IF GRIMSBY fans are looking for someone to strike the right notes in their promotion push next term, then Paul Hurst has made the perfect signing in Aristote Nsiala – the Piano Man of Conference football.
The 22-year-old has an impressive, if somewhat diverse, CV with three years at Premier League giants Everton enveloping loans at Macclesfield and Accrington Stanley, a League Two club he joined permanently in 2012.
Family problems led to his exit and time out from the game, before he returned early last season at Vietnamese club TDCS Dong Thap, then returned home to end it in impressive style with Southport.
Throw in a full cap for the Democratic Republic of Congo, the country in which he was born before moving to Paris, aged three, then Toxteth, Liverpool at ten years old, and you’ve got a young man who’s pretty much experienced as much as a Conference footballer can expect to have.
And that is all the more remarkable since he did not start playing the game until seven years ago.
“I only started playing football when I was 15,” says Nsiala, nicknamed Toto. “I was doing music, playing the piano quite seriously, and then I just started playing football when I moved school. I had a few friends that played, and I just wanted to join them.
“I’d tried football when I was 13. One of my cousins invited me to his training with his Sunday team, Kingsley United, and I had the p*** taken out of me. I got megged every time someone came near me, and I went home crying that day – never played again until I was 15.
Nsiala would eventually end up going back to Kingsley and proving his tormentors wrong, not to mention making a few people take note on a much bigger stage.
“At that age I just fell in love with the game,” says Nsiala. “I was playing every night, non-stop just on the astro with the boys, and I think I just got better through that.
“My PE teacher sent me for a trial with Liverpool schoolboys with three or four of the boys, but we never thought anything would come of it.
“A guy called Phil Cannon, who was Everton’s head of schoolboy recruitment and is now at Blackburn, was watching. This was on a Wednesday and I went to school on the Thursday and my teacher told me to ring this number, which was Phil’s.
“I didn’t know which club he was at, but he told me to meet him on the Saturday morning. I got in his car and he gave me a tracksuit. Everton Under-16s had a game against Crewe that day.
“We met on the motorway, he put me on the coach and I ended up playing my first game for Everton – I was just thrown into it about a year or so after I first started playing.”
Nsiala was soon making a name for himself at Goodison. “From that game, I then played against Blackburn and did OK,” says Nsiala.
“Then against Manchester United they put me against John Cofie, just after they’d bought him for a fee that could have risen to around £1m if he’d done well. I marked him out of the game and from there Everton gave me a scholarship, then a year’s pro.”
He was good enough to make David Moyes’ bench for a Europa League tie against BATE Borisov in 2009 before his loans in League Two with Macc and Accrington, where he first came across John Coleman, the manager who brought him back to English football last January.
“I took a year out of football, just to get myself right mentally,” said Nsiala of his January 2012 exit from Stanley. “I had family problems, and I had an Australian agent who was suggesting I go down the Vietnamese route. I’ve got a cousin living in China, so I thought I’d go and tie in some travelling with a bit of football.
“It was a holiday trip at first, but I got talking to some people about this massive club in Hanoi, the capital. They were getting 10-20,000 fans at the games, and I played four or five, but I decided to come back.
“I couldn’t survive the lifestyle out there, it was too much, but it served its purpose in getting me ready to come back and play once John had got the Southport job. I had to wait a while for the international clearance, but was ready to go straight into the side.”
Two of the most impressive of his 19 Conference appearances came against Grimsby, helping the Sandgrounders take four points from the play-off qualifiers.
It was form that stuck in Hurst’s mind as he sets about going that step further next term.
“We had those two matches, but I think a few of the fans watched the game against Forest Green on telly as well, because I had a few messages from them on twitter,” says Nsiala, who rejected approaches from Football League clubs – including League One Port Vale.
“They rang me on Tuesday, and I said ‘It’s too late now, I’ve already signed for Grimsby’. I actually signed on Monday.
“The reason I’ve signed here is because I want to get a promotion under my belt. I’ve always felt it looks good on your CV and it’s not about the money for me, I just want to get that promotion.
“I think Grimsby are going to do it, so I might as well do that for a year and make sure they go up.”
He might play the piano much these days, but striking notes like that will be sweet music to all Mariners!
