England's dream teen

As effortlessly as he plays his football, Theo Walcott provides a little reassurance. Ronaldo, Dwain Chambers and the England rugby players in New Zealand have supplied the feel-bad headlines of the summer. An afternoon with Walcott casts a rather different light on the life of the professional sportsman.

For a start, he pulls up in front of the Hertfordshire home that he shares with his parents in a VW Golf, which in the ostentatious world of the Premier League footballer represents ludicrous restraint. He has returned from a gruelling double session at Arsenal's training ground, but immediately busies himself fetching drinks, asking me and the photographer how we are, were our journeys troublesome, do we mind which room we sit in. He runs upstairs to change and is back down in seconds. He is not the sort to spend 20 minutes doing his hair or texting his mates and, in the three hours we spend with him, he does not use his phone once. For a footballer, it is a little bit weird. 'What did you expect?' he asks, then stops. He knows the answer to that question.

Walcott is not the stereotypical footballer. He seems weary of those recent headlines - court cases, slaves, celebrity girlfriends - that have made footballers such an easy target for criticism. He sighs. 'Everyone is different, but the stuff you see some footballers doing, cheating on their girlfriends and stuff, I just think, "Why?" Why have a girlfriend, or a wife and kids if you're going to cheat?' he says. 'And drinking; when you've finished your career you can have a drink - obviously not become an alcoholic...' He trails off. 'I don't drink at all. I never have done. Back at school people would take the mick out of me for not drinking at parties and stuff, but that didn't bother me. It's only a short career and the way you are off the pitch makes a big difference.'

As we talk, the European under-19 championship is on television. England are playing the Czech Republic. Walcott glances up occasionally to check the score. 'It's weird to think I could be playing for them right now,' he says. Instead he recently made his second senior appearance for England, against Trinidad & Tobago, following a successful spell with the under-21s and a string of impressive performances for Arsenal. 'It feels like I've been around for ages,' he says, 'but I'm still only 19.'

Perhaps it is his age, but there is something refreshing about Walcott. He is unguarded in his conversation, but too smart to be drawn into saying anything silly.

Apart from that England friendly in the Caribbean in June, he has had a quiet summer. 'It's been nice to get away from football and do other things. I don't even know who's signed for who, I'm just not that interested. I don't watch that - what's it called?' Sky Sports News? 'Yeah. I'm not interested.'

What does he think of Cristiano Ronaldo's 'slavery' comments? He laughs. 'Not bad, is it, being a slave on that much a year? Anyone would do that, I can guarantee.'

Walcott says a life in football is 'a dream come true' - which happens to be the name of a charity he supports - so why worry about money and contracts? He never has done. The charity arranges 'dreams' for terminally ill children, such as snow on Christmas Day, or waking up to find cows in your back garden.

In Walcott's case the dream was more a nightmare, a swarm of paparazzi after he became the most expensive 16-year-old English footballer at £9.1m, the figure that Arsenal and Southampton finally settled on earlier this year, following his move in January 2006. He did not make an Arsenal appearance that season, but became, at 17 years and three months, the youngest England player to be selected for a senior squad when Sven-Goran Eriksson picked him for the World Cup five months after that transfer. He soon became the youngest player to have scored for the under-21s, when he played against Moldova as a 17-year-old in August 2006.

The first time I saw Walcott play he was 16 and making only his second full appearance for Southampton, against Millwall at The Den. Four days earlier he had scored on his full debut away at Leeds and already there was a ripple of excitement around him.

In the press box the whisper was, 'This kid is going places'. From the whistle, Walcott did not disappoint. The afternoon was meant to be all about Dennis Wise - on his first return to The Den since joining Southampton - but as Wisey sat on the bench, Walcott stole the show. His darting runs terrified the Millwall defence. Their only response was to floor him. Despite this attention, Walcott put Southampton ahead after 18 minutes, his second senior goal in as many starts. Walcott says he has a bad memory, but he has not forgotten that day.

'I remember getting kicked about,' he says, grinning. 'I've actually got a scar on my knee from it. Someone put a hole in my knee, I can't remember the name of the guy who did it but he had no teeth.' He laughs at the stereotype. 'Yeah, proper Millwall.'

It is staggering how much life has changed for Walcott in three years. From Championship to Premier League aged 16, from a modest home to riches - although even now his home seems free from showiness or expensive James Bond-style gadgets.

At the time of the 2006 World Cup, a major breakthrough for Walcott that became mainstream news, his family could not afford to stay in the same hotel as the other England footballers' families. 'We didn't have the funds to stay there, and anyway the prices were ridiculous,' he says. 'To be honest it was nice to be out of the way. The World Cup was an experience for my family as well as me. Mel [girlfriend Melanie Slade] had to deal with the whole Wag culture - I hate that term, Wag.'

The media went crazy for them. How was it for Walcott? 'I was just a little 16-year-old running around on the pitch like a mad person, trying to impress. I didn't take any notice of anything else. You can't, people might say something you don't want to hear, or something really good that might go to your head and then your football goes downhill.'

As quickly as the excitement over Eriksson's young selection grew, it evaporated. Walcott did not play in the World Cup and resentment set in. In his autobiography, Steven Gerrard said that Walcott 'had no right to be there'. Headlines buzzed. Walcott was and remains unfazed. 'I didn't expect the call-up. I was only just taking my driving test at the time. Everyone always says, "He shouldn't have been there, blah blah blah," but it doesn't bother me. I didn't pick the team so don't judge me. It's not my fault.

'There was a lot of pressure straight away. With most young players their development is not on the telly or spoken about, but with me it was different. The England call-up didn't help my development, because everyone was expecting something straight away. In the end it was a good experience, but at the time it was like, "Whoa".'

He says he was starstruck when first picked by England. A keen Liverpool fan, he remembers showing Michael Owen - his boyhood hero - a photo of them together when Walcott had only just started playing football. 'When that photo was taken I was 11. When I showed it to Michael I was 17 - six years later. He couldn't believe it. The whole thing was so weird.'

When Steve McClaren took over from Eriksson and called to say that Walcott would be starting in the under-21s, he felt much happier. 'I was only 17 then anyway, so going into the 21s even then was a big honour. Doing well for them and scoring goals got my confidence back and people were just judging me on that.' Walcott missed the European under-21 championship finals in 2007 through a dislocated shoulder, but his contribution in getting the team there did not go unnoticed. Slowly, Walcott's reputation was being rebuilt.

When Fabio Capello named him for the Trinidad friendly, it completed that circle and Walcott felt the difference in the reception from the other players this time around.

'Whereas before I hadn't played in the Premier League, some players were probably thinking, "What's he doing here? He doesn't deserve to be here", now I'd been doing well,' he says. 'The players made me feel welcome; they trusted me on the ball, which was nice. I felt more part of the squad.'

Eriksson's World Cup gamble was not entirely wasted, though. While England played out their triumphs and woes, on and off the pitch, Walcott was busy making a video diary of his experiences.

'They gave us cameras, so I decided to record something every day about how I was feeling. Initially, it was to keep myself entertained and to show the family, but it's quite a handy thing to keep hold of,' he says. 'I haven't shown it to anyone yet... but I'm quite clever when it comes to those things.'

With the attention surrounding Walcott's emergence, there was a period when every newspaper seemed to carry photos of the young star and his girlfriend. They looked destined to follow the celebrity route. They graced the front of Hello!, appeared on the ITV gameshow Mr and Mrs, and Mel posed for the cover of men's magazine Arena. Walcott's father, Don, appeared on Celebrity Ready Steady Cook - in a face-off with Andy Murray's mum, Judy - and the whole family starred in a cameo role in the film Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

Walcott survived the experience. He laughs about the Hello! photos. 'That was so weird,' he says. 'We look fake! It's the airbrushing. Actually we had some other ones done of us recently, no airbrushing, just us... except that Mel's ear was sticking out in one of them so she asked to have it covered up with some hair...' He looks at me quizzically. 'Girls are weird, aren't they?'

Together the two have learnt to deal with the paparazzi. They try to laugh it off. 'They want to see something go wrong, that's the thing. They want to see a reaction, and that's fine because we don't give them any. We had one who thought Mel was pregnant, it was so stupid. They were actually going to release it in the newspaper. I was like, "OK, go on if you want." I do not have a clue where they got that from. I think they were just trying to make us lose it.'

Despite all the things that make his life unusual, Walcott does not seem far removed from an average teenager. Chatting in the kitchen, he and Mel get excited about a new milkshake chain where you can get 'any flavour of milkshake you want!' Melanie is due to start a university degree in physiotherapy this year. Walcott received an art set for his birthday. 'What do you get a footballer?' he asks. In fact he loves art. He has a C in GCSE art and would like to open a gallery one day. He likes hanging out with his best friend, the Southampton midfielder Jake Thomson.

'We still go into Reading and get haircuts like we used to. We've been going to the same place for eight years. It's a black hairdressers, and I remember we took Gareth Bale with us once. They asked him if he wanted a haircut, he was like "Naaa", which was really funny. Jake and I like to make a day of it. We go to Nando's and then have a cinema day - watch two films back to back, really close to the screen until our eyes are funny.'

Outside the window, one of Walcott's dogs - they have four - starts barking. 'That's Sanchez,' he says. 'He's a pug crossed with a shih-tzu and he's always dominating the other dogs. We've had the dog whisperer round and he says Sanchez has got height issues, that's why he has to bark at everyone. One of the other dogs had his bollocks cut off the other day. Bless him, he's got one of those lampshades on his head.'

Walcott points at his Golf. 'I love that car,' he says. 'It's small and zippy. It reminds me of myself. Plus it's the R32 model, which is also my first squad number, although that's changed now.' He has just been handed the No 14 shirt, last worn by Thierry Henry. 'It's just a number in the end,' he says. 'It's just a number on the back of a shirt, that's what I think, anyway.'

It is quite some mantle, although Walcott has long been accustomed to sharing the insignia of a global sports star. He shares his initials with Tiger Woods - also his school nickname - and is often mistaken for Lewis Hamilton. Mel later confirms that he and Hamilton have exactly the same measurements. 'That's what Hugo Boss told me when I phoned up to get his suit,' she says. Instinctively you cannot help but wonder how long it will be before Walcott's achievements match those luminaries in earnest.

Where does Walcott himself think he is heading? 'In five years' time I want to be a regular for Arsenal and England, scoring 20 goals a season. That's a lot, but you have to set your sights high. I want to win the Premier League, the Champions League and the FA Cup. That's the main thing, medals. People go on about money and contracts, but for me it's always going to be about the football.'

Source:Guardian