Former Atletico Madrid youngster Carlos Mendes Gomes savouring ‘dream’ FA Cup tie against Chelsea

For Carlos Mendes Gomes nothing will detract from the moment. Not the absence of a crowd, not the fact the opposition is likely to consist almost entirely of reserves, none of it can dilute what it will mean when he and his Morecambe team play Chelsea in the third round of FA Cup. 

“It’s massive just to be able to step out there,” he says, speaking on the phone from his home in the Lancashire resort. “Yeah, it’s unlucky that there won’t be a crowd there and our fans won’t be able to watch us do it. But as a kid it was something I used to dream of, me playing in the biggest stadiums against the biggest teams. And that’s what we’ll be doing.”

Indeed, just being there is quite an achievement for Morecambe’s fleet-heeled 22-year-old winger. Born in Senegal, he moved to Lanzarote when he was three after his father landed a job in construction on the island.

A passionate schoolboy footballer, he took the opportunity to pursue his ambition of playing professionally when a cousin went to university in Madrid. Aged just 13, he moved to the mainland and, unsure how to go about progressing his aims, with his cousin approached all the professional clubs in the capital, often just turning up at training grounds on spec.

“Eventually I got a trial at Getafe, it worked out well and I got a season in their under-14s,” he recalls. “The next year, the new manager didn’t fancy me, so I thought that might be it. But luckily we got a call from Atletico, saying they’d like me to go there for a try-out. And they offered me a contract.”

In an academy that has developed players such as Arsenal’s Thomas Partey, Manchester City’s Rodri, as well as Saul Niguez and Koke of the Atletico first team, Gomes worked tirelessly to improve over the two years he was there. Mind, he needed to. The tone was set from the top: this was not a place to slack. 

“You’d get to see [Diego] Simeone at the training ground every day,” he recalls. “He was always screaming and shouting.”

He was offered another year at Atleti, but his father had just accepted a job in Manchester and the family moved there when he was 17.  

“When I came here my English was poor and I found it quite difficult,” he says. “I went to college and I tried to get trials with local clubs. Unfortunately none of them offered me one.”

Eventually he got a chance at West Didsbury and Chorlton in the North West Counties League and was soon in the first team. For a player schooled in Atleti’s academy, it was something of a culture shock. 

“Yeah, I got kicked a lot,” he says. “My style of play is to try and dribble past players and they tried to stop me. I believe it toughened me up, the experience helped me mature. It gave me an understanding of English football and I tried to play smarter, move the ball quicker.”

But it was while playing for his college team, rather than evading the hackers of non-league, that he came to the attention of the professional game. 

“Somebody had a contact at Morecambe who told them the college had a player worth looking at. They scouted me and called me in for trials. I did well but at first they couldn’t offer me anything in case they got relegated. But when they stayed up I got a call.”

The long-serving Shrimps manager Jim Bentley signed him full time in May 2018.

“He was very careful,” Gomes recalls of Bentley. “He wanted to protect me, help me adapt myself. I spent my first season with the under-19s, coming on here and there for the first team.” When Bentley moved on to Fylde, the new manager Derek Adams took one look at Gomes and liked what he saw, giving him a regular role in his starting eleven.

This season he has flourished, forming a potent partnership with the striker Adam Phillips, scoring seven goals, including two in a Boxing Day victory over Grimsby, Morecambe’s last game before a ten day Covid-enforced layoff. 

“I like a dribbler,” says Adams of Gomes. “He’s got a freedom when we have the ball, freedom to find space, freedom to run in behind. I tell him to be his own person as he is the kind of player who he gets supporters on their feet. The only one thing I ask of him is when we don’t have the ball he gets back into defensive shape.”

And, even on a bleak January day which he describes the weather as “terrible, absolutely terrible”, Gomes clearly fits in. 

“I admit it was tough at the beginning,” he says, his accent these days tinged with a Mancunian edge. “But the people you’ve got around you, they decide how quick you adapt. Luckily I’ve been with the right people who helped me. I try to have the direct fitness of English football and mix that with what I learned over the years in Spain.

“But I like England a lot, it was the place that gave me the opportunity to be a pro footballer. If I could I would stay here for the rest of my career.” Not least because now he has the chance to play against Chelsea at Stamford Bridge.