Sometimes it does not do to get too close to your heroes. Imaginations may have been captured but Adu, struggling for fitness, made one substitute appearance in the domestic cup before being quietly released. The American analogue to Samba, Freddy Adu, recently returned to his home country with Tampa Bay Rowdies after failing to make the grade at Serbian minnows Jagodina or the moderate Finnish club, KuPS.Īt Jagodina, there had been the hope his exploits in the video game might attract supporters to their stadium – and local fans who met Adu were quick to thank him for his services to their all-night sessions in front of the computer. This has been a curious period for those who follow the Championship Manager (now Football Manager) cult. Photograph: Commissioned for the GuardianĮveryone has their own story of Cherno Samba, and perhaps a far more personal one than they might have had if they had actually known him: the virtual version would be unfazed at the prospect of becoming your first-choice striker at 16 and would be the guaranteed bail-out option to take you exactly where you wanted to be, regardless of your team’s level – usually finding the time to take England to 20 World Cup glory, too. While his career atrophied, his name reverberated around halls of residence and caused a buzz in student bars.Ĭherno Samba’s impressive in-game stats enabled his virtual presence to overtake his real-life career. It had been naggingly obvious since Samba’s departure from Millwall in 2004, having been paraded in front of the Premier League’s top clubs while concurrently allowing his own talent to drift, that the facts would never do justice to the figures.
You booted up the 2001-02 version of the game, made a beeline for a young, cheap Samba, and sat back while he fired you to glory amid febrile scenes in your back room. The Millwall academy player was given scores that reflected his clear ability and potential to become one of the world’s best. A Gambia-born forward who became one of the most vaunted properties in English football by his early teens – Michael Owen is said to have telephoned Samba personally while Samba was on a bus home from school, urging him to sign for Liverpool – his promise prompted the computer game’s creators to make sure they were ahead of the curve. Yet statistics are exactly what Cherno Samba will be remembered by after the self-styled “Championship Manager Legend” announced his retirement from football on Monday at the age of 29.