Marcus Edwards: ‘I definitely think some people didn’t understand me’

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In the final hours of a busier than usual January transfer window, you could easily have missed news of a late deal involving a young English player rated as one of the most naturally gifted talents of his generation. Still only 23, Marcus Edwards has rarely played on a stage befitting that reputation, but he has the opportunity to do so now having joined Sporting Clube de Portugal.

A fine start to the season with Vitoria de Guimaraes, scoring seven goals in 17 appearances, earned the former Tottenham Hotspur prodigy a last-minute €7.5m move to one of Os Três Grandes, Portuguese football’s three most illustrious and successful clubs. “It’s a change,” Edwards tells The Independent. “It’s really a level up. Just everything, from the intensity of training, how I have to conduct myself, everything.”

With this step up comes the opportunity to play in the Champions League, albeit in rather difficult circumstances. Edwards watched Sporting’s 5-0 demolition at the hands of Manchester City in Lisbon three weeks ago from the substitutes’ bench. “Going into the game, we were confident because we know how we play in this league and obviously had a good Champions League run in the group stages,” he says, “but everyone knows City.”

Sporting will walk out at the Etihad without much to play for but pride. “We’re just coming for a different result and to show the way that we play,” Edwards adds. But on a personal level, he will arrive in Manchester with the prospect of making his Champions League debut. Edwards has spent time watching and studying players at this level in the hope of one day reaching it. “From City, Sterling and Mahrez.”

Riyad Mahrez feels like an especially apt comparison. Watch a clip reel of Edwards’s displays at Vitoria and you see they share the same natural flair, the same close control, the same deft movements through tight spaces. The special gifts that made him one of the most exciting prospects to come through Tottenham’s academy in a decade have been honed and sharpened by regular first-team football.

He has taken a path less travelled to get to this point, though. Whereas many of the young English players who followed the trail blazed by Jadon Sancho travelled to the Bundesliga and central Europe, he chose Portugal. Edwards is one of only two English players to have appeared in the Primeira Liga this season – alongside Porto’s Danny Loader – and the only one to have been playing regularly.

And while being alone in a foreign country could break many a young player’s career, it has been the making of his. “I think time being away, being by myself, it’s just helped me become a better version of myself and improve. I got to know myself a bit more,” he says, when asked why it clicked for him in Vitoria. Friends and family visit but a lot of his time is spent doing his own thing. “I just got my head down and concentrated solely on football.”

Does he feel he has changed since he has been away? “I definitely think I’ve matured, but that just comes with age. At Tottenham, I was really young, I was 16 or 17. I was still a kid, still growing up and stuff. I’m a bit older now, I keep myself to myself.” Not that he hasn’t needed help along the way.

Edwards credits a lot of the progress that he has made over the past couple of years to Pepa, his manager at Vitoria, who not only helped inspire the spurt of form that shored up Sporting’s long-held interest but gave advice on off-the-pitch matters. “I wouldn’t say he’s one of the first that’s done that with me. I’ve also had a few other good managers as well but I felt that one with him.”

Ruben Amorin, Sporting’s young and highly rated coach who won the club’s first title in 19 years last season, has also made a strong first impression on his new signing. “He’s really down to earth, really tactical. He works you. He makes you want to be the best version of yourself,” Edwards says. “He’s constantly chatting to me in training, getting me used to the system and the way the team plays.” That sort of relationship has not always come easily in Edwards’s career.

In an interview with The Independent in 2019, his first in a British newspaper, he spoke openly about how his relationship with Tottenham slowly soured and admitted to being “a bit difficult” during his days at the academy. There was the loan spell at Norwich City which amounted to one substitute appearance and ended with his application being questioned, despite him struggling throughout it with a back injury. It all contributed to a reputation Edwards felt was unfair.

“I definitely still think some people didn’t understand me,” he says. “Now I know how to carry myself a bit differently. When I was younger, only certain coaches took the time out to really understand me and realise I’m just a normal guy, whereas now that’s a bit different.” Edwards does not pretend to have been perfect though. “At the same time, I was still young so I had some growing up to do as well.”

Edwards now treats his time at Tottenham as part of his past, while still looking back on it with fondness. There are coaches who made an impact on him that he remains in touch with. Teammates, too. “I made some good friends there who I still speak to now,” he says. “Obviously I’ve learned a lot since then, on my own, but when I look back it was my youth so I did enjoy it.”

It is suggested that those misunderstandings forced him onto the unorthodox career path he has taken. “Maybe that did have a bit of an effect. It could have done,” he says. “You know how rumours spread in football. When I was leaving Tottenham, some people didn’t want to take me because of stuff they’d heard.” There have been links and interest from English clubs during his time in Portugal but none which have ever materialised.

Given that, you might expect that Edwards would be especially looking forward to this chance to return to England and show what he can do, but no. “I honestly just treat every game the same,” he says. That was even the case when in late 2019, playing in the Europa League with Vitoria, he returned to north London and scored the opening goal of a 3-2 defeat away to Arsenal.

Edwards finds it hard to describe exactly what was going through his head as he chopped Kieran Tierney, fired low into the bottom left-hand corner and slid to his knees on the Emirates turf that night, celebrating in front of a crowd which included family members and more than a few of his Arsenal-supporting friends from home. “I don’t know bro, I was just so happy, so happy,” he recalls, through a grin that says enough.

That grin will be even wider if Edwards – a Manchester United fan as a kid, no less – makes another scoring return to English football at the Etihad. He would consider a more permanent comeback one day further down the line and harbours even greater ambitions. “Hopefully the national team one day,” he adds. Despite being part-Cypriot, a switch of allegiances has never been considered for a player who was capped by England up to Under-20s level.

It is in Portugal, though, where he has rejuvenated his career and at Sporting where he finally has the platform that his considerable talent deserves.