Richards: From all-American boy to Premier League pro

He tossed a football around with his friends as he walked home from lessons, he ran track during afternoons and he sang hymns on a Sunday. A normal childhood for an all-American high-school star, that is; not so much for a Premier League footballer.

To say Richards’ story is unique is something of an understatement. In two years he went from playing ‘soccer’ on Saturdays in Hoover, Alabama with his school friends to assisting Robert Lewandowski and playing in the UEFA Champions League. If that doesn’t make you pause for thought, nothing will.

It took just a few years but it was far from plain sailing; it’s a story that encompasses rejection, risk and rejuvenation, from Alabama to south London via Texas and Munich. Hollywood eat your hearts out.

Mostly, though, it was just plain odd. Richards grew up in a town where soccer – if you’ll forgive us for the term for now – was a mere afterthought. “In Alabama, especially in Hoover, American Football is the biggest,” he remembers. “They have the number one high school team in the nation almost every year, and that was the high school I went to.

“So everything revolved around it.” Everything revolved around a high school team? Not as peculiar as you might think – this isn’t the same as the sixth-form first XI. “It’s huge, it’s crazy,” Richards explains. “Our high school football games would probably get a similar crowd to what we get at Selhurst – and these kids are between 14 and 18 years old.”

Despite playing some American football in his early years, Richards was more committed elsewhere. “I played basketball until I was 16 and I ran track until I was 14. The 400m and long jump were my two events. I played a little bit of baseball. You name it, I probably played it.”

He had a reason to favour basketball. His father was a professional who competed in countries all over the world. Not a football fan, he was initially confused by his son’s obsession with this strange sport. He even made an attempt to persuade Richards back onto the court.

“He didn’t really know much about football,” he laughs. “Once I moved away from home, that’s when he realised how big the sport was. I played it growing up and I was always good at it, and it got to a point where I had to choose between basketball and football. I thought: ‘I’m better at football’.

“I was also very short, I was five foot eight at the time. I moved to Texas and he came out to see me, and I was six foot one within two months. He said: ‘Maybe you should play basketball!’”

After trialling for FC Dallas and being rejected, Richards moved to Houston for one reason: revenge. “It was definitely tough because at a young age you’re quite used to getting everything that you want,” he said. “They basically told me I wasn’t good enough.

“That’s why I decided to go to Houston, because we got to play Dallas twice a year. We ended up beating them and winning the national championship for academies. They called me back and said: ‘We want you to come back this year’.

“I was a little bit hesitant at first. It was very satisfying. It almost got to the point where I wanted to tell them no, but I knew that if I wanted to become a professional that was the path I was going to have to take.”

It was the right decision, and now Richards can be thankful for the serendipitous circumstances that it created. In Major League Soccer, a player from the Academy can only feature in the first-team when they have served a year in the youth set-up.

With Richards just six months into his career, he had to bide his time. Then opportunity knocked. “[Dallas] had just signed a partnership with Bayern as their north American affiliate, so I got the chance to go over there for 10 days with a few other guys.

“We just trained. I just figured it was one of those things – people talk about partnerships but nothing really comes of it.

“Then [Dallas] said: ‘They called and they want you to go back again’. I didn’t think much of it. But they said: ‘No, they want you to go back for six months on loan’. I was like: ‘What do you mean?’ Things don’t just happen like that!”

It was a dream come true, but a tricky one to take in. At home, where football was an unknown, it took some explaining of just how big an opportunity this was. “People were like: ‘You’re moving to Germany? For what?!’

“It was quite a weird situation because they don’t quite know the quality that Bayern Munich is. But my family and my soccer teammates were really ecstatic for me.

“I graduated high school and the next week I was gone. I got there and I knew zero German. I went from living by myself to living in a facility with 40 other kids with very traditional German rules.

“I was homesick, because a lot of my friends were going off to university. When you woke up in the morning you would see the stuff they had done the day before and it was kind of tough. I was used to living away from home, but not living halfway around the world. It was a struggle for the first few months.”

As soon as he got out on the pitch, however, the concerns soon melted away. “It’s weird to think that when I first went to Bayern it was the summer of 2018,” he says, reflecting on the journey. “In the summer of 2016 I was still playing in Hoover, Alabama with these kids I grew up with.

“These kids were all content playing in Alabama, so it is weird to have gone from there to playing with Lewandowski, David Alaba and others in two years. It almost felt like it wasn’t real.”

The only objective left to conquer was a move to the Premier League. It was a league Richards had watched as a child. “The American market was very much based around American players: there was Landon Donovan at Everton, Clint Dempsey at Fulham and Tim Howard at Manchester United and Everton. Those games were always shown on TV.”

Players like that, and now Richards himself, go a long way to overcoming the snobbery that many Europeans still have when it comes to Americans and ‘soccer’. “Europeans definitely have that perception of Americans in general that we’re lazy, that we’re behind the ball when it comes to football.

“But it also gives us that chip on our shoulder where we think: ‘Alright, we need to prove ourselves.’” His Palace teammates have been sure to tease him – but he has a pretty good riposte. “The guys here made me feel welcome, and they throw jokes around: ‘You shouldn’t be able to play football, you’re from the US!’

“If they came to the United States to play any other sport, they would have big problems!” Fair point.

The all-American high school star has come some distance since his days playing soccer in front of family and friends, as thousands crammed in to watch the American football game next door.

He has left those who rejected him rueing their snap judgement, has made his mark on the world’s most prestigious club competition, and now followed in the path of his heroes to make it to the Premier League.

In south London, Richards is living his very own American dream.