Newcastle United’s Mo Sangare has commented on his season.
Newcastle United youngster Mo Sangare has told the club’s official website that he is ‘disappointed’ with his lack of first-team training this season.
Rafael Benitez historically prefers to go with experienced pros over youth prospects, but Sean Longstaff has broken the mould this season by breaking into the Newcastle side.
Other Newcastle youngsters will be looking to follow Longstaff into Benitez’s first team in the coming years, and Sangare is one of those.
The 20-year-old recently earned his first two Liberia caps, meaning that whilst he’s a full international already, he’s yet to make his Newcastle debut.
Primarily a central midfielder, the youngster has been tipped for a bright future, and he has now discussed his path to Newcastle as well as his season in general.
Sangare has revealed that he’s disappointed that he hasn’t been around the Newcastle first team this season, having been in the setup week in and week out last season.
Benitez has seemingly dropped him from the training for now, but Sangare admitted he didn’t want to say too much about it, instead just focus on getting better having underachieved a little this season.
Sangare also opened up on having a trial with Liverpool, as well as Oldham, Accrington Stanley, Burnley, Barnsley and Bournemouth whilst having spells set up with Manchester United and Sporting before choosing Newcastle.
“I think this season’s been more of a disappointment for me, as a player,” he says. “Last year, I was training with the first team week in, week out. This time, I’ve never trained with them – I’ve not been up (to the first team’s training centre) yet. I don’t want to say too much on that, but I’m a lot better than that – I’m a lot better than what I’ve done this year. I’d say now, thank God, it’s better than it was a few months ago, but it’s still not as good as I want it to be.”
“I went to Liverpool on trial, but I didn’t get in. I then went to Oldham, but they said they didn’t want me either, so I started to go to college and I played for their development team. I was there for about six or eight months. Accrington (Stanley)’s academy said they’d give me a scholarship. They were trying to sort my international clearance but every time I asked about it, I just got told that the club were working on it. But nothing was happening. Burnley said they had a game against Fleetwood and they wanted me to come and play. I got an assist, nearly scored, and they said: ‘OK, we’ll give you two years.’ But as they were sorting out my international clearance, I was told that Newcastle wanted me to go on trial for a week.”
“Newcastle said they’d give me three years. At that point, I hadn’t been home for a month – I’d been to Barnsley, Bournemouth, Burnley, and I was in a hotel for a bit. I was going to go to Manchester United and Sporting Lisbon as well, but I thought: ‘I’ve been away from home for so long. I miss my mum. I know what I want to do – I’ve got what I’ve always wanted. I don’t want to be big-headed and lose everything. I want to sign for Newcastle.’ And I knew that if I moved away, I would focus a lot better and it’d give me something to push for, and I could look forward to going home every time to see my family.”
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