 10, 2019, 12:48:10 PM »
There was an article in Brummie Mail with quotes from his new manager saying how pleased he is with Berahino, his ability, his attitude everything. Maybe the penny has finally dropped.

https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/saido-berahinos-new-coach-said-16794527

Maybe..... but somehow I doubt it!!

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Re: Saido Berahino
« Reply #10765 on: September 11, 2019, 07:10:31 PM »
I always thought his hangers on were the problem, moving abroad has hopefully put the distance between him and them and solved the problem. I wish him the best of luck in turning his life around.

Would be nice wouldn't it.
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Re: Saido Berahino
« Reply #10766 on: October 08, 2019, 03:07:50 PM »
Seen on facebook: An arrest warrant has been issued for Saido Berahino after the forward didn't turn up to his court hearing and failed to pay his £75,000 drink driving fine.

also in the mirror: https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/saido-berahino-issued-arrest-warrant-20537931


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Re: Saido Berahino
« Reply #10767 on: October 08, 2019, 04:20:00 PM »
Berahino not returning to the UK anytime soon unless he wants to be arrested on arrival.

https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/former-west-brom-striker-saido-17052423

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Re: Saido Berahino
« Reply #10768 on: October 29, 2019, 06:45:49 PM »
'Never forget' - Sadio Berahino jokes about James Morrison 'sucker punch' after midfielder retires

https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/never-forget-sadio-berahino-jokes-17168272

In all fairness, it should read “sucker punches” plural!
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Re: Saido Berahino
« Reply #10769 on: October 31, 2019, 08:14:56 AM »
'Never forget'.........

Don't worry Saido, we won't be forgetting that he dropped you any time soon  ;) .
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Re: Saido Berahino
« Reply #10770 on: December 24, 2019, 05:16:48 PM »
Ex-West Brom forward Saido Berahino eyes England return

I mean, who would actually pay good money for him and to him?

Source: https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/ex-west-brom-forward-saido-17471119
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Re: Saido Berahino
« Reply #10771 on: December 24, 2019, 05:34:53 PM »
Deluded as ever. Can't see much of a queue forming any time soon to welcome him back.

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Re: Saido Berahino
« Reply #10772 on: December 27, 2019, 11:14:16 AM »
........Can't see much of a queue forming any time soon to welcome him back.

I wouldn't be so sure about that. There's a number of single moms out there who I'd imagine would be quite keen to see the inside of his bank account.
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Re: Saido Berahino
« Reply #10773 on: January 20, 2020, 06:21:43 PM »
Article in The Athletic.

"At 26, Saido Berahino should be an England international and Premier League star — so why did it all go wrong? "

Now, where do we begin and how long have you got  8)

If anyone has a subscription to The Athlete, I'm sure a few of us would read Steve Madeley's article with interest if it were posted
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Re: Saido Berahino
« Reply #10774 on: January 20, 2020, 06:46:46 PM »
As a youngster first establishing himself in the West Bromwich Albion dressing room, Saido Berahino was so determined to get changed between Nicolas Anelka and Youssouf Mulumbu — two fellow French-speaking team-mates that he respected greatly — that he had his kit moved to a spot where no bench was in place.

Instead, according to multiple dressing room sources, he took to perching on a narrow ledge just to be alongside his favourite team-mates. It’s a simple little story that paints a picture of a young man desperate to be a top striker like Anelka and the others he had looked up to as a kid.

Yet former colleagues recall an introverted, aloof character who, despite routinely being friendly and respectful, never succeeded in forming close bonds with his team-mates.

“There are two Saidos,” one says with an air of sadness. “There’s a really nice lad and there’s a selfish prick — and they’re always fighting against one another. He has done my head in but I can’t hate him.”

It is a familiar refrain when chatting to footballers, coaches and staff who have worked with Berahino. However many times the former West Bromwich Albion and Stoke City striker drives friends and work-mates to distraction, they still see a glimmer of the polite, talented, happy-go-lucky kid who charmed them as a teenager.

Such is the contradiction within Berahino’s personality between the engaging and the obnoxious that some of the people he has let down most refuse to write him off.

“I worked with him with West Brom and England Under-21s and he was a really good player,” says Dan Ashworth, who was one of Berahino’s first youth-team coaches at The Hawthorns and had become sporting and technical director by the time trouble began to strike.

“I never had any bother with him. There were a couple of minor incidents that I would have had with a lot of different players. He is a talented boy who is doing really well in Belgium now and I’m delighted to see that.

“Whatever happened later at West Brom or at Stoke, I wasn’t there so I can’t comment. I can only comment on his time with England and as a young player at West Brom, and he’s a good person and a good player who got distracted a couple of times, but no differently to a lot of young players.”

When Berahino first arrived in England he needed “a lot of help with a lot of things” says one of the Albion coaches who first encountered him as a 12-year-old refugee from Burundi.

His route to Birmingham had been harrowing. His father had been killed in the 12-year Burundian civil war and his mother, Liliane, had fled to England to make a new home for her family.

A young Saido was cared for by relatives in Burundi before being sent alone on a plane to London, where he was initially detained by immigration authorities until his identity could be verified and a reunion with Liliane could be arranged. After a brief spell in London, they set up home in Birmingham.

His father’s death is not a subject Berahino speaks about publicly nor, it seems, even privately with coaches he worked with closely at West Brom.

“Whatever people want to think or judge him on, there aren’t many people in this world who have had a similar experience as a 12 or 13-year-old boy,” one told The Athletic. “So it annoys me that people are very opinionated and that people are so quick to judge someone they know nothing about.”

Mark Harrison, Albion’s long-time academy manager and a mentor of Berahino, told the Birmingham Mail in 2016: “I’m not making excuses for him but if you have been through that what are the emotional long-term scars?

“What people don’t report is that on Monday afternoon he asked Darren Moore to stay out and do extra training with him. People don’t hear about that.

“When he came here as an 11-year-old he wasn’t a bad finisher… but, I tell you what, he hasn’t half worked at it as well.”

Berahino attended Aston Manor School alongside fellow sporting talents like Ateeq Javid and Recordo Gordon, both of whom went on to play first-class cricket for Warwickshire.

He lived with his mother in Aston, in the shadow of Villa Park, yet his talent took him to Albion, courtesy of a link between Phoenix United, his youth team, and Steve Hopcroft, Albion’s academy’s head of recruitment.

He quickly became the standout star of a talented age group that included Romaine Sawyers, Albion’s current midfielder, Chris Wood, the Burnley striker, and Kemar Roofe, the former Leeds forward.

The academy established by Ashworth and Aidy Boothroyd recruited some talented players born in the early 1990s but Berahino was always the one for whom big things were predicted.

After scoring prolifically for Albion’s youth teams and becoming a fixture in England’s age-group squads, he seemed ready for first-team football.

Things started well for Berahino at Brentford. He scored six goals in 14 League Two games for Northampton earlier in the 2011-12 season before Albion decided he was ready to step up to League One.


Berahino in action during his loan at Northampton Town (Photo: Pete Norton/Getty Images)
He made a positive early impression at Griffin Park both with his skill and his attitude.

But Berahino’s approach to training and his conduct at the club soon began to rile his colleagues while a rant on Twitter, about his substitution at half-time in a defeat at Leyton Orient in March 2012, led to a clash with his manager Uwe Rosler.

Rosler said that Berahino’s Twitter comments had been “addressed” and he was dropped for Brentford’s subsequent game against Bournemouth before returning for one more appearance in a 2-0 home win against Rochdale — but, by then, the Brentford dressing room had made its feelings clear.

Senior players told club officials they could not tolerate Berahino anymore. For Albion, the final straw came in the west London hotel room they had provided for Berahino, where the player’s habit of courting unnecessary trouble manifested itself most clearly.

Brentford heard several reports of parties but one ended with the room left in such a mess that cleaning staff reported back to their bosses.

Albion recalled Berahino, fined him, read him the riot act and privately admonished themselves for sending him to a club where he was subjected to the distractions of London. He left Griffin Park with an promising record of four goals in eight games but with a reputation for trouble already established on football’s fevered grapevine.

Albion already feared the worst for their rough diamond yet his talent was so special that they resolved to persist with smoothing out the edges. When Steve Clarke succeeded Roy Hodgson as manager in the summer of 2012, the Scot quickly took a shine to Berahino.

A six-minute debut in the EFL Cup in August 2012 soon after his 19th birthday was followed by a successful loan spell at Peterborough that brought two goals in 10 Championship appearances.

A year after being blown away by Berahino’s talent, Clarke was ready to unleash him on the Premier League.

Hardcore Albion fans already knew all about Berahino. They had watched him shine for the youth team and the under-21s, heard about his exploits in an England shirt and read a little about his troubles at Brentford. They knew he was the player who Albion hoped would be the first clear success for an academy that was set up long after those of local neighbours Wolves and Aston Villa but which had made great strides in playing catch-up.

But he announced himself to the wider public in his full debut for the club in August 2013. He scored a hat-trick in the first 38 minutes as Newport County were dumped out of the EFL Cup and the clamour began for a Premier League chance.

With Romelu Lukaku having departed that summer and Shane Long struggling for form, Albion needed a goalscorer. Another EFL Cup goal in a 1-1 draw against Arsenal on September 25 — Albion went out on penalties — was followed three days later by a fairytale, breakout moment at Old Trafford.

After replacing an injured Scott Sinclair on 13 minutes, Berahino displayed the movement and finishing that had seen coaches compare him to a young Jermain Defoe.

He scored the decisive goal in a famous 2-1 victory and Albion fans were about to see a whole lot more of “the two Saidos”.

“Maybe we let him down,” says James Morrison, who had a front-row seat for the whole of Berahino’s Albion career, from his explosive emergence on the first-team scene, through his angry reaction to the collapse of his move to Tottenham, to his infamous failed drugs test and subsequent departure to Stoke.

Morrison’s words now are tinged not with anger, but with sadness and regret.

“I think ‘frustrating’ is the word to sum him up because he had such a high and then such a low,” says Morrison. “But maybe we let him down.

“Having that Tottenham move rejected obviously affected him and as a club we maybe could have helped him more. We don’t know what goes on with people but that obviously affected him.

“He’d worked his way up and was scoring goals in the Premier League and that chance came for him to go to Tottenham and play Champions League football. I think most players would be disappointed and as a footballer you could see his frustration. I don’t think he ever got over that.”

Well before the angry incidents of September 1, 2015, when the Albion chairman Jeremy Peace refused to sign off on a transfer to White Hart Lane and Berahino took to Twitter to suggest he would never play for the chairman again, colleagues had spotted a concerning trait in Berahino’s make-up that meant he was easily distracted and knocked off course by a little success or a minor setback.

In a tweet that he subsequently deleted, the striker wrote: “Sad how I can’t say exactly how the club has treated me but I can officially say I will never play Jeremy Peace.”

Saido Berahino, tweet

In December 2013, Berahino signed a new three-and-a-half-year contract, replacing the £850-a-week deal he had penned when he first turned professional with a £12,000-a-week pay packet following months of negotiations.

Parking spaces at the training ground are numbered to correspond to players’ shirts, meaning under his previous financial package, Berahino would park his white Volkswagen Scirocco in bay 38, next to the Rolls Royce Phantom or Ferrari belonging to Nicolas Anelka that would sit in space 39. Now he could feel on a par with a player he had looked up to for so long and eventually, more expensive cars replaced his humble VW.

But several senior players’ displeasure about a change in Berahino’s attitude to training later that season culminated in the infamous spat with Morrison in the wake of a 3-3 home draw with Cardiff.

Berahino failed to keep the ball in the corner with his side 3-2 ahead, the Welsh side broke and equalised, leading to tempers boiling over in the immediate aftermath. Morrison and Berahino never had personal issues but other squad members maintain that, had the midfielder not lost his cool, someone else would have done.

Still, Berahino’s progress on the field was impressive on the whole and Albion’s established players recognised a team-mate with the talent to help them prosper in the Premier League.

Five goals came in 11 league starts in the 2013-14 season despite the sacking of Clarke and the chaotic reign of Pepe Mel.

The following season brought Berahino’s best form in an Albion shirt under Alan Irvine and his high standards continued under Tony Pulis.

He ended the season with 14 league goals from 32 starts as well as five in four in the FA Cup.


Berahino scores against Burnley in the 2014-15 season (Photo: Stu Forster/Getty Images)
He was called up by England, too, but did not get on the pitch in the one competitive match and one friendly for which he was in the squad.

The Athletic understands that both Albion and Roy Hodgson, their former manager who was by then in charge of the national team, had serious reservations about handing him a call-up.

Hodgson had been warned of Berahino’s behaviour during his time at the club. Irvine, meanwhile, had been successful in coaxing impressive displays and a dedicated approach from an unpredictable player and was concerned that international recognition might disrupt that balance.

He and Hodgson discussed the pitfalls and largely agreed but eventually the clamour to reward Berahino’s form proved too much for the England boss.

It seemed to be Berahino’s destiny. He had been viewed as a better prospect than Harry Kane when the pair were team-mates for Gareth Southgate’s under-21s. But while Kane would thrive at Spurs, the club who would soon blow Berahino off course.

Manchester United lodged an interest in signing Berahino but it was Tottenham who made a concrete move in the summer of 2015.

It came to a head on transfer deadline day with an offer potentially worth up to £22.5 million, but divided into instalments and including a high proportion of performance-related payments.

Some inside Albion suspected Daniel Levy, Spurs’ famously cautious chairman, had structured his bid to reflect his personal unease at signing Berahino despite manager Mauricio Pochettino pushing hard for a deal. By now, word was out on the downsides of Berahino’s complex character.

Peace stood firm, Berahino lost his head and Albion saw little of ‘Happy Saido’ from that moment on. ‘Stroppy Saido’ was back, and was there to stay.

“Saido struck me as somebody who really wanted to be loved by everyone but pretty much repelled everyone with his behaviour,” says one former colleague who saw Berahino close up after his Tottenham-related tweets.

Senior figures at The Hawthorns have often compared Berahino to John Stones, his former England Under-21s team-mate, and cited their contrasting behaviour in 2015-16 as an example of Berahino failing to help himself.

Stones was denied a lucrative move from Everton to Manchester City in the same transfer window but made the switch a year later following another impressive, dedicated campaign at Goodison Park.

Albion officials believe Berahino could have charted a similar path to the big time, but instead imploded.

Senior players once more offered words of advice. Work hard and continue scoring and another big move would eventually happen, they assured him. Albion offered him a new four-year contract, to both protect their bargaining position and reflect his growing status as a player with Premier League pedigree, and Pulis took Berahino and his mother to dinner as part of a concerted effort to understand the striker better.

Their plans did not work. Berahino had already been handed the first of two drink-driving convictions in January 2015 and in September came a game at Crystal Palace that further alienated team-mates.

Having been substituted by Pulis at half-time with the game goalless, Berahino put on his headphones during a half-time team-talk and left the stadium during the second half as his colleagues lost 2-0.

There were happy periods, too, when Berahino would emerge from a heart-to-heart with Pulis and redouble his efforts for a while, but there were too many cases of minor distractions derailing his efforts.

Once, when a three-sentence tabloid story linked him with interest from Manchester United, colleagues became tired of him bringing it up in conversation. There were incidents that amused his team-mates, as Gareth McAuley told The Athletic last year, like his trip around the training ground corridors on a hoverboard or the occasional visits from his dog.

But when a lack of focus affected his fitness and his attitude to training, it drove them to despair.

He knuckled down again later in the season and once more gave hope to colleagues that the likeable young lad they had previously known might return.

Yet at the start of the following season came a failed test for a recreational drug and an eight-week ban that did not become public until after his departure for Stoke. Pulis attempted to take the heat off the striker by sending him for intensive training at a French fitness camp.

Then, in January 2017, more than 10 months after his last Premier League goal, Berahino swapped The Hawthorns for Stoke.

He left behind a mixture of disbelief that Albion had recouped £12 million for a player viewed by many as damaged goods and sadness that a talent nurtured and developed by West Brom had been lost to the club.


Welcome to Stoke: Berahino completes his £12m move (Photo: Laurence Griffiths/Getty Images)
“We see a good kid, joking, having banter and working hard, and the other side of it is what he gets the headlines for, which is a bit of a shame to see,” says Morrison.

“I can sympathise with him not getting his move and everyone could see he was a good kid. really. If he was struggling we could maybe have helped him. We don’t know what he was going through.

“But it’s football and you’ve got one vision, which is to look after ourselves on the pitch and know what we’re going to do.

“It’s a tough game and you live in that bubble of looking forward to the next game because if you’re not it there will be consequences. I think a few people tried to talk to him but he was hugely disappointed that he didn’t get his Tottenham move.

“When he knuckled down he knuckled down but I don’t think he ever kept it going.

“I can always remember Darren Fletcher saying people at Manchester United were ringing and asking about him. He could definitely have gone on and been a top-eight player.

“I think Tottenham would have been perfect for him. I think he would have kicked on under Pochettino and with the Champions League, they are playing two games a week and you’ve got no time to think. That would probably have been a blessing for him and taken away other distractions.”

Berahino’s first public act as a Stoke player was to infuriate former colleagues at The Hawthorns.

At a press conference to unveil him in the Potteries, Berahino criticised Albion’s handling of the final months of his Hawthorns career.

“They never actually told me why I wasn’t playing,” he told reporters. “It could be because I didn’t sign a new contract.”

Yet the majority of Berahino’s first-team exile could be explained by his eight-week drugs ban. At the club who had gone to extraordinary lengths to comply with FA guidelines and honour their own loyalty to a player by keeping his embarrassment secret, there was dismay at the comments.