It was a Friday evening and Burnley youth coach Jeff Taylor was sat at Manchester Airport, waiting for the arrival of John Cofie.
Taylor would make this trip every fortnight. Cofie would fly in from Monchengladbach and be collected by Taylor, who drove him to his accommodation.
The following afternoon, Cofie would play in a home game for Burnley Under-14s, score a hatful of goals and return to where he was staying for another night.
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On Sundays, Taylor would collect him and back he would fly to Germany. Some life for a 13-year-old.
“Jeff was a top man,” Cofie tells The Athletic. “He always had classical music on in the car.”
“I flew over by myself, but I didn’t see any problems with it. Everything was sorted for me. Coming from Ghana, you learn to grow up quickly. It was just surreal, but it was enjoyable and fun.”
By the age of 14, Cofie was a £1 million player.
Now aged 27, he is without a club and looking to start a new career in coaching.
Burnley used to hold summer football camps in Germany for children. Cofie, who was born in the Ghanaian town of Aboso, had moved to Germany from the UK at the age of 10 due to his father, Samuel, being in the army.
At the time, Cofie was playing for PRB Gutersloh, a local team that faced Burnley’s academy products in a friendly. After impressing, he was asked to play for Burnley in a friendly. He impressed again. A few weeks later, they got in touch with Cofie’s father and an agreement for him to fly over to England and play was reached.
“Despite living in Germany, I didn’t speak the language and there was quite a lot of racism there at the time, so my dad wasn’t too keen on me joining a German team,” Cofie tells The Athletic.
“He spoke to my godfather, who lives in Warrington, and he told him it would be a good idea to come to Burnley, so I visited and eventually joined.”
Such was Cofie’s ability that Burnley convinced him to move permanently to England on his own, with his dad waiting to be posted. He joined a private boarding school called Moorland, which had a football academy in nearby Clitheroe.
Cofie enjoyed school life and met the head of football development for Moorland, Charlie Jackson. He was a “really important” coach and a mentor for Cofie, working to polish the technical side of his game to complement the physical attributes and poacher’s intelligence he already possessed.
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It helped build a foundation for his development at Burnley, where Cofie truly began to understand football. He had gone from playing in parks in Ghana to professionalised coaching in England, via Germany, without ever settling on a position. At Burnley, he learnt how to be a striker.
“I had a set position I had to learn, how to make runs, getting into good positions. That was all down to Burnley and they developed my game,” recalls Cofie.
“Finishing was always natural. I never thought about things when I was in front of goal. I knew where the goal was and I just hammered it. I wasn’t scared and I scored a lot of goals.”
Taylor and fellow youth coaches Terry Pashley and Vince Overson all contributed and were important figures, looking after Cofie and teaching him the game. They recognised the youngster’s potential immediately. He couldn’t stop scoring and his physicality meant he was capable of playing above his age level.
“Every weekend I was playing really well, scoring loads of goals for the under-14s,” says Cofie. “Vince came over to me and said it was getting a bit ridiculous, so he moved me up an age group.
“I did the same in the under-15s, so I ended up playing as an under-18 at the age of 13. Now and again, I was involved with the reserves. I have always been strong, so physically it didn’t bother me.”
Cofie, despite being a reserved and quiet character, settled into each dressing-room environment smoothly. He occasionally trained and played alongside Jay Rodriguez, whom Cofie remembers as a seriously talented 16-year-old. Joy is evident in his voice when reminiscing and he tells The Athletic he is still in contact with the lady who looked after him in “digs”, Suzanne, whom he visited before the COVID-19 pandemic began.
Scoring goals when playing five years above your proper age group is bound to attract attention and the big clubs were soon sniffing around. Burnley appeared willing to let Cofie go, but at the beginning of the 2007-08 season, he stopped training with the club due to a misunderstanding and miscommunication between them and his parents.
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“It was tough when I had to stop training. Burnley wanted me to go somewhere and my family wanted me to go somewhere else. I’m 14 (at the time), and I don’t know what the hell is going on,” says Cofie.
The two clubs competing for his signature were Manchester United and Liverpool. Burnley wanted Cofie to go to United but Cofie and his father were swayed more towards Liverpool, with his godfather being a fan of the Anfield club. Liverpool had a £250,000 offer rejected.
“Burnley were set on me going to Manchester United,” says Cofie. “They rejected everything that came in that wasn’t from United. It wasn’t easy. All I wanted to do was play football, so it was annoying that I couldn’t train. I didn’t care which team I went to, I would have gone anywhere as long as I was playing football.”
The stalemate rumbled on for two months. Eventually, Cofie confided in his father that he wanted the situation resolved. “I said to him that if Burnley want me to go to United, then let me go to United. Football is football,” he says.
In November 2007, the move was finalised and Cofie, at 14, became a Manchester United player for £1 million.
“No matter where I have been throughout my football career, I have always been indebted to Burnley. They gave me the first chance to progress,” he says.
“I didn’t have any fears going in. Give me a football and I’m away, it doesn’t matter who I am playing with or against.”
Cofie’s profile in the game rocketed. This was a 14-year-old moving to the top club in England for a seven-figure fee.
The youngster continued to focus on enjoying his football and scoring goals. It was a huge step up but it was a challenge that Cofie relished, playing in United youth sides alongside Paul Pogba and Ravel Morrison.
Manchester United’s reserves in 2010-11. Back row (L-R): Marnick Vermijl, Michael Keane, Reece Brown, Sean McGinty, Tom Thorpe, Alberto Massacci, Paul Pogba, Michele Fornasier, Davide Petrucci. Middle row (L-R): Warren Joyce, Alan Fettis, Oliver Gill, Matty James, Scott Wootton, Conor Devlin, Sam Johnstone, John Cofie, Joshua King, Zeki Fryers, Ian Buckingham, Richard Marron. Front row (L-R): Ryan Tunnicliffe, Joe Dudgeon, Oliver Norwood, Robbie Brady, Sir Alex Ferguson, Jesse Lingard, Larnell Cole, Luke Giverin, Will Keane
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“It was mad, unbelievable,” he says. “You get to know players’ real ability when you see them day in and day out. It was unbelievable to be around. What Ravel and Paul could do with a football was embarrassing.”
The players clicked off the pitch, too.
Cofie would return home after training for a nap and be woken up by Pogba knocking on his door, asking if he wanted to go down to the Trafford Centre for a Nando’s.
The pair are still close and the day before Cofie spoke to The Athletic, he got a text from Pogba asking if he was busy and whether he could come round for a socially-distanced visit.
“He’s a top man. He is a really nice lad, a nice guy who is easy going and doesn’t take any nonsense,” says Cofie. “I choose carefully who I associate with, and there are few people I call friends. He is one of them and it is not because of his position in life, it is because of the kind of person he is.”
Cofie was part of the 2010-11 FA Youth Cup-winning team, coming on as a late substitute in the second leg of the final. When the players paraded the trophy around Old Trafford at a first-team game, Cofie had lost his suit and wasn’t allowed to go on the pitch in his tracksuit. Sir Alex Ferguson found out and he was called into his office for the hairdryer treatment.
“I was young. We live and we learn from silly decisions. I learnt my lesson and we moved on from there… but Sir Alex didn’t hold back,” Cofie says with a chuckle.
Cofie believes his best period of development came when playing for United Under-18s coach Paul McGuinness with sessions always ball related whilst simultaneously designed to build fitness. Reserve team manager Warren Joyce was also “really good at what he did” and, when he was part of the under-23s set-up, Cofie had the chance to work with United’s now first-team manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, who passed on his knowledge of finishing and positioning.
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The striker loved his six years at Manchester United. However, injuries hindered Cofie’s progress at important stages of his time there. He suffered a stress fracture in his back shortly after arriving. Then he missed a portion of that FA Youth Cup-winning season due to knee tendinitis. It was a huge blow. As a second-year scholar, Cofie felt there may have been a chance he could break into the first-team picture. It was the same season Pogba and Morrison got their opportunities to be involved in and around the squad.
“I picked up the knee injury, which set me back massively,” he says. “I came back and, mentally, I wasn’t the same player. That was the time in my head when I thought Manchester United wasn’t going to happen for me anymore.”
There were loan spells at Royal Antwerp, Sheffield United and Notts County in 2012 and 2013, where he racked up 38 appearances in all competitions. At the end of the 2012-13 season, he was called in by the club and told him he was being released.
“You sit there, and you have Sir Alex Ferguson and Manchester United telling you that you are being let go. As soon as you left that place, that was it. That’s how they operated. It’s all football clubs, not just Manchester United.
“I don’t know if it is different now but I lived it and witnessed it. I was still very young and I didn’t know where to turn or where to go. It was hard.”
United emphasise that with young players who leave the club now, seven years on, there is a level of support.
Cofie was alerted to interest from Championship side Barnsley and decided to sign for them. It was a move he believes went wrong from the start.
He never saw eye to eye with David Flitcroft, the manager, following his arrival at Oakwell.
Cofie’s career at Barnsley never got going and he departed, aged 21, after one year without making a first-team appearance.
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Over the next four years, he played for 10 clubs, beginning with Norwegian club Molde, who had been managed by Solskjaer, before moving on to Crawley Town and then into the non-League game with Wrexham, AFC Telford United, Southport, Bradford Park Avenue, Chorley, Stalybridge Celtic, Derry City in Ireland and Melbourne-based Hume City in the second tier of the Australian game.
There are multiple reasons as to why Cofie feels his career spiralled the way it did. Injuries, managers and being unable to settle anywhere didn’t help. He acknowledges he made mistakes in his transfer decisions and quickly found himself playing football for the sake of it when he just wanted to enjoy it.
Adapting to a new style of football in the lower divisions was also tough. Cofie had been brought up playing a certain way on the “carpets” at Manchester United, with quality players for team-mates.
“I had never missed Pogba so much until I played for a team other than Manchester United,” laughs Cofie.
“I was raised at Manchester United, that’s what I know. Playing for a non-League side, I’m making runs and those behind me are not on the same level as a player like Pogba or the same wavelength. If a scout would see me play a non-League game, they would think I was terrible because that’s not the way I was raised to play football.
“It is a massive problem. When I was at Southport, I would start on the bench. We had one player (Ashley Grimes, a former Manchester City prospect who played for Millwall and Rochdale in League One) who was the most talented at the club and he was sat on the bench. Technically, there was no one better. We were on the bench not because we were bad but because that (level of) football is not for us.
“It isn’t arrogance, it is what it is. I am not sitting here and blaming anybody for the way my career turned out but myself — only me. My actions and certain decisions that I made; that’s down to me.”
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His career path saw Cofie suffer mentally and his mother, Dinah, was hugely important in maintaining his positivity and offering a different perspective. Equally important was an aunt who used the “tough get going” phrase to inspire him. “Times were very hard but tough times don’t last forever,” he says.
“I used to think, ‘How can people go through mental challenges when they are earning good money? How can that be happening?’” he says. “Then, when it started happening to me, I understood. This is how people do struggle. Football is a dangerous game if you are not careful. Luckily for me, I had my mum.”
The Athletic asks Cofie to reflect on his career. His experiences lead to a simple answer.
“If I knew what I know now, I would have stayed at Burnley.
“I wouldn’t have moved anywhere. I played my best football when I was happy. Thinking back, in every team I have been — and I have been everywhere and anywhere — Burnley was when I was at my happiest.”
Cofie is now mentally in the best place he has been and his outlook on life is much more positive. His two-year-old son, King, is the most important thing in his life and has brought a different perspective.
“Watching him grow and develop, nothing else matters in this world,” Cofie says. “I am focused on giving him the life that he deserves and bringing him up right. Right now, in my life, I couldn’t be happier and I am very lucky and blessed.
“Every time I wake up, I appreciate my position in life. People may see me and think, ‘Oh yeah, your life could be so much better than it is now’, but it could also be so much worse. It’s that simple.”
Cofie is a free agent after asking for release forms from Global, a club in the Philippines he signed for in January.
“Until they put money in my account, I wasn’t willing to leave my family behind for something that wasn’t certain or concrete,” says Cofie. “I’ve been through enough in my career.”
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He hasn’t ruled out a return to playing but Cofie’s focus is on getting his coaching and mentoring badges. He is set to begin at Moorland — the school where his career in England began — in September, to coach and advise the kids, passing on his story. He is also organising one-on-one coaching sessions for children in Clitheroe, hoping to pass on his experience from training sessions to fitness regimes.
The mentoring role at Moorland will allow him to educate youngsters, who are aiming to enter club academies, on the rights and wrongs in the early stages of their careers. “Hopefully, my story can touch people and help. There are lots of mistakes I have made that I can help others avoid,” he says.
With that, our chat is over and he is off for that socially-distanced visit to the Pogba household.
