Reise Allassani opens up on his time at Crystal Palace – and forcefully rejects any claims that big contract a factor in him not living up to teenage hype

Reise Allassani cannot hide his disappointment when October 23, 2012 is brought up.

It was the day his seemingly inevitable route to the Crystal Palace first team suddenly encountered major obstacles.

It was the day his reason for shunning offers from Tottenham Hotspur, Arsenal and a host of other Premier League clubs to stay at Selhurst Park vanished. It was the day Dougie Freedman left for Bolton Wanderers.

While the ‘wonderkid’ tag is thrown around with little thought for the impact on those who have to cope with it, in the case of Allassani there was so much uncontrollable excitement about his upward trajectory.

Having joined Palace’s youth team at the age of eight, by the time he turned 15 he had been regularly training with Freedman’s first team and been caught in an international tug-of-war. He was one of the brightest jewels in the Eagles’ academy crown.

Allassani’s talent? Immensurable. His eye for goal? Formidable. And the players he was compared to while he rapidly climbed through the ranks of Palace’s academy – Victor Moses and Wilfried Zaha – well, depending on who you asked, he was expected to eclipse both.

But Allassani left Crystal Palace in 2016 without playing a single minute for the club. When he looks back on his 12 years at Selhurst Park, there is an overwhelming sense of frustration, missed opportunities and wretched misfortune.

Allassani was promoted up through the age groups at a frightening pace. The Premier League vultures began to circle – offering state-of-the-art facilities, bigger wage packets, a more attractive style of football and a fast-track to the top-flight stage.

“It was the first time – bearing in mind I was still a kid – when it became serious, and I had to make a decision,” Allassani told the South London Press. “It was tough because there were several attractive offers on the table but, at the same time, Palace was all I knew.

“When I was getting offers from other clubs, it was always on my mind, ‘where is the best place for me to progress and play in the first team?’ If you look at Palace back then, young players were coming through the academy every single season – that’s what kept the club afloat at the time.

“I saw countless players come through – Kieran Djilali, Sean Scannell, Nathaniel Clyne, Jonny Williams, Victor Moses and Wilfried Zaha. There was no doubt that Palace had the best academy, in terms of bringing players through.”

Despite the alluring approaches of Tottenham, Arsenal and Everton, there would be one deciding factor that convinced the then 16-year-old to commit his long-term future to the club – the first-team manager.

Freedman saw the root of his rebuild at Selhurst Park based around the academy and repeatedly called Allassani over from the academy training site at the Crystal Palace National Sports Centre to take part in first-team training.

“It was great,” said Allassani. “The intensity was much, much higher than the youth and reserve team training.

“Dougie was the main reason I stayed at the club. When there was a choice between staying or going, Dougie would come to talk with me and my parents.”

Allassani rejected offers to leave Palace, signing a pre-contract agreement that came into effect on his 17th birthday.

But the plans would be shredded by the architect himself. When Freedman left play-off chasing Crystal Palace for Bolton Wanderers, Allassani says it affected him “massively.” He added: “I remember the day clearly when Dougie left to go to Bolton. It was a tough day, a very tough day. But it didn’t just affect me, there were quite a few other boys who were being brought through by Dougie.”

Palace gained promotion via the play-offs, with a Kevin Phillips penalty ending the club’s eight-year drought of Premier League football. The pathway to the first team became instantly harder.

“It messed things up,” said Allassani. “It changed the landscape of the club for everyone. The whole plan for me changed.

“I believe that if the club were still in the Championship, I would have started to play in the season following promotion.”

Despite impressing Ian Holloway on a pre-season training camp in Portugal, Allassani recounts what happened on their return to Copers Cope.

“I remember the day so vividly. We got back from Portugal, and we were given a day off. We came back into training the next day, and I was told ‘you’re with the U21s today’.

“I was only 17 at the time, but in my mind I was thinking ‘I had played U21s the whole season just gone. I had done really well too, so ideally, I want to be training with the first team every day and progressing’.”

A meeting with Allassani, his mother and Holloway took place, to discuss the next stages of his development. He then contracted glandular fever, which sidelined him for more than three months.

“As the weeks went on I remember the club signing loads of players, and rightly so, because the Premier League was a massive step up and the main aim was survival, but it was so demoralising,” said Allassani. “I made my reserve debut at 15. I then started playing U21s at 16. So at some stage, to carry on developing, I needed to take that next step to play regular first-team football.

“When you’re that young, mentally, you need to feel like you’re constantly being challenged. I always wanted to feel as if I was taking that next step, and when you’re not, it can be disheartening.”

After three years of pleading and pressing Palace to secure him a loan, Allassani was sent on loan to Bromley in the National League on a one-month deal. He only made three appearances.

“Although Palace was all I knew, if I was to make something of my career, I had to go and gain experience and take on a new challenge,” he said. “Everything that happened at Palace, whether that was on the pitch or off it, helped me develop into the man I am today.”

When Allassani left Palace, the rumours began to circulate and mutate. The biggest misconception was that he lost focus after signing his professional contract.

Allassani pauses when that statement is put to him.

“When I read those messages, it upset me,” he responded. “When a young player is hyped up to be the next big thing and it doesn’t work out the way it could have, people chose to look at the negatives rather than the whole picture.

“For a young player to make it at a club, everything has to connect. The timing has to be right, you have to have the right manager, you have to have no injuries and the opportunity has to arise in the team for you to kick on. If one of those doesn’t connect, you’re not going to make it – it’s plain and simple.

“I was privately educated for the majority of my life. My parents have worked extremely hard to provide the best life possible for me and my brothers – all the contract did was to make me financially independent.

“At that time, when I was getting offers, more attractive offers than the one I got at Palace, money didn’t really mean anything to me. I was 15 years old – what could I do with money at that age?

“It didn’t distract me or make me lose focus. The money is what came with it, the money is what Palace deemed that I was worth at the time. It didn’t affect me in any way. Money was never a focus.

“During the negotiations of the contract, my parents and agent dealt with it all. I had nothing to do with it. When I went to Dulwich Hamlet for the first time, I was on next to nothing because I wanted to get my career back on track.”

When the deal was signed, Crystal Palace chose to publicly announce that it was the most lucrative contract they had ever offered to an academy graduate. It’s something Allassani still thinks about today.

“From the beginning, I was hearing little rumbles about the money,” he said. “It created an unnecessary pressure that was geared towards money.

“During times at Palace, I would feel as if anything I did, it was judged against the salary I was on – which no other player my age was experiencing. That was tough.

“Palace’s intentions were of course ‘this is how much we believe in him,’ but over time, I think it has allowed people to conclude that the salary made me unfocused.

“If I played poorly and people said ‘you’re not living up to the tag of a wonderkid’ that’s fine – I could live with that. But when money becomes involved, I felt as if it became a completely different conversation.

“I’m human, I’m going to have good games and bad games, but money shouldn’t have ever been the topic of conversation.”

Upon leaving Palace, Sheffield Wednesday instantly showed their interest in Allassani and offered him a six-week trial.

He impressed, which led to him being offered a permanent contract by Carlos Carvalhal. But Allassani stalled on the deal, unsure about leaving London and the life he had grown accustomed to in the capital.

Allassani returned to Palace to play his former club in an U21 game for Sheffield Wednesday.

Allassani was running down the wing in the 10th minute and felt his right knee buckle – he had torn his anterior cruciate ligament. Wednesday instantly withdrew their offer as he faced 12 months of rehab.

In the space of five years, Allassani had gone from earning international recognition alongside Ruben Loftus-Cheek and Joe Gomez and named as one of the brightest prospects in the country, to being without a club.

But Allassani refused to look at it as agonising misfortune – he describes it as “the best thing that ever happened to me.

“The previous six years had been very intense for me, especially all the media attention,” he explained.

“This was the first time I had been out of that spotlight and able to really assess everything that had gone on in the past couple of years. Why didn’t I make it at Palace? Where did I go wrong? What could I have done better?

“There were so many things as to why it didn’t work out at Palace. To make it at a Premier League club, everything needs to connect, and for me, it didn’t.

“Could I have done more? Absolutely. When it was looking less and less likely that I was going to make it at Palace, I became disheartened.

“When I did leave, it was a massive moment in my life.

“There was a lot of personal disappointment, a lot of things had gone on, but I had to get over it in my own way.”

After working tirelessly over the 12 months that followed to strengthen his knee, Allassani found a home at Dulwich.

He felt comfortable and allowed to express the talent which he has always possessed – he just needed the right pieces of the jigsaw to fall into place.

Allassani scored 19 goals in 33 games, helping fire Dulwich to promotion.

“Up to that point, I hadn’t played men’s football consistently, so compared to academy football, there was a massive difference,” he said. “It was a relief to finally show what I could do.

“At that time, everyone said ‘the former Crystal Palace wonderkid,’ and that was annoying. I was ready to carve something out and be known as something different – I don’t want to be known as that for my whole career.”

A move to Coventry City failed to work out and Allassani, now 25, re-signed for Dulwich in September 2020. But the National League South season was aborted due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Allassani started Dulwich’s last fixture of that season on January 16 – a 2-0 loss at Billericay Town.

“In the future, I would like to play abroad,” he said. “Experiencing a new culture, a new way of living, and a different way of playing the game is something that really excites me.

“If I stay fit for a whole season and play every week, I can show what I can do.”

PICTURES: KEITH GILLARD AND PA