The latest episode of the A-Leagues’ new podcast My Football Passport, hosted by James Dodd, welcomes special guest Adam Federici to discuss his unique pathway into professional football, going from trial to trial in Europe and suffering his fair share of hard knocks which helped to mould the former Socceroos custodian’s successful career.
Adam Federici appeared more than 280 times in the Premier League and Championship throughout his decorated career, amassing 16 Socceroos caps along the way – but before it all began, he was a kid sleeping on floors in Europe, refusing to give up on a dream, with a single suitcase in tow.
Not to mention the DVD’s.
Copies of his personal highlight reel were sent along with his goalkeeping resume to clubs “everywhere in the world”, with the help of his dad back home in Australia as Federici went from club to club, following the whiff of any opportunities to show his wares.
It all began out of the Australian Institute of Sport, where the young goalkeeper emerged with a single invitation abroad from which his European journey began.
“I basically went over there with one trial lined up,” Federici told James Dodd as the guest on this week’s episode of My Football Passport.
“I had a load of DVD’s and a load of resumes I sent to loads of clubs, and basically was just going from club to club looking for any sort of opportunity – and I didn’t do that for a few months, I did it for quite a few years.
“For the most part I was on my own. You ring home… and your parents are like: ‘Maybe you should come home’, but in my eyes there was nothing to come home to.
“I wanted this as a career, I wanted it as a job, I wanted to be full-time, so coming home for me wasn’t an option.
“(At) many clubs I turned up with this big suitcase. I had a two-week trial and they’d be like: ‘Why have you got a suitcase?’ And I’d be like: ‘Well, I’m not going home, this is my suitcase’. So the suitcase for me was a bit of, I don’t know the word for it, but it’s something that will always be in my memory, that bloody suitcase I had for such a long time.
“But I was just adamant I wasn’t going to come home, regardless of what that looked like, how bad it got – and it did get pretty bad, as you could imagine. A young kid in Europe, no money and floating about from club to club, I did that around Italy as well, and yeah, it was definitely character building I’d say, if anything. That’s probably a good way to frame it.”
The record shows Federici spent a season at Italian club Societa di Educazione Fisica Torres 1903 (Torres) in 2003-04. But looking back on his stay at the Italian club, at “a long term trial” with no pay, living with lots of different kids from different backgrounds in the same room, and without much running water, Federici says his Torres stay can hardly be counted as a step in his professional career.
It was on a subsequent trial at Welsh club Cardiff City when he first saw a genuine glimpse at first-team football – but not with the Bluebirds. There was no opportunity to rise up the pecking order there; that much was clear – but the realisation of that fact helped him find an opportunity at another club where he was to go on and make his biggest impact.
“I did go back to England, I was at Leeds for a bit and some other places but I was at Cardiff at the time, and I saw the lineup at Cardiff: they had three first team goalkeepers – and they really liked me – but I just didn’t see a way in there, basically,” Federici said.
“I looked at Reading’s squad and they only had two first team keepers… I just thought: ‘Why haven’t they got more?’ It just seemed like a good opportunity.
“I did get the opportunity to go there. I got put up in digs there which was nice considering some of the other places I stayed, I trialled for a long period of time.
“I think I went there halfway through one of the seasons before they got promoted, and they sent me away and said no, basically.
“I was devastated… I remember walking out of that office, and that was after such a long time of being so close to getting your foot in the door, just to unpack a suitcase, that was a real kick in the teeth, really. I still feel that rejection (from) that time, because I thought I was pretty close.
“What happened then, I started applying for jobs, I was sleeping on someone’s floor, and basically one of the other goalkeepers had a court case which meant he was going to be not available for a period of time. Because they did like me, and how I trained and that sort of stuff, they called me first. I obviously jumped at the opportunity to go back there.
“The rest is sort of history, once I got my foot in the door, that feeling of being able to unpack my suitcase was one of the best feelings ever.”
Federici would stay at the club for the following decade, playing a key role in Reading’s promotion from the Championship to the Premier League in 2006-07. He would go on to sign for Premier League outfit Bournemouth in 2015, before joining Stoke City in the Championship and finishing his career in the Isuzu UTE A-League, playing his first professional fixture on home soil for Macarthur FC in 2020-21.
Through it all, Federici remembered everything he experienced as a teenager with a dream, travelling without direction around Europe in hope of turning that dream into a reality.
His days of printing out resumes, burning DVD’s and posting them to all four corners of the globe, trialling without pay at sceptical clubs whilst calling in favours to claim real estate on the living room floors of anyone who would take him in are long gone. But those formative memories are what kept the fire burning white hot in the good times that followed.
“I didn’t want to lose the spot (at Reading), so it meant the world to me,” Federici said. “I felt like it meant a lot more to me than the rest of the squad, because they all got to go home and I was still sleeping on someone’s floor.
“There was so much for me to gain and also so much for me to lose. So that’s how I treated it. I probably look back now and think geez, I took it seriously, but that’s what it felt like to me: the difference between eating and not, almost.
“Once I did get into the team, and once I did get the first team place, I used to feel bad about buying a new car or something, because it could go wrong the next year, or the next time, or I might not get a new contract and I’d be back where I started, so I always had that drive.
Federici added: “It was very different for other players. I remember having conversations when I’d played 100 games, and I remember one of the younger lads saying: ‘Oh, you’ve made it!’ And I said: ‘No, I’m nowhere near making it’. And that’s how I felt, like every day I had to be. Unbelievable in training, I had to be not just a seven out of 10 but a 10 out of 10.
“To a certain extent, I think when you go to Australia anyway and you play in these leagues, people do turn their nose up at Australians in general. So you always have to work harder than everyone else anyway, and always have to play a little bit better to keep your spot. But I just felt I had to do even more, because I didn’t come from the academies all the players around me did.
“Overall, such good memories and bonds from that team, but I just felt it meant so much to me, just from the route I took to get there, basically.”
