Welcome to episode one of "Up & Coming," a brand-new series that takes you behind the scenes to discover the brightest talents emerging from the West Ham United Academy! In this episode we shine the spotlight on the promising young talent & Northern Ireland International, Callum Marshall...
Callum Marshall’s route to senior debuts for West Ham United and Northern Ireland began years before he moved to London in January 2022. His love for the game emerged just outside Belfast, in the County Antrim town of Glengormley, to be precise.
There, Marshall spent weekends and evenings in local parks with his Dad, Ciaran. Kick-ups, shooting, stepovers, the lot. If he had a ball, his parents could relax. Young Callum was obsessed with football.
It was from here that Ciaran started to take his son to a local team, Bangor Rangers. And from the off, it became clear that Marshall had a knack for scoring goals, often finding the net against kids three or four years his senior.
“When you're a kid, all you cared about was scoring,” Marshall laughs. “Sometimes, I'd get annoyed if I scored just one! If we lost it was even worse… your weekend’s ruined!”
Progressing through the age groups after joining Belfast club Glentoran, aged seven, and attending Club NI – now the JD IFA (Irish Football Association) Academy – too, Marshall trained sometimes up to six times a week as a schoolboy. He then signed scholarship terms with Linfield, aged 15.
What followed was a transition to men’s football and the NIFL Premiership, a challenge the striker would take in his stride.
“I loved it because it was senior training,” Marshall explains. “It was a fun period in my life. You work towards the end of the fifth year (Year 11 in England) and that’s when you’d go to England [for trials with professional clubs]. I’d thought I'd missed that boat because a few things fell through.”
Attacking his scholarship over the next year, Marshall impressed Northern Ireland’s record goalscorer and his Linfield manager David Healy. He left a mark, despite only featuring on four occasions for the senior team.
“Callum was a natural goalscorer,” Healy states, sitting down after a training session in the shadow of Windsor Park last October. “As a younger player, it is hard to point to where his capabilities lie but with the attitude Callum has already shown... who knows where his ceiling will be?”
With a dream of moving across the Irish Sea still on his mind, goals for Linfield Reserves scripted his next step – a move to east London. One of West Ham’s scouts, Scott Boyd, had watched Marshall score a ‘perfect’ hat-trick and had seen enough. He recommended the youngster to then-Academy Manager Ricky Martin.
Boyd was, and is still, a good friend of Ciaran, and had been following his son’s career for years. Both always knew Marshall could make the move to England. Now, they had evidence.
“Callum was at West Ham for five days,” says Boyd, picking up the story of Marshall’s trial in December 2021. "I’m still hearing that he gave the perfect trial.”
Marshall smiles when he hears Boyd’s words at a later date. “They were my best two sessions since I've been here!" the former Linfield youth jokes. "My Dad was emotional when I told him West Ham wanted me. I felt like I had secured my future because I wanted to go to England so much! I also felt like I had paid him back for that support.”
What followed has been some journey at West Ham, where the last two years have been a blur. Not Boyd, not Healy, and not even Marshall could predict his success at the Academy of Football since signing a scholarship contract in January 2022.
Playing in a group of outstanding youngsters, Marshall and his fellow U18s triumphed, securing an FA Youth Cup and U18 Premier League South double in 2022/23.
A first professional contract followed, one extended until June 2027 in January, ahead of a loan to EFL Championship club West Bromwich Albion.
The current campaign has brought more of the same. Marshall scored 16 goals in ten Premier League 2 games and was nominated for four PL2 Player of the Month awards and won two, earning his temporary transfer to The Hawthorns. Club success was just the sub-plot, though.
Last October, the 19-year-old returned to Windsor Park, a stadium where he was a ballboy, alongside U21s teammates Patrick Kelly and Michael Forbes, almost a decade ago, to make his first Northern Ireland appearance on home turf.
His first touches in his country’s stadium will live long in the memory, although his night in Denmark, four months previously, will always be a story for Marshall to tell.
Drafted into the international set-up following a three-week training camp across youth and senior sides in June 2023, Marshall would cap his first full season at West Ham with an unforgettable senior debut for his country in Copenhagen.
Trailing 1-0 going into added-time, Marshall hooked home what he, his teammates and the travelling fans celebrated what they believed was a dramatic equaliser that was… then wasn’t. The shooting script was some story. The director’s cut, even better.
“We couldn't believe what happened,” Marshall smiles ruefully, on the historic ‘goal’ he saw ruled out after a seven-minute review. “I mean, that was my first time playing with VAR and it stitched me up!”
Watching on from the TV studios as a pundit that night, Healy agreed that Marshall can learn a lot from that moment. “He would have just felt pure elation,” the former Fulham striker sympathises. “It would have deflated him after, but you see with the goal and the excitement he knows how much it means to play for Northern Ireland.
“If he continues on the path that he is on at the minute, the progress he is on, there will be many more caps and hopefully, he can be one of those players that Michael O’Neill and everyone in Northern Ireland are crying out for at the minute.”
Marshall is certainly well-set for more dramatic moments but as he found out in one seven-minute wait, the margins in senior football are thin.
Throughout the last six months, Sporting Director Mark Noble and Academy Manager Kenny Brown have made that clear. To maximise their potential, the young professionals to sign new contracts – George Earthy, Kaelan Casey, Forbes, Kelly and Marshall – must keep that same work ethic. The player forges his own path. The Club is there to support.
Back in Northern Ireland, Healy agrees. “Callum has to keep pushing on because there is still a long way to go. I have no doubt he will develop with the help of the coaches at West Ham, but he will need a bit of luck to break along the way too. Everyone does.”
But what about the player himself? Marshall admits this has all been a bit crazy. After all, three years ago, he was on the bench in the NIFL Premiership – this coming weekend, he could debut for West Brom in England’s second tier in a West Midlands derby against Birmingham City.
Marshall, though, sings from a similar hymn sheet to those watching him closely – and is realistic about how difficult this next step will be. He knows he has a great opportunity to establish himself as a senior professional at West Ham but is aware he cannot call himself one just yet.
He can’t expect it to happen overnight, but it is clear Marshall has given himself some chance. Work at West Ham – and in Northern Ireland – has got him here and ready to script the next chapter.
How it reads? Who knows. But Marshall is ready to turn the page.
