West Ham forward Jarrod Bowen has spoken again of the pain he felt when he was rejected by Cardiff City as he prepares to complete his ascension from non-league to England international.
Bowen was stuck without a club after his hometown side Hereford had to fold their youth team owing to financial difficulties. He went on trial with the Bluebirds in 2014, but Cardiff felt the then 17-year-old wasn't up to scratch and passed at the offer to sign him up.
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Fortunately for Bowen, he got taken back in by then Conference Premier side Hereford and impressed. So much so that he earned a move to Hull City, where he grew to become one of the Championship's top operators before securing a £20m-plus move to West Ham in 2020.
Following a stunning season with the Irons, in which he contributed 12 goals and 10 assists, he rightly earned a call-up to Gareth Southgate's England squad and will be hoping to earn his first cap against Hungary in the Nations League on Saturday.
But that all seemed a million miles away when Cardiff said no to him all those years ago, a hurtful memory he has spoke of once again in an interview with the i.
“Sometimes I look back at where I’ve come from and especially being in an England camp now – not sounding big-headed – but I’ve got to take my hat off to myself for where I’ve come from to where I am now,” he said. “I was just playing for my local team week in and week out in the Conference.”
“[Before that] Hereford told me that their youth system was kind of finished so I went on trial to Cardiff for six weeks and I thought I’d done well,” he recalled.
“My Dad took the phone call and I could just tell it was bad news straight away. He told me they don’t fancy you either so I was kind of stuck with no Hereford, no Cardiff, no football so I was kind of chilling for about a month thinking 'I don’t know what I’m going to do here, I’m in trouble'. At that time of Cardiff saying no that was a hard moment to take.”
“I didn’t know what I was going to do. In school I wasn’t the brightest spark, I just wanted to play football, that was it.”
Bowen has previously admitted that he cried at the news of his first Cardiff rejection. He has also spoken about turning town a move to Cardiff three years ago
In January 2019, City made an approach to sign the 23-year-old winger, reportedly bidding £12m, but Bowen revealed he felt "uncomfortable" with the transfer owing to the events which had just unfolded with Emiliano Sala.
"The whole situation was very uncomfortable. Of course, it was nothing to do with how I view Cardiff as a club, and any player will tell you it's their dream to play in the Premier League," Bowen told the Daily Mail at the time.
"But the whole story around Sala was just so tragic. I know it caused a lot of shock and upset in our dressing-room at Hull, and I am sure it was the same around the country.
"To join Cardiff knowing that he was meant to play for them would have been incredibly difficult and not something that filled me with any enthusiasm. Of course, any transfer would have needed Hull's approval in any case, but from my personal point of view it was never a starter, not under those circumstances. It just felt wrong."
