Richards at home with City stars

Daniel Taylorfinds the gifted young defender in fine fettle except for one thing: he wants his England place back

A GREY October afternoon in Manchester, the grinding routine of training is over for another day and Micah Richards is playing a game everyone connected with his football club has probably had a go at over the last few weeks - the which-player-would-we-like-next game. Ronaldo or Ronaldinho? Kaka or Messi? Villa or Torres?

It is a long list of the super-rich and super-talented and Richards, eyes sparkling, needs a few seconds to make up his mind. "Thierry Henry," he eventually announces. "That's one cool dude."

The stuff of fantasy? Maybe, maybe not. There is so much money swilling around Manchester City these days it would not be the biggest shock in the world. On the flipside it could also be argued the club's young English footballers should be watching with as much concern as awe.

Yet Richards, alone, should ensure Mark Hughes never has to field a team made up exclusively of foreign players. Among the Brazilians and other assorted nationalities it is inconceivable there will be no place for the boy from inner-city Leeds who played his first game for England at the age of 18 and 144 days and had Bobby Robson talking of him becoming "our best defender since Bobby Moore".

Richards is engaging company - polite, generous with his time and happy to talk despite an image for being reluctant to do interviews. He is understandably excited about City's future and there is a boyish innocence when he talks of playing alongside Robinho, the club's showpiece signing.

"One of my mates heard before me," he recalls. "He rang me to say, 'We've signed Robinho'. I just went, 'Yeah, whatever . . .' I mean, he's the sort of player you would usually only pick for City in a computer game."

Robinho, he reports, has quickly won over his new team-mates. "When he turned up for his first day it was really weird for everyone," says Richards. "It needed a week before we could get our heads around it and stop staring. But he's just one of the boys now. Coming from Real Madrid, we were all thinking, 'What's he going to be like? Is he going to be a superstar? Up his own a***?' But he's a really nice lad. He went around the dressingroom and shook hands with everyone and he speaks a lot better English than we imagined."

The beauty of City's new-found wealth is Robinho is just the first of many €40m-plus signings. The plan, in case anybody in the sporting world is not yet aware, is global domination and, even though Richards warns "it will not happen overnight", he is confident the club can win the Premier League within three years.

"We could probably go out and get another 10 superstars in January," he points out.

These, however, are strange times for Richards and the smile disappears as he contemplates how his England career appears to have stalled. He has not played a single minute since Fabio Capello's appointment and admits to being "frustrated".

"I'd played 11 games, been constantly hyped in the media and I thought I had a good chance of keeping my place. Then I got an injury and ever since then I don't know why it is, but I can't get back in. I do believe I should be in the squad."

That last sentence should not be construed as arrogance. Richards simply belongs to that new breed of footballer who is supremely confident, with his snazzy designer gear and tram lines shaved into his eyebrows.

He has been called cocky; in reality he is just full of proud self-belief and strong of mind, a useful trait for any sportsman and something that can be traced back to his upbringing in Chapeltown, an unloved district of Leeds synonymous with the Yorkshire Ripper murders, social deprivation and crime.

"It was hard growing up there," says Richards. "There was a lot of drugs and gun-shooting. But my dad [Lincoln] was always by my side and because I always played football I didn't get involved in the drug scene and all the other kinds of stuff. I saw it all and I knew what was happening but I never went down that road."

Lincoln, a dreadlocked Rastafarian, moved to England from St Kitts in the 60s. "I wasn't always as disciplined as I should have been and I'm not going to lie - there were times when I was younger and did things that I shouldn't have," says Richards.

"My dad knew what the area was like and he would say to me, 'You've got the opportunity to make something good of yourself - don't screw it up by doing something stupid'. I listened to his advice and that's why I'm here today."

His journey took him via Leeds United, who failed to recognise his potential and let him go. Oldham Athletic picked up the pieces and signed him on schoolboy forms, and it was not long before City got wind of his talent.

There is a tragic twist. While Richards dedicated himself to becoming a professional, a parallel can be drawn with another of the talented young players from Chapeltown. Daniel Nelson grew up on a nearby street and shared Richards's expectation to make a career out of football. Then he fell in with the wrong crowd and slipped out of the game. By the time Richards made his debut for City, Nelson had hanged himself in prison while facing drug charges.

"We were good friends and we grew up playing football together," says Richards. "It was just a horrible waste of life - a mate of mine who had been in the same team as me. I can still remember finding out and how upsetting it was. I guess he felt he had no other option but to end his life. It just shows what can happen if you are not focused."

There were other evils, too. At the age of 12, playing for Leeds City Boys, Richards was bewildered by the loud grunts when the ball came near him. "After a few seconds I realised they were monkey noises," he says. "It wasn't just the boys but their parents as well. There were mums and dads around the pitch and they were joining in."

Eight years on Richards is an ambassador for Kick It Out and, though he has no desire to be seen as a crusader or political campaigner, he admits to being dismayed by the €19,000 fine Fifa imposed on Croatia for the racist abuse suffered by Emile Heskey during England's game in Zagreb.

"I don't think it is acceptable," he says. "In this day and age that kind of money is pigeon-feed. I'm realistic and I know my opinion is not going to change anything. But if a crowd is making racist chants, I think the authorities should just ban them, end of story."

Does he agree with the Football Association's insistence that England's friendly against Spain is not played at the Bernabeu, the stadium where Ashley Cole and Shaun Wright-Phillips were targeted in 2004? "I wouldn't make that a condition because it makes it look like they [the racists] have won. It's a nice gesture from the FA because they obviously don't want our players to hear those chants again.

"But it defeats the object. We should go over to Madrid, play the match there and, if there is racist behaviour, Spain should be banned."

The game is on February 11th and by then Richards, now 20, hopes to have convinced Capello to resurrect his England career. Time is on his side - and it is worth remembering that when he broke into the team he was young enough to be still living in digs.

"That was the really weird thing," he says. "I didn't have my own house and shared a place in Stockport with Karl Moore, who's at Millwall now. When I got the call to say I was in the squad I just thought it was one of the other academy lads winding me up. But when I got my first cap I wanted my second and third. And that's what it's like now."

His time will surely come again.

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