A 13-year-old Michael Carrick is sat on the edge of his bed surrounded by posters of Peter Beardsley, the iconic blue star of ‘Newcy Brown Ale’ breaking up the black-and-white stripes on his ASICS-produced Newcastle United shirt.
That toothy-grinned, wide-eyed lad could only dream he would become a Champions League and five-time Premier League winner, a former Manchester United, West Ham, Tottenham Hotspur and England lynchpin.
But there’s one glaring omission from Carrick’s trophy-laden CV – Newcastle United.
“My favourite memory of being a fan is sitting on a barrier in the Gallowgate End with my dad watching Mirandinha,” Carrick told the Daily Mail in 2018.
“It was exotic to a seven-year-old: ‘Woah, we’ve got a Brazilian!’ You could feel that in the ground.
“We’ve got Mirandinha, he’s not from Argentina, he’s from Brazil, he’s f****** brill!”
Born just three-and-a-half miles east of Newcastle city centre, Carrick was a Magpies fanatic born and bred.
But, despite honing his talents in the same Wallsend Boys Club that gave us Alan Shearer, Lee Clark and Beardsley, Carrick never represented his boyhood club, showcasing remarkable maturity when turning down Newcastle in favour of West Ham aged 15.
“What happened with Michael was I sat with his mam and dad and told them how much I wanted him to sign for Newcastle,” John Carver, a coach at Newcastle’s academy at the time, told The Chronicle.
“But Kevin Keegan had got rid of the reserve team and there was no pathway. His parents said how much they wanted him to sign for Newcastle as he was a fan – but he wanted to play football.
“With no reserve team at Newcastle, there was no route for him.”
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Could Michael Carrick finally get his chance at boyhood club Newcastle?
A quarter of a century has passed since Carrick made a decision that, when you consider where his footballing journey took him, surely proved the right one.
But while the 40-year-old may never have represented Newcastle before hanging up his boots in 2018, could he do so in a different capacity, running the game from the touchline rather than in front of the defence?
According to 90Min, Newcastle’s new Saudi Arabian owners have identified Carrick as one of the potential contenders to succeed Steve Bruce in the hottest of managerial hot seats.
And while he has next-to-no experience as a manager, cutting his tactical teeth on Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s coaching staff at Old Trafford, this is an opportunity that will give Carrick, a thoughtful, intelligent character on and off the pitch, much to ponder.
Carrick turned down Newcastle at 15. Will the temptation be impossible to ignore this time, 25 years on?
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