Black History Month Players: John Carew
As October is Black History Month in the UK, I will spend this month publishing threads on X (formerly Twitter) on certain players who have been part of a long and distinguished line of Black representation at West Ham United. With this being the second year I have undertaken this exercise, I thought it would be fair to publish a blog post for those who don't have X or find threads on the platform difficult to read. Feel free to read last year's threads, via this link, but this post and today's thread on X is on John Carew.
Born in Lørenskog, just outside of Norway’s capital Oslo in 1979 to a Gambian father & Norwegian mother, Carew grew up like many young Norwegian boys playing football, with Carew joining the youth team of his local side, Lørenskog, who signed Carew on a youth team contract at 15. Around the same time, Carew began his international career when he played for Norway’s under-15s team, rapidly rising through the age groups in the space of a couple of years between 1995-1997 as his youth career was progressing with Lørenskog.
By 1997, Carew was already playing for the Norwegian under-21 team and progressing well with Lørenskog, which caught the attention of Vålerenga in nearby Oslo, who offered Carew his first professional contract and his debut that year.
Carew would play for Vålerenga for 2 years, making 58 appearances and scoring 30 goals, with his first season with the club resulting in promotion back to the Eliteserien, the top division of Norwegian football & winning the Norwegian Cup.
During his time with Vålerenga, Carew would also make his international debut for Norway in November 1998 and in doing so, made history in becoming the first black player to represent Norway. Carew would go on to represent Norway 91 times in his career, scoring 24 goals.
But back to his club career, Carew’s form at Vålerenga earned him the attention of Norway’s biggest club Rosenborg, who paid 23 million Norwegian Kroner (about £1.7 million) for him. In his 2 seasons with Rosenborg (Norway plays football in the spring due to the heavy winters), Carew would score 24 goals in 31 appearances & also impressed in the champions league, gaining interest from big European clubs such as Spanish side Valencia, who signed him in 2000.
Paying €8.5 million for Carew, expectations were high and in his first 2 seasons, Carew managed them well, helping Valencia win a runners-up medal in the 2001 Champions League & winning La Liga in 2002, spending a total of 4 years with the club, scoring 28 goals in 128 games.
However, after falling out of favour at Valencia or due to an incident on international duty with Norway in 2002 which he punched John Arne Riise in an argument (not the only former West Ham striker to attack Riise either), Carew was sent on loan to Italian side Roma in 2003. Scoring 6 goals in 20 games in the Italian capital with Roma, Carew would then leave Valencia permanently in 2004 to join Turkish side Besiktas, where in his sole season with the club, he scored 14 goals in 28 appearances, resulting in an average of one goal every 2 games.
With Carew in such prolific form, he was signed by French side Lyon in 2005, who were in the midst of a run that saw the club win 7 consecutive Ligue 1 titles between 2002 and 2008, which saw Carew win two consecutive Ligue 1 titles in his time with the club. In his time with Lyon, Carew made 53 appearances, scoring 17 goals before leaving in January 2007, moving to the Premier League with Aston Villa in a swap deal that saw Milan Baros heading in the other direction.
Carew would have a slow start to his Villa career, only scoring 3 goals in 11 appearances in that first half-season with the club. However, after this slow start, Carew would show his quality, scoring more than 10 goals in the following 3 seasons under manager Martin O’Neill. By 2010, Carew found himself out of favour at Villa under a new manager Gerard Houllier, who had replaced Martin O’Neill, who had always favoured Carew & found his fitness levels were called into question by his new manager. A subsequent falling out saw Carew go on loan to Stoke. Carew would spend half a season with Stoke, earning a FA cup runners up medal during his time before being released by Villa scoring 48 goals in 131 appearances for the Villians in 4 and a half years with the club.
In the summer of 2011, Carew would join West Ham, who would end up being the last club of Carew’s career, only scoring 2 goals in 21 games for the Hammers before being released after a single season with the club. Carew was offered opportunities to carry on playing with his old club Vålrenga, but demanded too much money & Inter Milan, but a trail period with the Italian giants in 2013 never went any further due to concerns over his fitness. Carew announced his retirement later that year.
Since retiring, Carew has kept busy, beginning an acting career in both Norway & even made it to Hollywood, where he appeared in the 2nd Maleficent film alongside Angelina Jolie, with evidence of this below.
Additionally, due to his Christian upbringing, Carew has undertaken lots of charity work as well, donating sizeable amounts of money as well working with many youth projects and was well known to visit children’s hospitals during his time with Aston Villa.
However, despite all of his good work with charity, Carew isn’t complete free of sin. In 2020, he was arrested for tax evasion and defrauding the Norwegian government to the tune of 5.4 million Norwegian Kroner, which is about £400,000, which he blamed on his former agent. The main concern surrounding this tax evasion involved where Carew lived, with Carew claiming he did not live in Norway that much, whereas bank records showed he was in Norway enough that he was liable to pay taxes. Carew pleaded guilty once his case went to trail last year. As a consequence, Carew was jailed for 14 months and was required to pay back the owed tax in addition to a £45,000 fine. As part of his rehab whilst in prison, Carew has been working with the Norwegian FA in its youth programmes, wearing a ankle tag during training.
Despite this poor latest act in his life, Carew has shown his heart is in the right place and hopefully, he can be recognised for his good contributions to society, which will obviously be further aided if Carew has learnt his lesson and pays his taxes going forward.
Thanks for reading today's thread.
My sources today were:
And this article (which requires translation) about Carew’s recent work with the Norwegian FA during his prison sentence:
Comments
Post a Comment