VICTOR MOSES is the Premier League’s most remarkable star… an orphaned refugee who had to rebuild his life before he could follow his dream of becoming a professional footballer.
His emergence as Chelsea’s unlikely hero after switching from striker to wing-back is one of the stories of the season.
But it is nothing compared to his real-life tale, which includes having to cope with his parents’ murder when he was 11 and moving from Nigeria to England as an orphaned refugee.
This inspirational triumph over adversity also contains an amazing coincidence, as Moses was once coached by former Chelsea captain Colin Pates.
Pates, a sports teacher who helped mould Moses’ raw talent at Whitgift School in Croydon, says it is wonderful to see his former protege playing so superbly as Chelsea top the Premier League.
Pates said: “He’s having a fantastic season, is playing really well and it really suits him.
“I would never in a million years have said he would be a wing-back. You just didn’t think that was the role he would have taken up and enjoyed.
“But he has developed, he’s proved a lot of people wrong and it looks like he’s absolutely loving it to me.”
Moses, 25, was awarded Man of the Match in Chelsea’s 1-0 win at Middlesbrough.
Antonio Conte’s side have gone on a six-match winning run without conceding since Moses was given his first Premier League start of the season against Hull on October 1.
It is a new high-water mark in his remarkable career – a career, and life, that threatened to be over before it had even begun.
Moses was just 11 when his dad, Austin, a Christian pastor, and mother, Josephine, were attacked in their home and killed in 2002.
He was playing in the street when it happened, kicking a football made together with tightly-bound tape.
Religious riots between the Muslim majority and Christian minority divided Nigeria and Moses’ father, who had his own church, was a target.
Moses was hidden by his uncle for a week after the murder before he was flown to England for his own safety to seek asylum.
He arrived in South London and knew no one. He was placed with foster parents and joined his first team, Cosmos 90, after plucking up the courage to ask if he could play with them.
The Tandridge Youth side were called “the worst team in the league” but Moses, playing centre-half, bagged eight in his first game.
It was in football, ultimately, where he would find happiness, according to Blues hero Pates.
The former defender has been a coach at Whitgift for 20 years and taught Moses for three of them.
He was awestruck by the young lad’s talent and says that even with the personal devastation, this unknown sensation came alive with the ball at his feet.
Pates, 55, said: “That side of Victor’s life was kept private and he never really talked about it. It’s not my job to pry into something like that.
“But he was a happy-go-lucky lad and I’d like to think he enjoyed his time at the school, he seemed happy and he certainly enjoyed his football here.
“We gave him a free role and he used to go out and enjoy himself. I’d like to think he had a good time here.
“He was very popular with the academic teachers too and he progressed well in all his classes. The teachers had a lot of time for him.
“You’d have to ask him what his favourite lesson was – but I think it would have been football! He was happy.
“The school had all the details about what happened to his parents and Crystal Palace, who he signed for, would have too.”
But all that is not to say Moses was immune from a rollicking on the three times a week he would pass under Pates’ watchful gaze.
Pates remembers one telling-off in particular.
He said: “Victor never had a tendency to be lazy but let’s just say you had to encourage him sometimes.
“At half-time I was having a go at him about working harder. Then my coach John Humphrey, who used to be at Charlton and was with him me at Whitgift at the time, I could hear him behind me sniggering.
“I turned round and said: ‘Look, you can’t laugh when I’m giving a team talk here’.
“And he said: ‘Yeah… but he has scored six goals and you’re telling him to work harder!’
“But the thing was, Victor was the type who would work hard when he had the ball.
“Now he’s developed a good work ethic but at school he worked a lot harder when he had the ball than when he didn’t.”
Then there was the infamous celebration.
Moses pulled off his trademark backflip after scoring in the 3-0 rout of champions Leicester last month.
And Pates, who saw it countless times at Whitgift, could be forgiven for wincing at its sight once more.
He said: “He used to do a somersault and we had to tell him not to do it because a couple of times he didn’t land too well.
“But he kept doing it. He had that little bit of defiance in him.
“Sometimes Victor did things you didn’t want but you can’t have a go at him for it because he’s actually been successful.
“I’ve got a picture of him upside-down on one of our pitches when he was 14. He was doing it for years.
“We told him to rein it in a bit and take it easy because his fitness was so important and there were times when he did those flips and I thought, ‘If he lands on that ankle…’, especially on some of the pitches we played on.
“At Stamford Bridge now it’s a little bit different.
“There was a worry about serious damage because it was our job to make sure he didn’t do it. It was dangerous.
“But at the end of the day playing football’s dangerous and you can easily get injured.”
Flashes of brilliance were not one-offs. Moses scored seven on his debut for Whitgift. In his fourth match he pinged one in from the half-way line.
That came after a telling-off from Pates, too. Not that he minded though.
Pates said: “I had no clue what to do after that because I’d never seen a kid do that before.
“He made a great impact in and around the school. He was such a good football player he became an icon in that year group.
“I’ve been here 20 years and have never seen the likes of him before or since.
“Whatever standard he played, he could step up and match it. Even when he was 16 and playing in our Under-18s, he stepped up.
“He constantly needed a challenge and sometimes you just couldn’t give it to him because he was that far ahead of everyone else.
“He became a hero in the school. We won a few national and county cups and he was scoring the goals.
“We won the FA Youth Cup in 2005, we won 5-0… and he scored all five. He was an icon.”
Moses was signed by Crystal Palace and a first-team debut at 16 followed, then call-ups by England at every youth level.
He won the Africa Cup of Nations with Nigeria in 2013.
In a familiar story for promising Chelsea youngsters, loan spells at Liverpool, Stoke and West Ham followed and there was a fear this star no longer shone.
But the road eventually led back to Chelsea – and Pates is not surprised in the slightest that his former pupil has gone from outcast to “revelation”.
Moses, who speaks with a South London accent, said after last night’s win: “I’ve been on loan three times but we’ve got a good manager who wants to give the youngsters the opportunity to express themselves and I’m doing that.
“I just want to keep improving in every game.”
Pates is sure he will because he always knew it would take something big to hold back a talent as huge as Moses’.
He said: “It was a pleasure to watch him play. I remember just sitting back and watching him play so well.
“He’s just an exceptional player and he was when he was younger.
“You look back and think, ‘If this boy doesn’t make I’d be very surprised’.
“You would never tell a young lad he was going to make it but secretly I always looked at Victor and thought it would take a lot for him not to make it.
“He was unbelievable.”
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