Reo Griffiths relishing chance of ‘real football’ with Doncaster Rovers

A bubble of a different sort is also cocooning numerous aspiring top-level players at leading clubs amid a widespread view they don’t comprehend the reality of the modern game.

Given his story, Doncaster Rovers’ Reo Griffiths is well placed to pass judgment on that.

Put on a pedestal after being a prolific scorer for Tottenham Hotspur’s youth teams, the cream of the crop in Europe beat a path to Griffiths’s door when he chose to leave Spurs in 2018.

Barcelona, Madrid and Paris Saint-Germain were among the clubs who wanted Griffiths, who elected instead to link up with Lyon on a long-term deal.

The brochure did not prove as glossy as most observers imagined. The Londoner could not make the step up from the comfortable and safe surroundings of the B team to first team and after three-and-half-years, he came back to England to Doncaster.

Those chastening experiences in his early career provide a cautionary tale for youngsters. You can excel at academy level and even earn a move to a leading European club, but it does not always fully prepare you.

Griffiths, who turned 22 last month, is just happy that time is still on his side in his quest to get back on track at Rovers.

He said: “This is real football. Academy football is a bit of a bubble and when you come to these leagues, it is where your ‘life’ is on the line and every game is a must-win and the feeling is just crazy in that changing room.

“You can be down or 1-0 up and feel it. Youth football is calm.

“At the start of last season, I thought ‘I can’t really be here (at Nice) for too long’ and didn’t want to fall into this trap of comfortable, nice football.

“I needed to get games, whether that be grinding down the lower divisions and fighting my way up and experiencing proper men’s football.”

Griffiths’s grounded sentiments point to an individual who thankfully did not believe all the hype which surrounded him earlier in his career and could have finished it before it really started. It reflects well upon his family too.

He added: “A lot of players go through a lot in football. They get hyped about and you have to be mentally strong to deal with that.

“You need good people around you who will help you and have your best interests at heart. Some don’t have that and drift off and aren’t as mentally strong and drop down the leagues.”

For Griffiths – who signed a two-and-a-half year deal with Rovers in January, it is his finishing school in League Two and One for Doncaster as opposed to Lyon or North London which will define him.

It is the devout hope of many that he can graduate.

He continued: “Being at Doncaster and playing in the first team, there’s so much more to football that you don’t see and experience as a youth player.

“Especially at being at such a high club where they expect something a little bit different.

“For example, they’d never expect you to go long. Here, you are learning so much more about channel balls and if you can get off second balls. It is all very different for me and the experience is really good.

“A lot of players don’t get that and maybe get one side and when they come to League One or League Two, it is a shock to them and hard to adjust to it. It’s brilliant for me to start at a young age here.”