Former prodigy is running classes to help wannabe footballers develop skills and resilience, and says he is happy at last
On this spot of land, a couple of minutes off the M25 and surrounded by stables, Sonny Pike can see his past fade over the horizon while the future glistens more brightly than ever. It was a few metres from here, on a plot owned by his mother-in-law, that Pike lived in a mobile home during the early 2010s.
Life had been tough, sometimes nightmarish, for a long time but there was light in the form of his now-wife, Rosie, and the birth of their daughter. Freya’s arrival was, he says, “when I started pulling my finger out” and the period since has brought a journey he struggles to comprehend.