Belmont United Youth FC

Many congratulations to Under14s striker Faik who with his 5th hat-trick of the season scored his 100th goal for Belmont. A great achievement seeing as it's taken him less than two and a half-seasons to notch the century.

When he arrived for Summer training three years ago we had no idea what was in prospect. He was very quiet, so much so that I was calling him by the wrong name for a few months. We had no idea of his blistering pace until then coach Ali played him upfront for his debut away at St Albans Rangers and Faik scored a brace in a 5-2 win. Every time we play St Albans, Faik has scored two against them, even this season in the Cup when they are a Division higher than us. Faik finished with 22 league goals, easily our top scorer, and a further 2 in the County Cup against a Premier team whose manager came over to congratulate him and a vital 7 in the Spring Cup which propelled us to the semi-final of that competition despite being the lowest ranked club to enter the competition. 31 goals in his debut season in all.

In that season Faik will admit he missed a fair few chances, but last season his conversion rate was far higher as he worked on his finishing to dink balls over onrushing keepers, or unerringly finding the corner of the net. He score 40 league goals, the second most of any player in our League's age group and one in the Cup. He had 9 hat-tricks in all. He also worked really hard on his wekaer left foot and was starting to notch with that as well as his deadly right.

This season he has progressed further, because he now helps the team by defending from the front, closing defenders down and he has put in a series of excellent crosses for his teammates. He started the season with a double hat trick against Oakhill, as he did last season, maybe they are his favourite opponents. He has 25 League goals in 8 games and stands a good chance of being the highest goalscorer throughout the Under 14s age group across all Watford Friendly League divisions.

He has done this having different strike partners all 3 seasons. If I had to compare him to a professional footballer, I'd say he was a bit like Michael Owen when he first made his mark, though Faik does a lot more work out of the box and link up play than Owen ever did. But Faik is a natural finisher as Owen ever was. When he's racing on to a one-on-one with the keeper, you just know 99 times out of a hundred the ball is going to end up in the net.

Faik, well done on a brilliant achievement over the past 2 and a half seasons. Keep knocking the ball in the onion bag, be it with chips, dinks, sidefoots or lashed shots!