Meet the ex-convict rapper talent-spotting for Arsenal

Times

5 hours ago

One of the Premier League's top academy scouts is a convicted drug dealer and rapper whose lyrics about his old life of crime have garnered millions of views on YouTube. Joseph Bol does not covet attention on the touchline in his role as Arsenal's grassroots recruitment coordinator for east London, for which he is charged with organising a network of talent-spotters focused predominantly on under-9 to under-14 players, but parents and older siblings at youth games still occasionally recognise him as the artist 'Joe Black'.
'The kids always used to say, 'You're famous', but I don't think they understood what for,' Bol says. 'They may have thought it was for football.'
It has been 15 years since Bol, 39, was released from prison for a third and final time. Ordinarily, a DBS check that showed convictions for robbery and possession of class A drugs with intent to supply — Bol spent a year in prison on remand for a third charge on which he was found not guilty — would preclude him from working with minors, let alone within the academies at Crystal Palace, Chelsea and then Arsenal. Yet, several of the players Bol discovered are now on the cusp of making their first-team breakthroughs, such as Zain Silcott-Duberry (Bournemouth) and Amani Richards (Leicester City). Trey Faromo, a 14-year-old winger, is considered one of the country's brightest talents and recently made his debut for Chelsea Under-18.
It is a rare and quite remarkable story of reinvention. When Bol is not watching all manner of school, district, and league matches, he is a tutor at City Select Academy, a specialist college in Croydon for sixth formers harbouring faint but fading dreams of playing professional football. 'They may have not gone down the same road as committing crime, but it's just being someone relatable to them [saying] that their route might be a bit different, but it's definitely not over, and just being there for them,' he says.
'There are loads of people in my position who made mistakes early in their lives and think, 'That's it, I'm never going to be able to excel.' People are shocked that I work for Arsenal so it's just being an example that you can still do it, and it's not just football.
'The first age group I started coaching [in 2012], they're like 25 now. Sometimes growing up on estates you think football is the only way out, but one of them is a firefighter now. He always says to me that I was very influential in making him feel like, 'Don't waste your time, find your purpose as soon as possible', and that gives me just as much satisfaction as seeing a player make it at a professional level. So that's my mission: to use football as a tool for kids to have a better start because a lot of these skills are transferable.'
Bol grew up on the Highbury Estate in north London and his mother worked as a civil servant in Brent Town Hall. He had been a talented footballer himself but he was seduced by the perceived glamour of crime in his early teens.
'I wanted things my mum didn't deem necessary, like designer clothes, trainers, and that led me down a slippery slope. I stopped playing football and I started selling and smoking weed, and then it went on to be more class A drugs. I was just in a bubble thinking this is going to be my career path,' says Bol, who was sentenced to three years in prison for robbery aged 15 and sat his maths and English GCSEs in a young offenders' institute.
When he was released after 18 months, 'it didn't really sink in that I'd actually served that much time,' he says. 'I came out and got adulation from my peers, it boosts your ego, and I just started rapping about what I was going through. It was more about selling drugs. We didn't really have postcode wars at the time.'
A member of the so-called Highbury Boys, Bol was stabbed in the arm and leg while sitting in the front seat of his car by four boys from a rival gang when he was 18. Undeterred, he was arrested again in 2004 after being caught selling drugs as part of a county lines network. The bubble finally burst when he turned 21 and was transferred to an adult prison. After being caught with a mobile phone, an officer vowed to get Bol a job in the gym if he behaved well and encouraged him to complete FA Level One and Community Sports Leader coaching courses.
'That helped me figure out that I needed to break the cycle and change my outlook. When I came out, I started volunteering at a local football club run by my friend. It was called A Class FC. Imagine,' Bol says, laughing. 'But I caught the bug and I've been doing it ever since.'
Bol continued to rap about his old life and earned a 'liveable wage' as his popularity grew, pressing his own CDs and taking them to independent record shops in the days before streaming. He was even once a support act to Rick Ross when the American hip-hop mogul played in London, but football remained his foremost passion. In 2012, he set up his own grassroots club called AC United and it quickly grew from having one team to eight. Their performances in local cups attracted the attention of scouts such as Joe Shields, now a senior director within Chelsea's academy, who got Bol a job as an academy scout and development coach at Crystal Palace.
Bol's big breakthrough came when the standout player at AC United, Clinton Mola, was invited for a trial at Chelsea. He accompanied Mola to the training ground and was mobbed by several of the under-14 players, including the likes of Reece James, much to the confusion of the academy staff. Seemingly realising the sway his fame could have, Chelsea ultimately decided to sign them both — Mola, 24, who now plays for Bristol Rovers, went on to represent England from under-16 to under-21 level. 'I'm still amazed that it happened. It wasn't by design. It was just because of the quality of players we had in our team,' Bol says. 'The original question was, 'Do I know anyone who would be interested in scouting for Chelsea in north London?' I said, 'Yeah, me.' '
Bol feared his criminal history would caused Chelsea to baulk. 'Rightfully so, because there were obviously reservations after what showed up [on the DBS check],' he says. 'I did a risk assessment and they asked me how I ended up in these situations and what I'd done to change my behaviour to ensure I wouldn't fall back into those old patterns. Long story short, I think the years I put in coaching unpaid went a long way to overpower the past. They could see I was making a big effort to make a change. I got the role and I was there for just over five years.'
ALAN STANFORD/PPAUK/SHUTTERSTOCK
There is not necessarily a secret art to scouting. 'It wasn't a conventional job with set hours, it was just having my ear to the ground, my eyes on the grass, and trying to find the best player in north London,' he says. Using the network of contacts he had built up as a coach, Bol would receive tip-offs about talented youngsters and attend countless matches every week to draw his own conclusions. Since joining Arsenal in 2020, his role is slightly more administrative, ensuring that a group of scouts are always covering all parts of east London and then similarly putting names forward for possible trials. 'There are a bunch of people involved in the decision-making and then Per Mertesacker [Arsenal's academy manager] may have the final sign off,' he says.
Bol's end goal is to become the head of academy recruitment at a Premier League club so his voice is the crucial element in that decision-making process. 'There are still lingering doubts in my head that because of my past maybe there is a ceiling [on what role he can have], but so far there hasn't been. If there is, I created it myself, but I feel proud of where I'm going,' he says. 'It's good to reflect every once in a while to remember how far I've come.'