Forget the kids books - Theo's career is in danger of becoming a horror story

By Michael Calvin

Published 23:03 13/02/10

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Get the hankies ready. This could be the biggest ­tear-jerker since Bambi searched in vain for his murdered mother.

The first of a series of ­children’s books, based on the life and times of Theo Walcott, is due to hit the shelves in April.

The storyline had seemed simple, a sure-fire hit. Boy wonder earns fame, fortune and football immortality.

The course of true love, with his childhood ­sweetheart, runs smoothly.

The world falls at his feet, and the feelgood factor soars off the scale.

Life, though, has a horrible habit of refusing to follow the script. Walcott’s career has been compromised with bewildering speed.

Here’s an alternative plot for the kiddies to get their heads around:

Innocence is lost. Injuries take hold. Impatience ­corrodes our hero’s self ­confidence.

He is the unfinished ­article, in danger of becoming a lost boy before he turns 21.

His finest hour, a hat-trick for England in Croatia in 2008, is a distant memory.

His club manager does an emotional slalom between expectation, exasperation, support and sympathy.

His international manager coldly distills his difficulties and dismisses sentiment as a sign of weakness.

He’d shoot Bambi, never mind Bambi’s Mum.

I’m not the only one ­hoping that the doomsday scenario, of a once-in-a-generation talent remaining unfulfilled, doesn’t come to pass.

English football needs ­Walcott to succeed more than ever. He’s an antidote to the ­toxins in its system.

Intelligent, ­likeable and ­understated, he’s everything certain international ­colleagues are not.

But let’s face facts. He can’t go to another World Cup on a whim as a manager’s mascot.

He may be the youthful face of Fabio Capello’s regime, but if Il Capo valued boyish looks and enthusiasm above all, he’d recruit from the cast of High School Musical 3.

Knee, shoulder and ­hamstring injuries have ­restricted Walcott to just six starts for Arsenal this season.

He has lasted the full 90 ­minutes only once, in the 1-0 defeat at Olympiakos, when Arsene Wenger played his Carling Cup team in a dead ­Champions League rubber. He survived 33 minutes against Birmingham, 64 against Burnley and Chelsea.

Walcott was hauled off after 68 minutes at Stoke and 70 against Liverpool.

Wenger remains publicly optimistic, although his ­anguished mime in midweek, when Walcott hit an aimless cross at Pepe Reina in added time instead of keeping the ball by the corner flag, hinted at deeper tensions.

A leading coach, who has worked with Walcott, sums up the dilemma perfectly.

“No one doubts his talent, but you have to wonder about the end product. He’s like a shaken bottle of ­champagne. When you pop the cork, the stuff sprays ­everywhere. Most of it is ­wasted because there’s no control.”

Ironically, for someone hailed as a prodigy, the ­problem appears to be that the world’s most expensive teenager is a late developer.

Walcott didn’t play football seriously until the age of 12, the outer limit for a boy ­reliably to acquire technical skills. Most develop these from the age of seven, and plateau when they reach physical maturity.

His intelligence makes him a fast learner, but he needs game time to ­perfect his craft. Constant injury means he’s trapped in a cycle of ­renewal and rehabilitation.

As a result, he’s chasing the ghost of the player everyone assumed he would become.

His pace is frightening but, too often, he betrays his inexperience by making the wrong run or the wrong pass at the wrong time.

It’s not too late for his story to have a happy ending, but time is running out. Fast.

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