In the weeks before making his Leeds United debut in front of 27,000 people and the Sky Sports cameras, Gboly Ariyibi was bouncing around clubs on trial and playing Sunday league football.
The winger was released by Southampton in the summer of 2013 aged 18, leaving him to maintain fitness with park football while spending his weeks travelling up and down the country in the hope of securing a first professional contract. Trials at Brentford, Bolton and Bristol City, to name a few, came to nothing but perseverance paid off for Ariyibi, despite plenty of knockbacks on the way.
“I moved to stay with my brother in London for two months where I was playing for Sunday league teams trying to get fit,” Ariyibi says. “He decided to make a CV together with my email and some YouTube clips and he emailed it to 300 agents.”
Read at Planet Football.
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