10 years on from winning television show ‘Football’s Next Star’, Ben Greenhalgh has opened up about it was to earn a contract and be a part of Inter.
“We were chucked in a mansion, cameras everywhere, a bunch of boys who’d never met each other before. Realistically we were living the dream,” he explained in an interview with British newspaper The Daily Mail.
“It was definitely nerve-racking. Sometimes when I watch these shows now, people play up to the cameras but we didn’t do that.
“Early on, we were watching the first-team train when they needed another body. I got the call over, and I remember receiving the ball from Quaresma. I started running at Lucio and my legs turned to jelly! I looked up and realised who I was trying to dribble past.”
He then went on to recall how everyone looked up to then Inter manager Jose Mourinho.
“To this day, those memories you can’t compete with. I was quite level-headed when training with the first-team, I knew where I was and where they were. Everyone was so respectful of Mourinho. Those he didn’t like, he’d freeze out.”
Greenhalgh proceeded to recall what Mario Balotelli, then the most promising star in Inter’s academy, was like and recalled Balotelli’s infamous actions in a Champions League win over Barcelona where he threw the Inter shirt to the floor.
“Balotelli was 19, a bit older than me. He couldn’t acclimatise himself to not playing. He came on for 15 minutes in the Champions League semi-final first-leg against Barcelona and after a 3-1 win, he spat on his Inter shirt and threw it in the ground. Like, what has gone through his head?”
During his time on Inter’s books Greenhalgh was loaned out to Serie C outfit Como and revealed there was a match fixing incident whilst with the club.
“We had a guy come in and said we were meant to draw. I asked the boys “is this serious?” They said “not really” but we ended up drawing the game. Maybe a few players were in on it.
“It’s a shame because when you look at Italian football, it does come across as quite boring. Is it boring because all the players know what they want to happen?”
Upon his release from Inter at the end of the 2010/11 season, Greenhalgh, now 27-years-old, joined Welling United. He has also played for the likes of Maidstone United and Inverness Caledonian Thistle and current plays for Tonbridge Angles, in the sixth tier of English football.
