3 days ago
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Jamie Cureton still wonders about Sir Alex Ferguson. His big 'what if' in a career stretching across more than a thousand games in more than three decades and 23 clubs.
He is close to 400 goals scored and has become the first player to score in all top 10 tiers of English football, but what if Cureton had said yes to Ferguson and joined Manchester United not Norwich City at the age of 16.
It was the chance to become centre forward in the youth team featuring David Beckham, Paul Scholes, Nicky Butt and Gary Neville, knocking in the goals for those now branded as the Class of 92 but it is the Fergie factor that makes him think.
'I don't call it regret,' Cureton says. 'It's not like I haven't achieved anything. I'm proud of what I've done but it's more about what would have been different.
'Would I have played longer at a higher level? Scored more Premier League goals? Won stuff? Broke into England? Would I have achieved what my young talent should have achieved?'
Cureton, to rewind, was a teen sensation, one of English football's hottest properties as he tore through youth football in a blur of goals.
Jamie Cureton had the chance to join Manchester United under Sir Alex Ferguson
Cureton tells Daily Mail Sport's Matt Barlow (right) that he wasted the first part of his career
Born in Bristol, he moved to Norwich from one of Southampton's satellite academies and, as a boyhood Manchester United fan, he jumped at the chance of a trial in the school holidays.
He travelled north, trained for a week at The Cliff, played alongside Beckham and Co, and assembled for a meal with Ferguson before returning home. The formal offer followed in the post, matching Norwich's promise of a two-year professional deal after a two-year apprenticeship.
'The story sounds better because we know them now as the Class of 92 and I turned them down,' says Cureton. 'I probably thought I was a good player and would score goals and be a professional footballer no matter where I was. I'd been at Norwich for a while and knew the place.
'Sir Alex rang my house and spoke to my Dad about why I wasn't signing. I'm pretty sure he doesn't do that with all the kids. My Dad just said, "that's his choice".
'Whether I would have become what they became, I've no idea but I've seen the documentaries, I've heard those players talking about the way they were treated and things they couldn't get away with.
'And I know how my life went. I know the things I got away with and I would have liked to be in his regime because it would have stopped a lot of my silly antics.
'I've nothing against Norwich, but I did what I wanted. And because I kept turning up and scoring goals there was nothing to stop me. I wasted the first part of my career. I was good enough, but my mentality and professionalism weren't.'
Norwich finished third behind United in 1992/93, the inaugural Premier League season and the first of Ferguson's 13 titles. In the following season, Cureton broke through. He travelled but did not make the bench when Norwich beat Bayern Munich and an unused sub when Inter Milan knocked them out of the UEFA Cup.
Cureton wonders what his career would have looked like if he'd accepted the Man United offer
He scored his first goal against Chelsea in December 1994 as Norwich headed for relegation and on loan at Bournemouth in the third tier as United's 'you can't win anything with kids' team won the title in 1996.
'I saw them playing every week, winning things, breaking into England and not just one of them, about six of them,' says Cureton. 'I thought about what I would have been in that group.
'We got relegated and I never got back to the Premier League. To this day now we're still talking about the Class of 92, so I look at it like that. Not like I haven't done anything but would the start of my career have been a hell of a lot different?'
He tells the story with a smile as he sips his cappuccino in the Toast coffee shop in Sudbury in Suffolk. He is 50 years old, wonderful company and in the process of writing his autobiography, which might explain his polished storytelling.
He promises the book will be an honest account of his life in football. There's the wild child phase, an ill-judged move to South Korea to escape a relationship break-up, the lost months upon his hastily planned return before the enlightenment when approaching 30 he won the Championship's Golden Boot with Colchester United, clinched a return to Norwich and the clouds parted as he meandered through the foothills of the English football pyramid bathed in a golden glow.
'In the last 20 years I've lived more professionally than I did when I should've been at my peak,' says Cureton. 'It was stupid. Growing up in football in the '90s there was a drinking culture, and I was straight into that.
'I wanted to be one of the boys, sitting in a bar, having a drink and a laugh with people rather than putting myself above them and saying, "sorry I shouldn't be coming out".
'When the culture started to change, I didn't change quick enough. If I have a regret, that's the one. I could've looked after myself better. And, stupidly, as time's gone on, I sacrificed that, which is mad.
Cureton, pictured for Bristol Rovers in 2000, has played at many levels in the football pyramid
'At my age, I should be able to indulge but as I've drifted down the league and into non-league I've started thinking, I'm not going to eat this or drink that and I need to rest up. I'm going to the gym more than I ever did as a young pro. I didn't even lift weights.'
Cureton is playing for Kings Park Rangers in the Eastern Counties Division One North. They don't train or pay their players. They travel away in a minibus, have a beer and a singsong on the way home and he is enjoying football more than ever.
He lives nearby so he signed, looking for a game after 16 months as Cambridge City boss in the Isthmian League North. His first goal for his new club, scored against Dussindale and Hellesdon Rovers last month, wrote him into the history books and catapulted back into the limelight.
'I don't think I ever had this level of attention when I played professionally,' says Cureton. 'The maddest thing has been the international interest. I've had a two-hour photo shoot with a German magazine. I suppose it's because our league pyramid is quite unusual.'
After his early promise and a time when he sprayed his hair green playing for Norwich in a derby against Ipswich, there was passing interest as the oldest outfield player in the EFL at Dagenham and Redbridge, and upon his 1,000th appearance at Bishop's Stortford.
The next milestone on his horizon is 400 goals. 'I tried to check,' says Cureton. 'Someone told me I need another six. Wikipedia says I need 10 but I've looked at Wikipedia before and I'm not sure that's right. I'm looking for another nine. That's better than saying five and having someone dispute it.'
50 year old Jamie Cureton becomes the only player to have scored in all of England’s top 10 tiers!!
He scored his first ever goal for Kings Park Rangers at Non-League Step 6.pic.twitter.com/u7OmcOZ4Tm
The 50-year-old says he is enjoying his football as much as ever and is targeting 400 goals
And while in pursuit of nine more for Kings Park Rangers he will try to work out his next career move, whether into management or coaching again or seeking more media work.
He coached part time for three years in Arsenal's academy, working with the young Bukayo Saka and Omari Hutchinson among others, and held managerial or coaching roles at Bishop's Stortford, Enfield and Maldon and Tiptree.
'What keeps me going is the love of playing,' he says. 'I've spoken to loads of ex-players and a lot of them got bored or couldn't be bothered to go through the regime to stay fit anymore or put up with the aches and pains, but I've the same enthusiasm I had when I was kid.
'It's the buzz. Scoring the other week, I felt just good as I did scoring my first goal against Chelsea.'
They're all etched into Cureton's mind from the first against Chelsea. 'Header from a corner,' he says. 'Just on as a sub, literally ran from the dug-out to the box and scored, 13 seconds, first touch, made it 3-0. It was the fastest goal scored by a sub at the time.'
His favourite? 'Loads of favourite but the most important was for Reading to secure promotion. We needed the draw to finish second and we were one down. Long ball, flicked on, took a touch and lifted it over the goalie into the far corner.'
The type that became his signature finish, bursting clear onto a bouncing ball and lobbing the keeper. His first for Kings Park Rangers was another from the same category.
Cureton, pictured in action for Norwich in 2007, says he is still brimming with enthusiasm
'All my ex-teammates and managers messaged me going, "Oh what a surprise, it's one of them," says Cureton. 'It's an instinct. I know the finish I'm going to make so when the ball goes through on the bounce I tend to think 'lob'. I do it quick, don't dilly-dally. I've done it so many times it's second nature.'
It is the art of scoring goals. The most critical aspect of the game and yet these days, he finds, strangely underrated.
'We've gone through a generation of dribblers, number 10s and false nines,' he says. 'I wouldn't get a game in that era so it's nice to see Erling Haaland emerge, a modern player who just wants to score goals.
'He doesn't need to touch the ball, doesn't feel the need to be involved. When the ball drops, he has a finish. When he sees a teammate who can make a pass he's running.
'Hopefully it will give the next generation an appetite to score goals.'
As Cureton will testify, there's really no feeling like it.
