After a whirlwind month, Garang Kuol’s feet are firmly on the ground

Garang Kuol’s head should be spinning. But it isn’t, or at least doesn’t seem to be. For a guy whose life has changed irrevocably during the past month - turning 18, making his Socceroos debut, rocketing himself into genuine World Cup contention, and signing with a Premier League club - he’s keeping it all together astoundingly well.

“I’m just taking it in my stride,” Kuol tells the Herald and The Age, a few days after returning home from his whirlwind journey to England, where he completed a medical and put pen to paper on a contract with Newcastle United that will soon make him one of Australia’s highest-paid footballers.

“It was a good trip. I met the people there, went to the city, saw the stadium - beautiful place. It was just enjoyable to meet the team, the coach. They’re all very honest people. I respected that a lot. They said, ‘There’s no guarantees. You’re going to pave your own path’ - stuff like that.”

It’ll be a while until Kuol pulls on Newcastle’s iconic black and white stripes and actually plays in the world’s most-watched league, where there has been a paucity of Australians in recent years. Kuol doesn’t qualify for a UK work permit so, when the transfer window reopens in January and his new deal takes effect, he’ll be loaned out to another team — probably in Portugal — to gain more experience.

Even then, as he was told, there are no guarantees in football, a sport where raw talent like his only gets you so far.

For now, though, his focus is on his final few months with the Central Coast Mariners, and using the first six weeks of the new A-League season - starting with Saturday’s F3 derby opener against the Newcastle Jets - to demonstrate that while he’s still a long, long way from where he needs to be, he can be an incredibly valuable bench weapon for Australia at the World Cup.

Garang Kuol’s signing for Newcastle United will take effect when the transfer window reopens in January.Credit: Getty

Yet to start a professional match at any level, Kuol has made it this far off the back of substitute appearances - but be it for the Mariners in the A-League or the Australia Cup, against Barcelona for the All-Stars, or for the Socceroos, he has dramatically changed almost every match he’s been involved in with his daring runs down the flank and clinical finishing ability. When he’s on or near the ball, defenders panic, and things just tend to happen.

“Garang has got weapons in his artillery that some of the best players in the world have,” says Mariners head coach Nick Montgomery. “You probably don’t see enough of it in this country - people that just play with freedom to attack and go one-v-one and take people on and score and assist.”

Born in Egypt, to parents who fled war-torn Sudan, Kuol and his family settled in Shepparton, a two-hour drive north of Melbourne, when they arrived in Australia as refugees. He is one of seven siblings, all boys - and four of them are either current or aspiring professional footballers. Alou, 21, is a former Mariners star now at German Bundesliga club VfB Stuttgart, while Teng, 19, a midfielder in the mould of Patrick Vieira, and Didi, 11 — another tricky winger who Garang rates as better than he was at the same age — are also in Central Coast’s academy system.

“Everyone has their own hunger to be the best in their age group,” says Alou. “Every time we step on the field, it’s just that hunger to do the best you can. Back in the day, we used to play our older cousins, older kids would join in, no matter the age - we could just tell who’s good enough to continue playing and who’s not.”

Were it not for the introduction of an NPL team in Shepparton, the Goulburn Valley Suns, in 2014, it’s possible the Kuols would have risen no higher than local football, and slipped through the cracks of the professional system. And were it not for the good grace of the local community, they definitely would have.

The Kuols, like so many families like them, simply couldn’t afford the exorbitant fees associated with NPL football. “$1600 for the four of us,” Garang recalls. “Crazy. It shouldn’t be like that.”

So the GV Suns, having quickly noted their freakish ability and the importance of honing it, would either waive the charges, or allow father Mawien and mother Antonita, who ran a dry cleaning business in Shepparton, to wash the club’s kits in lieu of payment.

“That was their way of contributing,” says Craig Carley, a former GV Suns player who also coached their under-14s when Alou first joined.

Garang Kuol holds off Barcelona’s Adama Traore in May’s friendly in Sydney.Credit: Getty

“It wasn’t just them as well - they would go to their church group and there’d be other young African players. While everyone else was in church, they’d be out the back playing football. They would just always be with a ball at their feet. It almost reminds me of the European mentality, with their desire to always be out, constantly learning and just have fun, basically.”

Still, Carley recalls having a hard time trying to get professional talent scouts to come out and have a look at them. The three Melbourne-based A-League clubs all took a look at Alou and passed, with Melbourne Victory deeming him to be “too raw”. Their loss has been Montgomery and the Mariners’ gain, having brought in a family that may yet have a profound impact on the Socceroos and the broader Australian game.

“We put a scouting system in place where I’ve got a lot of contacts, who send kids of potential,” Montgomery says.

“You don’t sign a kid who’s a finished product. We look for potential, and then a lot of hard work goes into them. When we first brought [Garang] in, he was 16, he didn’t understand the game. Didn’t understand football tactically. He was just this free spirit, playing at lower levels - going past three or four players and scoring was just normal for him.

Garang Kuol joined the Mariners’ set-up at 16.Credit: Peter Stoop

“His game lacked a lot of the defensive teamwork. That’s something that he’s learning now. You have to be the complete player to play at the top level. We’ve been harsh on him at times, and we’ve seen him grow. He’s still got a lot of growing to do. The main thing is just be humble, keep your feet on the ground and understand that without hard work and dedication, he won’t be where he is.”

There’s a lot of hours on the pitch and in the gym ahead for Garang, who knows he needs to build out his wiry frame and learn how to become a regular starter who can run out full matches - and then back up repeatedly - to cut it in the A-League, let alone the highest level.

“Monty and [assistant coach Sergio Raimundo] have been saying I just need to work on my body, become like a machine.” Kuol says. “In this modern day and age, players are machines. They can play 120 minutes with no issues and play two days later. That’s the difference between world-class players and all others. I’ve got to get myself in shape to that extent, and just work on everything.”

The motivation is there. His trip to Newcastle, and his week with the Socceroos, a team he idolised as a child, was a tantalising taste of what’s possible. “When I left, I was sort of gutted because I was like, ‘that ended very quick.’ I just wanted to be there for a while,” he says of his brief national team camp experience.

“I’m always grateful for what comes my way. What comes in the future, I’ll have to deal with that myself. I can’t really get carried away with anything that’s happening at the moment. And I’m very hard on myself to perform. I know when I’m performing or not performing. That’s what I’m mainly focused on - train well, play well, and hopefully make it to the World Cup.”

Watch every match of the UEFA Champions League, UEFA Europa League and UEFA Europa Conference League on Stan Sport. Continues with Matchday 4 from Wednesday, October 12.