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Paddy McNair: The kid with magic in his feet
Features - Author: Administrator (Posted 1 year, 3 months, 1 week, 1 day, 18 hours, 22 minutes ago)

MERCURIAL: Ballyclare Colts and Manchester United youngster Paddy McNair
By Maxie Swain
Every once in a while, a player comes along touched with that something special – a gift so outrageous it’s impossible to ignore.
Not every generation or every nationality can boast one but at Northern Ireland under-14 level, it is widely believed such a talent exists.
In Paddy McNair, it seems the country has struck football gold.
Still only 13, the precocious central midfielder has by many accounts been sprinkled with that most elusive of ingredients: star quality.
His club, National League minnows Ballyclare Colts, have ascended to the dizzy heights of second in the toughest under-14 section in the country, largely due to McNair’s brilliance.
And reigning English and European champions Manchester United have been quick to lure him to Old Trafford, with the youngster invited over to their academy every four to six weeks.
But on a weekly basis, for the meantime anyway, McNair will continue to wow crowds for club and country in his homeland.
And for his Northern Ireland elite coach, Pascal Vaudequin, his protégé’s talent really is a joy to behold.
“There are quite a few players who stand out but if there is one who really stands out, everybody knows, it is Paddy McNair,” said Vaudequin.
“He is absolutely exceptional. And I tell you something, in football, I’ve been around for a very, very long time here and in France and you rarely see people with that quality.
“For me, Paddy McNair is one of those players you very rarely get, you don’t know where his talent comes from, from Mars, I don’t know.
“He’s got such beautiful balance, extremely high technical ability but his vision would be his main strength.
“He’s got game awareness, he can read the game, he can dispatch the ball, he can switch the play, he does things which you wonder ‘how did he see that?’.
“Even to coach, he is an absolute pleasure because he will challenge you basically because you know as a coach, you cannot waste his time with a talent like that.
“And you need to challenge him, technically, tactically, he just has something special.”
As a man schooled in what has become France’s most feted football academy, Clarefontaine, Vaudequin is a coach not easily star-struck.
Much-lauded French manager Phillipe Troussier coached a young Vaudequin and as an up and coming footballer himself, the 42-year-old Parisian rubbed shoulders with the likes of former AC Milan forward Jean-Pierre Papin and former Chelsea stalwart Franck Le Boeuf so he certainly knows a player when he sees one.
“It’s difficult to compare him to anyone,” added Vaudequin. “But a lot of things can happen when you’re growing up at 15, 16 or 17, physically, mentally, so many things can happen.
“To compare him to someone, I don’t know but 15 years ago, we used to call a player like that, ‘the famous No.10 player’ – a playmaker – that’s the type of player he is.
“It would be good for Northern Ireland to get player like that in the future. In the County Antrim Excellence Programmes, he is like a locomotive, driving the other players on and dragging them along with him.”
And Ballyclare Colts’ secretary Andy Apsley agrees, insisting the teenager’s outstanding talent means the name McNair is now well renowned in youth football circles.
“He’s a marked man, in matches he is a marked man,” said Apsley.
“They just go down the match card and go ‘Paddy McNair, there he is, number 10, he’s your man, two players on him, don’t let him get the ball’.
“We even noticed it in the east Antrim League, everybody knows him now.
“He has an absolutely fantastic engine, he doesn’t stop for an hour or an hour and 10 minutes of football.
“Since we got him, I think we got him at under-11, he has changed our team.
“He has transformed what was the original Ballyclare Colts, he’s the main midfielder and he makes the other players come up to his standard.
“He makes things tick. We got him from Apex and at that age, you could see his potential.
“From Ballyclare Colts’ point of view, he is fantastic, and very, very level-headed.
“After all the attention that he has got over the past few years, he still has his feet planted firmly on the ground.”
And on the Colts’ arrangement with long-time suitors Manchester United, Aplsey added: “Man U have been very good, they work around us but any weaker sides we play when we don’t need him, he’ll go across the water that day.
“That’s how we try and work it. It’s good from our point of view that we’re allowed to hold onto him.”