Source: Northern_Echo
Saturday Spotlight: Steele makes cast-iron case for younger keepers
After a rapid rise to the first team stage at Middlesbrough, Jason Steele looks back on how he went from attacking midfielder to Championship goalkeeper with chief football writer Paul Fraser.[LNB] ONLY four years ago, the schoolboy frame of Jason Steele was asked to take part in first team training with the Middlesbrough squad after an injury to one of manager Gareth Southgate's more experienced goalkeepers.[LNB] He was approaching his 16th birthday, yet found himself thrust on to the same training field as established international names who had played in a major European final months earlier.[LNB] Steele might not have known it, but such a test of character helped to build him up for what lay ahead.[LNB] This season, like his first encounter with the stars of 2006, he has found himself thrust into the spotlight sooner than many expected.[LNB] It is difficult to understand why there is a belief that goalkeepers need to spend more time in the reserves. His recent call-up to the Under-21s has followed years of representing England at Under-17, 18, 19 and 20 levels, so a season in the Championship has provided him with the suitable platform to start life in Middlesbrough's first team.[LNB] Goalkeepers seem to be the exception to the common belief that players are old enough if they are good enough. Considering how the likes of Iker Casillas, Joe Hart and Shay Given were all given early opportunities to shine, perhaps there is justified argument that the best goalkeepers are given an earlier start.[LNB] I always hear the word experience. People around football always say they need experienced goalkeepers. How do you get experience if you are not playing asked Steele, speaking ahead of his tenth consecutive Championship start against Leeds United.[LNB] How can promising players become success stories without playing matches. The gaffer here has given me my chance, hopefully I am taking it. A different manager might have used that experience word against me.[LNB] I don't know why it tends to be goalkeepers. It does seem like for every other position that if they are good enough they are old enough. With goalkeepers, I know a lot who struggle to get a chance because the manager wants someone who has played 400 games.[LNB] Steele knows he has not cemented his place. He has performed competently since being given his place following the departure of Brad Jones to Liverpool, but he knows things can take a turn quickly if he does not keep focused on improving his game.[LNB] Whether it has been his 11 appearances for Boro, hitting the fairways at Woodham Golf Club or taking the plunge as a goalkeeper for the first time as a 12-year-old for Newton Aycliffe Sports Club, he has always retained the same outlook. Practice makes perfect.[LNB] Such an approach was evident at an early age, something which was picked up on by former Boro coach Stephen Pears after locally known scout, Ronnie Horner, spotted Steele playing in a sixa- side team of friends at the Great Aycliffe Show.[LNB] But even after Pears had taken him for a six-week trial to Middlesbrough's Academy, Steele felt his chance had gone.[LNB] Pears was at a Spennymoor development centre for a few sessions and he asked me to go to Boro. Had Pearsy not been there I probably wouldn't have got anywhere near. It was a total coincidence, he said.[LNB] In my first game I dived into a post and got a 28-stitch scar across my knee. I was just 13 and Pearsy came when I was in hospital, three or four times, in five days. He signed me up and I had only played a game. He must have seen something in such a short space of time.[LNB] I didn't think I would play for Middlesbrough again. I really thought that my six weeks would be over and that would be that. I expected a no' but he came to my house and I signed while I was off school.[LNB] Pears has since departed, but the two have stayed in touch. Steele has the utmost respect for his former coach and regularly calls him for advice.[LNB] Steele, however, was not always a goalkeeper. He started as a right-winger for Sugar Hill Primary School before being given a centralmidfield role by his teacher, Danny Morgans, at Woodham Community Technology College.[LNB] Matty Atkinson and Jason Steele were both good goalkeepers and good friends from the same tutor group when I had them for five years, said Morgans, a Physical Education teacher.[LNB] We just couldn't play them both in goal and Jason only became a goalkeeper at 12.[LNB] So I had to play one of them out and because Jason was a decent district level outfield player, I played him in centre-midfield. He didn't play a single game for me as a goalkeeper before he left school.[LNB] It's amazing really. Jason was a really, really nice lad and even now he still comes back to see us at the school and donates shirts and the like if we need them. He is a real grafter and he has the attitude and approach to life to be a real success.[LNB] Steele's memories of those times are still strong and it was Atkinson's ability that was responsible for his classmate becoming a goalkeeper in the Teesside Junior Alliance on a Sunday morning for Newton Aycliffe Youth.[LNB] Matty, now playing in Georgia, had not signed for Middlesbrough at that stage and I always said I wouldn't go in goal because he was better than me, said Steele.[LNB] I was always the rightwinger, with the red Puma Kings. I could never run fast but I could always cross and shoot. Eventually they had to accommodate me just behind the strikers.[LNB] But when Matty went to Middlesbrough and there was no-one to go in goal, I said I would. I have stayed in goal ever since. It's weird how things happen, but I'm so pleased that I did even if I didn't play there for the school team.[LNB] Since then, of course, he has established himself as one of the most promising goalkeepers in the country.[LNB] Those who know him, though, also have the utmost respect for him as an individual, with club staff regularly referring to him as a genuinely nice guy.[LNB] That, he says, will never change, with his parents Sonia and Paul, his brother, Jordon, and his girlfriend, Yazmin, keeping him in check.[LNB] It would be fair enough to say that I could get carried away if I didn't have the family that I have, said Steele, who now lives with Yazmin, who he asked out on the last day of school'.[LNB] I don't know who they are, but I'm sure there are lads out there who would let it get to their heads, the money and things. My mam and dad wouldn't let me do things like that, Pearsy wouldn't. There's a lot of people there who I can speak to.[LNB] He also regularly talks with Chelsea's former Middlesbrough goalkeeper Ross Turnbull, who left Woodham CTC the same year as Steele started.[LNB] Turnbull has fallen victim to criticism from the media during his time at Stamford Bridge, offering the younger of the two further evidence of just how difficult life can be as a goalkeeper.[LNB] You have to be strong, some of the things written, like they have been about Ross, are harsh, said Steele, who used to clean the boots of Jones, Mark Schwarzer and Turnbull.[LNB] It begs the question why would a talented footballer choose to become a goalkeeper, knowing they are often made the scapegoats for defeats[LNB] I really don't know, said Steele. There's a lot of pressure on goalkeepers. I'm not mad. I couldn't think of anything worse than going to head a brickwall, said Steele, with a smile rising across his face as the rain lashed down on the Riverside turf behind.[LNB] But the other day I was looking back at old photographs. I can't remember having toys when I was younger.[LNB] All I ever wanted was a football. In all of the photographs all I ever had in my hand was a football. Even in prams.[LNB] A number of years have passed, but Steele's fascination with football has continued.[LNB] It remains an obsession, choosing to watch football at every opportunity rather than to dedicate hours on end to the PlayStation 3. Romantic comedies, or watching The Hangover, listening to R&B and house music also occupy his mind, but football is his life.[LNB] He is not content with playing in the Championship.[LNB] Helping Middlesbrough back to the Premier League is his main aim, having spent the early part of his days at the Teesside club mixing with some of the biggest stars in the game.[LNB] I remember coming into training with Jonathan Woodgate, Ray Parlour, Stewart Downing, Gaizka Mendieta, Mark Viduka. I was 15 and having to pinch myself.[LNB] I had watched these players two months earlier in the UEFA Cup final.[LNB] I watched it on telly. It was mental, he said.[LNB] It's strange, though, because had we still been at such heights, I can't imagine me playing nine Premier League games in a row this season. No chance. Whoever the manager was. I can't imagine any of them putting me in at that level.[LNB] Personally, though, I could now see myself doing that next season. I don't look at the Premier League and think I will be scared.[LNB] It's something I want to do and hopefully we can take Middlesbrough up into the Premier League. That would be the best thing.[LNB] There are no plans on either side's part to open negotiations over a new contract for Steele just yet, with 18 months remaining on his existing terms, but there is a sense that he could be the shape of Middlesbrough's future.[LNB] Jason Steele was speaking after presenting awards to schools which successfully completed the Middlesbrough Enterprise Academy courses.[LNB]
