Michail Antonio: AFC Wimbledon wouldn’t pay £7 registration fee to sign me

BY SAM SMITH

Michail Antonio has recalled the time that AFC Wimbledon passed up the opportunity to sign him from Tooting & Mitcham United over a £7 registration fee.

The Dons were still in non-league when they tried to sign the now-West Ham forward in 2008.
Antonio, 30, had impressed in the Terrors’ youth and reserve ranks before making the step up to the first team – but was available on a free transfer due to a contract dispute.

The Wandsworth-born Antonio trialled at Wimbledon but claims that the South Londoners refused to pay a small registration fee. He returned to Tooting before trialling at Millwall and Reading.

Antonio has 39 goals in 142 Premier League appearances for the Hammers and earned an England call-up, but there was once a time when he was struggling to impress Tooting’s first-team coaching staff.

“I went from the youth team, then from the youth team into the reserves [at Tooting],” Antonio told On The Judy Podcast. “The reserves manager kept telling the first-team manager: ‘I’ve got a player here.’ But the manager was always like: ‘Nah, he’s a kid, I don’t want no kids around here in my team’.

“All the time, ‘he’s 17, he won’t be able to handle it.’ I had to actually trial out to be in the first team. Forget the fact I was in the reserves, I had to go and trial to get into the first team. That’s when he finally signed me.

“Then I played three games and the club asked me to sign a contract, so I was like ‘I don’t want to sign a contract.’ If a club came in, I wanted to just be able to leave. I just knew, if someone comes in, I don’t want the club going, ‘you’re paying this, this and this much for him,’ I just want to pack my bags and go.

“Then they kicked me out the whole club – just for not signing a contract. They were like, ‘you’re not playing reserves, you’re not playing in the youth team, you just have to leave the club’.

“I left and went to AFC Wimbledon, and they wouldn’t pay £7 for my registration fee. Tooting and Mitcham were offering me £150 a week and they were paying my taxes, so it was cash in hand.

“I was also a lifeguard earning another £150 a week, so I thought ‘do you know what? Let me just take that’. So I went back to sign a new deal and within six games I signed for Reading. I scored in every game. I signed for Reading and then went back [on loan to Tooting] full-time, literally getting hat-tricks every other game.”

Antonio signed for the Royals under Steve Coppell. The former Crystal Palace boss had received a tip-off from Tooting manager Billy Smith.

But Antonio’s impressive form also caught the eye of Millwall. He trialled with the Lions and they also offered him a professional contract.

He said: “Billy Smith was the Tooting manager at the time. I was playing really well and scoring quite a few goals. Billy knew Steve Coppell and he told him to get some scouts down.

“The scouts came down and watched a few of my games, and in the last game they saw I played against Millwall reserves. I played well and Millwall asked me to train with them. I played them on the Tuesday and the next day I was training with Millwall for the Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.

“They offered me a contract on the Friday but I had a trial with Reading on the Friday. I told them I couldn’t accept it, I asked for them to let me do my trial with Reading and that I would get back to them the next week.

“On the Monday I trained with Reading’s first team – I’d gone from non-league to training with the likes of Stephen Hunt, Kevin Doyle, Michael Duberry and Leroy Lita. I thought I was going in to train with the reserves, but I was in with the first team. It was crazy.

“I had to give Millwall a call and say sorry, because I signed for Reading.

“I had an agent at the time in non-league, and we sat down to talk. He said: ‘Go with Millwall and there was more chance of getting into the first team and you can start your career, but you can go to Reading and work a bit more and be around the reserves more.’

“I based it on the fact that Millwall were in League One and Reading were in the Championship – pushing to get into the Premier League.

“I always believed that if I pushed really high, went to Reading and it didn’t work out, there was always a chance I could go down to Millwall. To be fair, everything did work out.”