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The Senegal star who is loved in Sheffield and was made in Boreham Wood

Iliman Ndiaye - Maddie Meyar/Getty Images
Iliman Ndiaye - Maddie Meyar/Getty Images

For Sheffield United fans, when England line up against Senegal on Sunday night, there will be torn emotions. Because among the Lions of Teranga there will be one of their own. Iliman Ndiaye, the prodigy the club picked up from non-league football, has been absolutely magnificent for Aliou Cisse’s side as they qualified from Group A. Which will come as no surprise to regulars at Bramall Lane, where the young frontman has been electrifying the crowd all season.

“My God they love him,” says Kevin Cookson, the Sheffield United press officer. “They already have two songs for him. He is the best we’ve had in an age. Of all the players to be developed here - Aaron Ramsdale, Phil Jagielka, Kyle Walker, Dom Calvert-Lewin, Harry Maguire - this lad could be the best of the lot.”

Which is not something that was said to him when, as a 16-year-old, he went for a trial at Reading. There he was told bluntly he was not going to make it as a footballer, and he really should try something else.

Though quite what a star player for Senegal was doing in the first place going for a trial at Reading is part of what makes Ndiaye’s journey to the second round of the World Cup all the more remarkable.

He was born in Rouen in France, his dad from Senegal, his mother French. It was a big, boisterous family: Ndiaye has seven sisters and a brother. And almost from when he was born, he was playing football on the streets, his father using modern training techniques to develop his game. There is footage taken by his dad of him running across a playground in Rouen strapped to a parachute. Wanted by PSG and Marseille as a youngster, he was on his way to the Marseille academy at the age of nine when the family went to live in Senegal.

He carried on playing, on the streets as much as anywhere, and when he was 14, his dad took a job in south London. The family decamped and, although speaking not a word of English, he was soon starring in games of cage football. Word got out. He was invited to camps at Chelsea and Reading, and a development course at Southampton. But, reckoned by many an academy too unschooled in the game, there was no offer of a scholarship. It appeared he was going to end up another missed talent.

Iliman Ndiaye at Sheffield United - Andrew Kearns/Getty Images
Iliman Ndiaye at Sheffield United - Andrew Kearns/Getty Images

But when he left school at 16, he joined the PASE academy at the non league club Boreham Wood, where he combined his football with courses in all manner of trades, including bricklaying, at Barnet and Southgate College.

Of the dozen young scholars, he was immediately spotted by Boreham Wood’s first team manager Luke Garrard who invited him to train with the first team squad.

“He was always a stand out here,” recalls Garrard. “He has great balance and the way he caresses the ball is just a thing of beauty.”

Still only 17, Ndiaye produced an astonishing solo goal in a three-day tournament organised by the PGMOL as they tested Var at St George’s Park. And still it is impossible to work out how he did it.

But he never made a league appearance for the club. Largely because Sheffield United moved in during the summer break. They had scouted the player through footage on YouTube of him playing for the Rising Ballers freestyle troupe. This is how far clubs these days throw their nets. He was invited up to Bramall Lane and - even with Chelsea keen to make contact - he was signed up. Soon after moving to Yorkshire, he was sent out to non league Hyde United on loan, to toughen him up.

“It’s what we do here,” says Cookson. “When Dom Calvert-Lewin was here, he went to Stalybridge. Play against men. See what the game is all about. Withstand that, a kid can withstand anything.”

When Paul Heckingbottom took over from Chris Wilder as United’s stand-in manager, in his first game in charge in March 2021, he gave Ndiaye his debut. It was a 5-0 Premier League defeat at Leicester. But, although only 19, he stayed in the team and, when United sank into the Championship, he really bloomed. He scored a standout individual goal at Fulham last season, a perfect example of his balance, technique and ambition.

This season he has taken another step: when the Championship was paused for the World Cup, he was the joint leading scorer in the division. And now, just 18 months after he was playing for Hyde in the Northern Premier League Premier Division, having been spotted by Cisse and given his debut only this June, he is scoring goals in the World Cup.

“We knew he was a real prospect,” says Garrard. “But did we think he would be starring at a World Cup? No. What he has achieved has been magical.”

Though for Garrard and his colleagues at Boreham Wood, Sunday’s game will have a particular poignancy. Danny Hunter, the club chairman, is a fanatical England supporter. He has followed them across Europe and beyond, and was in Qatar for the group stage. He will, however, not be at the game with Senegal, obliged to return to England for business commitments.

“We’ll all be watching together on the telly,” says Garrard of his chairman. “Sure, we want England to win, even if Iliman is on the other side. If we score three and Iliman gets one for them, that would be the perfect result for us.”