The making of Angel Gomes: ‘He can do things that are not really coached’

Having bravely walked away from boyhood club Man Utd, England’s Angel Gomes is now receiving the recognition his cage-honed talent deserves

Nani is happily recalling all those times his beloved godson would rush over to his house to show him the latest skill he had perfected but Angel Gomes was not only there to impress the then Manchester United and Portugal winger. He wanted to learn from him, too.
“I’d ask him all the time to do some tricks with the ball and every time he wanted to show me something new,” Nani tells Telegraph Sport.
“I’d always be positive with him. ‘You’ll be a superstar one day Angel’. Every time Angel needed advice I was able to give it.
“I always tried to teach what I think I can give to the young kids to improve their game, help them, motivate them to be even better each day. I’m happy Angel listened and took on board some of the things I said.
“It’s so nice to know I was with him in those early days and we had the chance to be together and enjoy those moments. He’s such a good kid.”
Still, there was one request from Angel that Nani could not accommodate despite the youngster’s urgings — how to do the acrobatic backflip he performed to celebrate his goals.
“Yeah, that was too dangerous!” Nani recounts amid fits of laughter. “I know how much training went into being able to do that backflip – and the costs that can be involved – so I didn’t advise him trying that!”
Today, it’s a #Throwback to a special moment – my first goal for @ManUtd! Good luck for the new season, guys!🤞🏾🙌🏾👹 #TBT #ThrowbackThursday #manutd #goal #backflip #EPL #reddevils #glory #newseason #premierleague pic.twitter.com/PRTWwqtUAc
Nani is bursting with pride as he reflects on how far the tiny boy he first encountered has come, the journey he has watched unfold at close quarters from United to current club Lille via Boavista – and the tantalising prospect of Gomes, now 24, making his England debut against Ireland at the Aviva Stadium on Saturday.
Gomes was just six when he first visited Nani’s house. His father Gil, a former Portugal youth international, had not told Angel or his older brother Rico where they were going when he packed them in the car and set off from home in Salford.
Imagine the surprise, then, when they rocked up at this huge house in leafy Cheshire to be greeted by this big dog – and then Nani. A few years later Angel had signed for United and would soon be hitching the odd lift to training with his superstar godfather and Rico, who was also in the club’s academy at the time and played with the likes of Jesse Lingard and Ravel Morrison.
Lee Unsworth was one of Gomes’s first coaches at United. They struck up an immediate rapport and remain in contact to this day. Angel messaged Unsworth six months ago marvelling at the accuracy of the reports of him as a nine-year-old and how they still chimed to this day and only recently contacted his old coach asking if he had some videos from when he was 14 at United that he could send over.
“He was unbelievably skilful,” Unsworth told Telegraph Sport this week. “He just had a natural awareness on the football pitch from a very young age. He was able to manipulate the ball as he wanted, twist, turn and jink and do things that are really not coached – that are just in him, innate.
“His dad was a professional and his older brother Rico was already at the club so they’d obviously been some influence from there.”
Gil was a forward in the gifted Portugal side alongside Luis Figo and Rui Costa that won the Fifa World Youth Championships in 1991. Managed by Carlos Queiroz, with whom Gil remains close, they would beat a Brazil team containing an 18-year-old Roberto Carlos in the final in Lisbon on penalties.
A nomadic career that started in Portugal and took in clubs in France, Switzerland, America and Italy would end on Manchester’s non-league circuit with the likes of Salford City and Hyde United. Gil settled in Salford with his family around the same time Queiroz became Sir Alex Ferguson’s assistant manager at Old Trafford in 2002 and it was from there that the Gomes family became close with Nani.
“I knew of Gil from him playing in the national team in the past and I’d heard all the stories about his background,” Nani explained. “We connected so easily and from there we formed a really good friendship and he ended up asking me to be Angel’s godfather.”
Angel was actually born in London – Gil was playing for non-league Hendon near Barnet at the time – before the family relocated from their flat to Salford when he was two or three. His parents would separate and Angel divided his time between living with his mum in Lower Broughton and his dad in Clarendon, towards Salford precinct.
He would play football anywhere and everywhere, whenever he could: Albert Park, not far from The Cliff, United’s historic old training ground, Salford Sports Village on Littleton Road. But nothing quite compared to football in the cage on his estate in Clarendon and those big games his dad would organise when the large, extended Gomes family would invariably take on the rest.
Even with a bad back, Angel recalls nobody being able to get near his dad and those experiences – coupled with all the videos he would watch of a young Gil in action and the time spent watching his brother in action for United’s older academy teams – played an important role in his formative football education.
It would stand him in good stead. Unsworth recalls Gomes revelling in the cage at United when coach Paul McGuinness would throw 12 and 13-year old boys in with lads often three or four years older than them. For a kid as small as Gomes, it sharpened all his instincts.
“A big thing that helped Angel develop was mixed-aged play — going into the cage with bigger, stronger, better, older boys at that time. [Marcus] Rashford, Ro-Shaun Williams, [Adnan] Januzaj,” Unsworth explained.
“It’s amazing how that brings certain aspects of their game on. Because if Angel is not quick and nimble and shifting the ball before these monsters get to him then he’s going to get smashed all over the place.”
It would not be permitted now but try telling Gomes it did not make him a better player. “It never fazed Angel because he’d have been doing that on Albert Park for years,” Unsworth said. “There’s loads of literature out there that shows mixed-age learning is the highest form of learning because you’re learning off your peers. Angel will then have got to be the older one in the cage years later and his learning deepens further because he’s now the teacher. It was amazing to watch how that brought kids on.”
It was a similar story when Unsworth took Gomes’s year group to Italy to play in a Unicef tournament against older age-group teams and United, bullied physically by these giant Italian players, struggled to cross the halfway line — but Angel never once wilted in the face of such intimidating opposition.
With an August 31 birthday, Angel was the very youngest in his school year – and tiny with it. Even now, he is only 5ft 6in. United felt his development would be aided by playing down a year or, as Unsworth puts it, “down a day”. “The reality is if he’d been born a day later he’d have been the oldest in his age group, not the youngest!” Unsworth says. 
And so Gomes joined a group comprising the likes of Mason Greenwood, James Garner, Brandon Williams, Dylan Levitt and D’Mani Mellor – and was invariably its star player year after year. He may have been reinvented as a No 6 under Paulo Fonseca at Lille, before the Portuguese’s switch to AC Milan this summer, but back then he played further upfield as a No 10, false nine or out wide.
Unsworth remembers times when Angel would come into the office and sit down with him and analyst Steve Brown and privately voice his frustrations that other players could not always reach the same levels. But Gomes always retained a humility off the pitch, something that has never left him. It was just on the field where his arrogance – the best kind of arrogance – shone through. One game, one moment, remains seared in Unsworth’s memory – an 8 v 8 game around the Under-10 year group away to bitter rivals Liverpool.
“We drew 8-8 but the bit that made me laugh was all the reserves from Liverpool were walking in from training and they all stopped to watch this game,” Unsworth said. “And Angel did the most outrageous bit of skill in the corner to beat three men and all the Liverpool Under-21 players were jumping up and down. They couldn’t believe what they’d seen. I just remember looking over and thinking this little fella is already entertaining these top pros.”
It is easy to forget now, given that Gomes would later turn down an inviting contract offer from United to join Lille in favour of regular first-team football in 2020, that he was one of the jewels in the club’s academy crown.
The Football Association recognised as much and saw it as a big challenge to ensure Gomes played for England – and did not follow in the footsteps of his father by representing Portugal. Gomes revealed this week that, despite his dad holding talks with friends at the Portuguese Football Federation about his son potentially changing nationalities, it was always his intention to represent the country of his birth, but the FA could not be certain of that at the time and made every effort to ensure he did not get away.
“It was understandable,” Nani said. “He was born in England, he spent all of his life in England, his first language is English so you can understand that decision and accept it of course. I think it was a good decision for him because he feels more English so it made sense.”
The legacy of that work and vision by the FA’s former technical director Dan Ashworth – now sporting director at United – is being felt now. Like Gomes, the Nottingham Forest midfielder Morgan Gibbs-White has been called into the England squad for the first time. 
The pair are close friends and hold the distinction – along with Emile Smith-Rowe – of being the only England players who can say they have won a World Cup and European Championship. The latter they achieved last year under the watch of the new interim England manager Lee Carsley at the Under-21 Euros, so when Gomes met up with the squad this week there was some familiar company to greet him.
Carsley has said previously that Gomes is such a deep thinker about the game that he can see him becoming a coach one day and Unsworth agrees. “Some players just have that ability to analyse what they’re doing and why and see what’s happening,” he said. “Angel’s stature didn’t show he was mature in physical terms but his mind was always sharp, perceptive. He had an understanding of things. I think that’s probably come from his background – his dad, being around his brother, probably watching loads of different types of football.
“His whole being is football. Still to this day he understands and finds space really quickly. No one has taught him that.”
Gomes became the first player born in the 21st century to appear in the Premier League and United’s youngest debutant since Duncan Edwards at 16 years and 263 days when he was introduced as a late substitute against Crystal Palace under Jose Mourinho in 2017 – the same year he was named the club’s Young Player of the Year.
But subsequent opportunities would prove fairly limited and, in a brave move in search of the first-team football he craved, Gomes moved to Lille in France after rebuffing United’s contract offer and then almost immediately joined Portuguese side Boavista on loan. It would prove the making of him and United’s regret will be they do not have a buy-back option on a player who left as a free agent.
Back at Lille, Fonseca, impressed by Gomes’ composure, orientation, quick thinking and technical ability in tight areas, moulded him into a No 6 and Unsworth chuckles now at how the player was sometimes accused of not working hard enough out of possession when further up the field at United.
As for Nani, he believes it will not be long before Gomes’ talents become well known to a much wider audience. “I’m so proud of him,” he said. “It’s a privilege to see him playing so well at this moment and to be called into the England national team. It’s a big achievement for him and I just hope he continues to produce his best because he’s a great player and there’s a lot to come. He has the ability to play fantastic football.
“I believe in the next few years we’ll see a fantastic player playing for England, doing his best, enjoying his game and scoring some nice goals.”