It speaks volumes about the confidence Graham Potter has in young Ollie Scarles that the teenage left-back was trusted to go eyeball-to-eyeball with Mo Salah when West Ham United travelled to Premier League champions Liverpool in April.
The 19-year-old was only five starts into his top-flight career, at the time.
And yet, Potter had no qualms about fielding Scarles against Salah so early in his senior career. OK, the manager’s plan didn’t really work out how he would have liked.
England Under-20 international Scarles had a torrid afternoon against arguably the most formidable forward in world football, as was probably to be expected.
Yet, as Ollie Scarles explains on the latest edition of the Ironcast podcast, training alongside the likes of Mohammed Kudus, Lucas Paqueta and particularly another free-scoring right-winger in Jarrod Bowen provided him with a valuable insight into the qualities he would come up against on the most unforgiving of Premier League stages.
Ollie Scarles reflects on training with Jarrod Bowen and West Ham United stars
Scarles only made his Premier League debut in December, before Graham Potter handed the teenager a more regular role in his Hammers side.
Scarles was outstanding as West Ham stunned Arsenal in February. The one-time Chelsea kid found life much tougher against the likes of Bryan Mbeumo and Antoine Semenyo, however, his breakout season equally split between peaks and troughs.
Yet, as he reflects on his first year of consistent senior football – the left-back followed in Declan Rice’s footsteps this week when Scarles was named West Ham’s Young Player of the Year – he looks back on those early training sessions against Bowen and co as the moment when the reality started to hit.
“There are boys doing it now, who are getting their first training sessions with the first-team. I think, yeah, training with them, you’re training and you’re thinking; ‘There’s Jarrod Bowen, there’s Mohammed Kudus, there’s Lucas Paqueta’…” Scarles smiles.
“It’s mad. You are watching them on the telly all the time and, all of a sudden, you are training with them. It is crazy to think [about]. It’s a huge jump but also mentally, you’re now playing with these players who play in the Premier League every week.
“It’s crazy.
“It’s exciting. It’s what you dream of when you’re young. I was saying to my dad, seeing the plaques up the wall [in the training ground] when I was 12 and 13, saying ‘imagine being one of them!’.”
Carlton Cole tells Scarles what he must do to thrive in the Premier League
Scarles, rising through the ranks at a club he initially joined as an under-eight, now has a place to call his own alongside the likes of Michael Carrick, Joe Cole, Rio Ferdinand and Declan Rice, though whether he ascends to the same heights over the course of the next decade or so only time will tell.
Speaking opposite the 2023 FA Youth Cup winner, former West Ham striker Carlton Cole opened up on the mentality which helped him to hold his own in a star-studded Chelsea side when making his own way in the professional game.
“I put myself back 20-odd years when I made my debut,” says Cole, thrown in at the deep end for a 3-0 Chelsea victory over Everton in 2002.
“There was an injury, I think to [Jimmy-Floyd] Hasselbaink. I was in the changing rooms with my headphones on and someone said; ‘Coley, get ready!’. I was like ‘What?!’.
“That is where your life flashes before your eyes. When you’re actually there, you have to go through the processes that you normally would but there’s something that actually changes within you.
“You say; ‘You know what, I’ve got to know I deserve this and I’ve done everything in my power to get here’.”
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