Islam Feruz: A Mystery Inside A Riddle Wrapped In An Enigma
No discussion of footballers seemingly hell-bent on wrecking their careers would be complete without this kid, which is why I’m opening with him.
It’s not the first time I’ve written about Islam Feruz, a player in whom so much early faith was placed and who appeared to justify every single bit of it based on what he could do with a ball.
I’d heard of him years before I ever saw him, and that’s saying something considering he was still only fourteen when we were treated to a public display of his skills at Celtic Park in the Tommy Burns memorial match in 2011.
He dazzled, as he did in Scotland Under 16 games, and there was a feeling we were watching the emergence of a huge talent.
But all the while there were rumours that as big as that talent was we would never get to see it fulfil itself in a Celtic shirt.
Feruz’s name and reputation had spread far and wide before he ever pulled on the strip in that game, and the platform it gave him made it inevitable that even more interest would follow. Rumours circulated about how dismissive he was of the club and how a serious attitude problem had developed. He showed no sense of loyalty and some speculated that he couldn’t wait to depart and chase the big money in England.
It was no surprise when he left for Chelsea having never seen first team football at the club.
His departure infuriated many inside Celtic Park.
To say that the move hasn’t worked out is an understatement.
It would be hard to over-state just how big a mess Feruz has made of his early career.
He is now a 21 year old, still young enough to crack it, and is still on the books at Chelsea, who he signed for in 2011, but since getting his first professional contract in 2014 they have sent him out on loan to five different clubs and he has played a grand total of 22 games in that time.
He has never scored a goal in senior football.
To put that into some kind of perspective, Watt is 23 and has 37 career goals in 164 professional games. That’s a very decent ratio for any player. For all the criticism he gets, he has been playing regularly from an early stage. By the time he was Feruz’s age he had already appeared 34 times for Celtic and scored 8 senior goals … including that one against Barcelona which both defined him as an up-coming talent and has haunted him ever since.
It’s almost impossible to imagine Feruz ever scoring a goal of that nature; although younger than Watt, he hasn’t accomplished anything like what Tony has in his career thus far and looks increasingly unlikely to.
His own return to Scottish football was a disaster; ironically enough, he wound up in Edinburgh like Watt did. But whereas Tony Watt made 17 appearances for Hearts and scored a goal, Feruz made 6 for Hibs, all from the bench, and his contract was cut short by a club that simply ran out of patience.
As with Watt, there’s still a chance that Feruz can make it but the career clock is ticking down on him, and you can sense that it won’t end well. Everywhere he’s gone there have been the same complaints of a negative attitude and a refusal to buckle down to the hard graft. Like many blessed with an awesome ability, Feruz believes it’s enough.
It’s not. It never was. As others have already found out.
