Looking back, it didn’t finish me, but I was never as quick.” “I wasn’t as quick because I kept getting injured, whereas before that, I never did. It made my left leg only slightly smaller, but the knock-on effect it had… “When I broke my leg, I broke it at an angle, so they had to put a pin in there. “I wasn’t the best technically, like some of the players – my best mate Leon Britton was a technician, he was unbelievable – but me, I was really quick. “That stuffed me, really,” Riddle admitted. Yet in the final game of the 2000/01 FA Premier Reserve League season, just as Riddle hoped to kick on with his teammates, the teenager sadly suffered a broken leg. Him, Tony Carr and Paul Heffer – who’s 74 now and still at the Club – really helped me out on and off the pitch." “The late, great Peter Brabrook was massive in my life. We go into the West End in London and all meet up – Joe Sealey, Dean Cleaver, Glen Johnson, Anton Ferdinand… it’s like being 16 again! “My own age group still meet up once a year, minimum. “I think in my first year I did manage to score more than him, but he did play up in the first team a few times!
“I was always a striker, but in my first year of being a professional, they went and signed Jermain Defoe from Charlton, didn’t they?!” Riddle laughed. Initially a speedy forward, before slowly morphing into a promising left-back over the course of a decade at Chadwell Heath, Riddle looks back fondly on life in east London. While playing alongside the likes of Cole, Carrick, Leon Britton, Jermain Defoe and Glen Johnson during his time at the Academy, Riddle was quite the player himself, representing England at all youth levels until the age of 18. Originally from Ware in Hertfordshire, the affable Riddle was part of a generation which needs little by way of introduction. I didn’t know it back then, but looking back, everything West Ham instilled in us – being a good person, working hard and as part of a team – I just took that on in my later life.”įrom the age of nine to his early 20s, football was Louis Riddle’s life. “I do believe that they made the person I am today. “The players we had at the time… Richard Garcia was an U18, Joe Cole and Michael Carrick were U17s… it was a special group of players, and it’s testament to the Club that a lot of them went on to do great things. I was the only Under-16 in the squad, and Trevor Webb, our Head of Education, had to get permission to take me out of school to travel all over the place. “To win the FA Youth Cup… and bear in mind, I was an Under-16s player at the time! I was pulled out of school for it. “I was young at the time, but I knew it was a special team.
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