'We are not complainers,' says Manila Wisten. 'We do not want to be seen to be pointing fingers at football. But our boy died upstairs, while we were in the house. We're having to live with that.'
He is talking about his son, Jeremy Wisten, who was two weeks past his 18th birthday when released by Manchester City in May 2019 and never recovered. A boy known to his City academy team-mates as 'Ace' seemed a shadow of his former self. He took his own life in October 2020.
The inquest into his death, last November, felt like a moment when British football's talent factory — the recruitment of thousands of children, 70 per cent of whom never earn a professional contract — might have been examined in full.