Record scorer for Norway’s age-group sides discusses his World Cup hope, being frozen out at 15 and fake tickets heartbreak at Anfield
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iverpool against Aston Villa on 18 January 2014. It was impossible to measure the excitement in an seven-year-old from Norway making his first pilgrimage to Anfield. Inside was the promise of watching his favourite player, Daniel Sturridge, and the rest of a freewheeling side throwing everything at a title push. But as Sindre Walle Egeli and his family reached the turnstiles, the cruelest of realities dawned.
“It’s not a good memory,” Walle Egeli says. “We showed up, ready to go, and it turned out we’d got fake tickets. I don’t know what happened, maybe my parents bought from some shady people. It was heartbreaking.”
English football has dealt him a kinder hand now. The 19-year-old is sitting in a makeshift meeting room at Ipswich Town’s training ground; outside loom the girders of a new complex that will transform their base next season. His move from Nordsjælland in August, the initial £17.5m fee a Championship record, was a statement of ambition from both parties. It was the pathway to Premier League football Walle Egeli had craved; Ipswich, despite stern competition, had landed one of the most sought-after prospects in Europe.
