Dubbed the next Harry Kewell, Kaz Patafta never kicked on to have a career in football

Kaz Patafta was good enough to beguile Guus Hiddink, Ange Postecoglou and Cristiano Ronaldo’s agent before he was old enough to vote. Six years later he’d retired from top-flight football.

• Tombides life cruelly cut short but his legacy will live on

The world was at their feet — young Australian footballers blessed with the talent to embrace fame and fortune before life took a twist that changed their worlds forever. Emma Kemp continues our series looking at players whose careers ended too soon

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Kaz Patafta used to smash lights for fun.

Break bricks off the walls and strip paint off the ceiling.

Turns out a room with no furniture makes for an exemplary after-school space for a kid to emulate David Beckham.

A kid good enough to beguile Guus Hiddink, Ange Postecoglou and Cristiano Ronaldo’s agent before he was old enough to vote.

“My parents decided to leave one living room open as a bit of a football room,” Patafta tells The Sunday Telegraph.

From an early age Kaz Patafta was recognised as a special talent and was at the AIS by the time he was 17.

“I'd wait for Dad to get home from work and we’d just play in that particular room. Summer, winter, autumn — it didn't matter, I was in there.”

That spindly little kid would never become the Manchester United legend, but he did have the skills to be a household name for the Socceroos.

Hiddink certainly thought so when he picked a teenage Patafta to train with the golden generation before the 2006 World Cup.

So did Benfica, when the Portuguese giants signed him as a 16-year-old.

And his mentor Postecoglou, who in 2007 called Patafta “the most technically gifted player I've coached”.

Back then Patafta would have laughed in your face if you’d have told him his professional career would be over quicker than Beckham scored his first 50 professional goals.

Now, little more than a decade later, he wears a suit and tie in Singapore as a lawyer.

There are no regrets about his decision to effectively retire at the age of 22.

Because, for the 30-year-old, this is not a tale of unfulfilled potential but one of an athlete who made a deliberate decision to pursue another career.

That outlook is tempered by the hope that today’s young talent are offered more support and direction from within the Australian game than what he encountered during those pivotal years.

Identified as a special talent he was training alongside the likes of Harry Kewell at the World Cup in Germany.

If Patafta has learnt anything from his transient, somewhat surreal trajectory to the top and back, it’s that football can be fleeting. And confronting.

One minute you’re in Canberra playing kickabouts in the family home, the next you’re being dubbed the next Harry Kewell.

Then, suddenly, you’re 15,000km away in a country where no one speaks English and your own teammates hide your boots just to put you off your game.

“It's quite brutal in Europe where I was,” Patafta says.

“You're around kids who will do anything to mentally like distract you, to make you as uncomfortable as possible.

“Just really, really strange different things on matchday like getting rid of your boots, or you're in your room at night and they’re harassing you, just doing everything possible to make life difficult.

After a stint in Europe Patafta returned to play for the Melbourne Victory.

“You learn the true nature of the sport at that age, when everyone's fighting for the same thing but in reality the number of players who actually make it at that level is minimal.

“The more you achieve, the more people want to bring you down … it's just a big mental game.

“It’s a fascinating journey. I hold fond memories — I still have close friends from parts of Africa and Europe — and I would do it all over again.

“The expectations are just so much higher than what’s expected back home.”

EUROPEAN CLUBS CIRCLE

Patafta started playing football like many kids — alongside other sports including cricket and tennis.

But coaches soon started approaching his parents, Croatian-born father Zak and Laos-born mother Ramthone, to say the young playmaker had something a little different.

By 12 or 13 he was kicking countless balls against that living-room wall and perfecting his touch in every nook and cranny, the kind of obsessive training that propelled him straight into the Australian Institute of Sport and then for a trial with Swiss outfit Basel.

He was 15 then, and his determination to secure a contract meant inevitable deflation when he didn’t.

“I didn't really want to accept that, I was pretty devastated,” he says.

Patafta says he was devastated when he didn’t get a European contract.

“After the Under-17 World Cup they were another club that made an offer but we declined it in the end to go to Benfica.”

Benfica stumbled upon Patafta by accident soon later at the 2005 U17 World Cup in Peru, where he captained the Joeys’ first-round match against Turkey alongside Robbie Kruse, Matt Spiranovic and Nathan Burns — all his age and all of whom went on to play for the Socceroos.

“They had scouts there and the academy directors to watch some of the Turkish players,” Patafta says.

“They approached me and my family. It all originated from that match … at the time it was the best move for me out of the opportunities that presented themselves.”

PSV Eindhoven also circled through the Hiddink connection, soon after the Dutchman summoned Patafta to the Socceroos’ pre-World Cup camp in Germany, where the diminutive midfielder didn’t play but pulled out some impressive tricks in a scratch match alongside the likes of Kewell, Tim Cahill, Mark Viduka, Lucas Neill and the rest.

That was the peak for the barely known wunderkind managed by Jorge Mendes, the Portuguese agent representing Ronaldo, Jose Mourinho and David de Gea.

“I got a lot of advice from the players and coaching staff,” he recalls.

Patafta celebrates scoring his only A-League goal for the Newcastle Jets.

“Graham Arnold was always a big supporter when I was coming through the youth systems, and just to be under Guus was pretty significant for where I was at that time in my career.

“On a personal note though, Ange Postecoglou, before his days with Brisbane, was someone who probably played more of a role in terms of mentoring me in that period.”

The support wasn’t quite so forthcoming once he got to Portugal, in a time before WhatsApp and social media facilitated constant contact with family and friends and Netflix offered escape from his own thoughts.

“So the mind is constantly questioning what you're doing, and you’re at an age where all your friends are drifting away because you've gone on a different path,’’ Patafta says.

“That's a real test to see how you can cope on your own, you really grow as a character.

"It put me in good stead for the career I'm in now but was probably the toughest period, a good six months when no one talks to you and no one really wants you around, and you’re really fighting day in, day out to prove yourself.”

Patafta ended up as general manager of Lanexang United.

In search of more game time, and despite firm advice it would spell the end of his European career, Patafta secured a loan move to the A-League with Melbourne Victory.

After 14 appearances but only two starts under Ernie Merrick he joined the Newcastle Jets permanently.

A solitary goal over 33 appearances — mostly off the bench — in three forgettable seasons at the Jets, and coach Gary van Egmond lamented he’d “shown some good flashes but he is a bit of an enigma”.

ONE LAST SHOT

By 2010 Patafta was done with the top flight completely, and though he played subsequent stints with Canberra FC and Sydney United along with a handful of games in Southeast Asia, he views his last professional match as the Jets’ 2010 exhibition game against none other than Beckham's LA Galaxy.

Postecoglou was one who tried to stop him quitting.

“In my own mind it wasn't quitting,” Patafta counters.

“I was making a justified and rational decision to pursue a new career that was going to take me some time to achieve.

Patafta is now a lawyer working in Singapore.

“Trying to put myself in the best possible position for my future, because you really didn't have those support networks so you had to make the right decision for yourself at the time.

“I guess the biggest disappointment at that point, and I think it's just the reality of where we are as a nation, was that coming from almost being a player at the World Cup to then coming home, there was just no support systems and really you’re left on your own.

“One minute you’re identified and you’re in Germany and the next minute there’s no real nurturing, you’re sort of left your own devices. And you need that at that critical age of 16, 17, 18, 19 years old.

“Here they don’t start identifying players till they’re sort of 15, 16 … the biggest football nations are identifying players at 10 and really nurturing and building talent.

“It’s a different environment here. It’s very contradictory because they would rather talk about players like myself who didn’t move on or didn’t succeed — in whatever succeed means to people — as opposed to focusing on the nine, 10, 11-year-olds around the country that will be the next generation.’’

With his fiancee Rachel, Patafta says that despite his disappointments things have worked out OK.

Patafta studied law on the Gold Coast and worked in a graduate position in Sydney before heading to Asia in 2015.

At first it was to join Thai club Khon Kaen United for one last shot as a player, but he soon moved to Laos side Lanexang United where he became general manager.

There started his journey of practising law in Southeast Asia, and he’s now working for an Australian firm in Singapore, where he lives with his long-term partner and now fiancee Rachel, a dentist.

“To be honest, I’m quite thankful it panned out the way it did because I’m really passionate about and love what I do,” he says.

“I guess if things had worked out I wouldn't have been able to do this.

“I'm still passionate about football, it’s just not something I'm directly involved in … but you never know what the future holds.”