Life after Man Utd: DJ Buffonge on haircuts, ‘old school' mentalities and a new calling

New York Times

a day ago

Earlier this year, The Athletic asked Manchester United subscribers what they would like to read.
Olumuyiwa S, Rob M and Vaageesh T were among those to suggest pieces about what former academy players are up to now, and we have since begun a series about Life after Manchester United. The first piece was an interview with Charlie Savage; now, in the second, Laurie Whitwell talks to DJ Buffonge.
DJ Buffonge spent four years at Manchester United's academy — a crash course in football, life and everything.
He trained with the senior team under three different managers — Louis van Gaal, Jose Mourinho and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer. He bonded with Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho and Angel Gomes, elite players he still counts as friends. But he was also introduced to the hard realities of an unforgiving industry.
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Now aged 26, Buffonge is currently without a club, but has a wealth of football knowledge, which he is channelling by setting up a course aimed at helping players come to terms with the dips they can experience in their careers.
'Manchester United was an amazing experience, so much good and bad,' he says. 'It taught me how much discipline you need, how much mental toughness, how much drive to be able to play at that elite level consistently.'
Buffonge's story is a reminder of the challenges thrown up by forging a career at an academy that has created stars but could also be a difficult environment. He talks about being told to cut his hair before coming under consideration for a first-team debut, receiving a fine for getting a tattoo and how taking a penalty in a youth game saw him dropped indefinitely.
It is a story that has been far from straightforward, but now he is ready to tell it.
Buffonge joined United as a 16-year-old in 2015, having previously been with Arsenal and Fulham.
'Fulham was my most enjoyable time playing football,' he says. 'I was very raw, very fresh, very expressive. All I wanted to do was become the best. I attracted a lot of attention. I was playing on the wing for the under-16s but I got called up to play for the under-18s against United and got put in midfield. That's the game when I impressed the scout for United.'
Buffonge had not yet signed his scholarship contract at Fulham. Those looking after him, mainly his father, felt the west London club's offer didn't 'equate to how much they rated me as a player'.
Paul McGuinness, then United's under-18s coach, certainly rated Buffonge.
'When I first went up to Manchester, he invited me out for lunch with my dad and spoke about how he saw me as a player, all the attributes I've got naturally,' Buffonge says.
'He said they went hand in hand, even things like the way I received the ball. He was really heavy on the details, like safe turns in midfield, driving with the ball, being able to pick the right passes.'
He also got the seal of approval from two members of the United academy's fabled Class of '92.
'In pre-season, we played against Tottenham in a five-team tournament,' Buffonge explains. 'Nicky Butt (then United's head of the academy) and Ryan Giggs (who was first-team manager Van Gaal's assistant) were there and they were really amazed by what they saw. They brought me into a room where they had computers everywhere and broke down all the touches, off the ball, what they liked, what they didn't like. It was really encouraging.'
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There were some early setbacks as well, not least a torn abductor (a muscle in the hip) sustained in his third game of the season in attempting a pass to Rashford, but these were generally happy times for Buffonge under McGuinness and then Kieran McKenna, now Ipswich Town manager, who took over United Under-18s in August 2016.
'He (McKenna) was a very good coach, very thorough,' Buffonge says. 'I remember him having a book full of tactics, training ideas and (team) shape. He made sure in training that we were all doing what we do well consistently, and always winning our individual battles. He partnered us up with our opponent, so that you could see if you deserved to play or not at the end of the week. I think all clubs should do that.'
Buffonge's performances in midfield saw him promoted to the under-23s — McKenna told him under-18s football was 'too easy' for him — but that brought its own problems.
The under-23s setup was, according to Buffonge, run along a 'kind of old-school mentality' by reserve-team manager Warren Joyce, who held that role at United from 2008 to November 2016. His sides lifted the youth league title six times in those eight years, but by Joyce's own admission the environment was hard.
'It was almost like an army camp, which for some players works perfectly fine,' Buffonge says. 'Some players really focus on the gym. Other players like playing football, doing the stuff on the pitch. I feel like when you mix both, you get the best out of a player. But when it's so rigid, some players find it hard.'
Buffonge, then 17, had a three-month period with Joyce at the start of the 2016-17 season. He made two squads in Premier League 2, coming off the bench in one match and being an unused substitute in the other — games in which Scott McTominay, then 19, was playing up front — before Joyce left to take charge of Wigan Athletic in the second-tier Championship.
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'No matter how hard or how well I trained, he had his group of players who he had been working with,' Buffonge says. 'I ended up just training a lot.
'I definitely experienced a difference between the 18s and the 23s in terms of the physicality, the intensity. In the under-18s, we were much more focused on our technical ability. In the 23s, it was more about, if you can run up and down in training well enough, then you can play. Which was a different kind of battle. That was a period where I didn't play much football.'
Clashing over training styles is one thing but, according to Buffonge, the requirements on him went further, straying into unusual territory.
'Warren Joyce would make comments like, 'I'm gonna tell Mourinho (by then United's first-team manager) you're not gonna make your debut with him until you cut your hair.' I was just thinking, 'I don't understand. They're joking around, but I really want to play. I don't see the correlation between my hair and me playing.'
'In football, there's a lot of banter. In those times – I don't know exactly what it's like in academies now – they made a lot of jokes. But even if it was said as banter, it stuck with me because when you're fighting for your place, everything feels like a signal.
'I'm a young kid trying to get minutes, and I'm asking for guidance, and if you're guiding me to cut my hair, that doesn't really make sense.
'I remember coming home and asking my mum if I should get it cut. I did cut it a couple of months later — not fully off — but nothing changed from that point.'
Joyce does not recall making that comment to Buffonge, although he accepts that style of management was part of his repertoire. He remembers Buffonge as a 'tough kid' who had quality, but that there were older players ahead of him in the queue for selection.
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Buffonge says he was also docked a week's wages for getting a tattoo.
'At that time, there was a rule that no youth-team players were allowed to get any tattoos,' he says. 'I had abided by the rules until I was 18, where I'm legally allowed to get a tattoo. And I felt like getting one on my chest. It says, 'I was put on this earth to achieve my greatest self, to live out my purpose and to do it courageously.' And that meant a lot to me.
'It was for me to look at myself in the mirror on game day. Even when I'm short-sleeved, no one can see it. But I got in trouble for that. Now in the youth team at United, everyone has their tattoos, expressing themselves with their art.'
Buffonge's exit from United — who told The Athletic they have consciously aimed to care for player welfare in recent years — was set in motion in August 2018, by which time Ricky Sbragia had replaced Joyce.
'The third game of that season was against Southampton away,' Buffonge says. 'Angel (Gomes) got given the role to take penalties, but in this game I won a penalty and in the heat of the moment, I wanted to take the penalty. Angel was cool with it. I scored, but I got a b****cking from the coach, which was fair enough. Next game, I was in the stands.
'I went to speak to him (Sbragia) and was like, 'Is it because I scored that penalty?'. He was like, 'No, honestly, it's come from above (within the club).' So I'm thinking, 'How do I progress from this situation?'.
Sbragia confirms now that choices were made in collaboration with senior staff at United.
'That was the moment I started feeling some decisions weren't even about football anymore — it felt political. No one could tell me directly what the issue was,' adds Buffonge.
'I didn't play for the 23s for a long while after that. I was only getting five minutes here and there, and no real explanation. Weeks would go by. I'd knock on his door, 'Is there anything you want me to do in training to be able to get myself back in the team?'. I didn't understand. I was confused for so long. I remember just channelling my focus on training.
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'It wasn't until I was having lunch with some boys after training and Mourinho walks in. He was someone I had met when I was at Fulham, as his son (a goalkeeper, also named Jose) was there. He came over and said, 'DJ, I want to know why you've not been playing recently. The last game you were doing good. Are you not fit? What's the problem?'. And I told him, 'I honestly don't know.'
'Mourinho said, 'OK, now you're going to come train with us, and I'm gonna tell you the reason why I think you don't play.' I ended up training with them most of the time. He couldn't give me a reason why I wasn't playing. He said, 'If I could say one thing – never walk (when on the pitch)'.'
The frustration at being left out of matches was still acute but Buffonge did benefit from training with first-teamers including Paul Pogba, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Anthony Martial, Juan Mata, Jesse Lingard and Rashford.
'It was quality players sparring against each other,' he says. 'But in the business of football, people don't see that development behind closed doors. You're not playing on matchday. That's where everybody gets judged. That's what I was starved of.
'The first time I ever trained with the first team, I think I was 17, 18. I've got the ball on the half-turn in midfield, lined up Phil Jones, put it through his legs and ran straight away. Everyone went crazy. He said some foul language, but it was a good touch!'
Buffonge also trained with the seniors under Solskjaer, who replaced Mourinho in December 2018, but towards the end of that season, he realised there was no way back for him at United.
'I wasn't actually told anything,' he adds. 'My dad was looking after me and he said, 'Let's see if we can get a youth loan and some games before the season ends.' So that's what I ended up doing. At 20, I went to Bolton. But I had only been training, so I played, scored a goal for them and pulled my hamstring.'
Buffonge's time at United ended that summer, and he moved to Spezia of Italy's second-tier Serie B, managed by Vincenzo Italiano, who is now in charge of top-flight Bologna.
Adjusting to life abroad was hard, and with Italiano wanting players who could make an instant impact to help the club's promotion bid — which was ultimately successful — there was little leeway granted for a young man trying to find his way in senior football in a new country.
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Buffonge went on loan to Pergolettese in Serie C, before his best run of form between 2020 to 2022 in the Dutch second division at NAC Breda, for whom he scored his only senior goal.
Spells elsewhere in the Netherlands at Telstar and Emmen followed but his progress has been stymied by two surgeries in the past two years, the first for a broken kneecap, and the second for a knee meniscus injury sustained as London-born Buffonge was preparing to join up with Caribbean country Montserrat's national team.
His energy at the moment is away from the pitch, working on creating a platform that he says is to 'coach young men on mindset, masculinity, purpose and motivation'.
He adds: 'I'm teaching the lessons that go beyond sport — discipline, resilience; things I had to master during my time at Manchester United and beyond.'
He is still in regular contact with former team-mates such as Sancho, another Londoner who went north to pursue his football dream. They met through Gomes when Sancho was at Manchester City's academy.
Buffonge has watched the career arcs of Sancho and Rashford at United with interest and, while he prefers to speak in general terms, he believes players should be judged on their on-field performances.
'To bring a person's appearance, or the car they drive, into their performance, I don't think is fair,' he says. 'Players train the way they feel inside. If these players are not feeling appreciated or heard, or they're not allowed to do what they do best, they're going to feel a type of way.
'And I feel like coaches don't have the time nor the care to really figure out why a player may be training a certain way. They'll just start pointing at all these other things, kind of like a smokescreen.
'We've all seen what Marcus did at Aston Villa (on loan for the second half of last season). These players who can do amazing things have that talent living inside, but due to a lot of external factors, sometimes it can get blocked. These shots at a person's character are what can have a negative impact, which is part of the work that I'm doing now.
'People who've watched me go through what I've gone through and what it must take, on top of the fact they see what I do on the pitch, it equates to a trusted voice.'