From serial reject to Manchester City, Semenyo’s football journey a story of highs and lows

Rejected by Crystal Palace at 15, Antoine Semenyo already had a body of evidence to support his suspicion that he might have to find a career outside football.

Like Arsenal, Tottenham Hotspur and Millwall before them, Palace had concluded that Semenyo was not ready to make the grade.

“It wasn’t that I was doing badly, they would just tell me to come back in a couple months when I’d developed my game,” Semenyo told the South China Morning Post.

“I was thinking, ‘am I doing something wrong?’. I always went away and did well with my Sunday league team, then I’d have another trial and the same thing would happen.”

To borrow from the American musician, Father John Misty, time makes fools of us all. Semenyo capped a fabulous campaign, after joining Manchester City from Bournemouth for £65 million (US$87.5 million) in January, by scoring the only goal against Chelsea in May’s FA Cup final.

Last week, his teammate, Josko Gvaridol, told the SCMP, only half-jokingly, that Semenyo was “the best signing in our club’s history”.

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