[Ska'dForLife-WBA]

The decent human being in me feels sorry for him ...... he came from nothing, father killed, fled for his life, given chance in Blighty, does well, gets academy place with a family club, a decent club, career goes from strength to strength, verge of playing for your adopted countries first team, greedy football money men and unscrupulous chairman of a sly underhand club set about unsettling him, leaking stories of moves, big money wages etc etc, head gets turned, who wouldn't, we all would feel the same, unscrupulous club then make their move in an under valued attempt, have turned his head try to bully his employers to let him go cheap .... Albion stand firm, deal does not go thorough and his head is all messed up, dreams smashed, goes off the rails, can't get back on them.

I feel sorry for him for the things that happened in the first ten words of your description. The rest of it? Nah. What happened to Saido is not having your "dreams smashed". Being told you have to play professional football for West Bromwich Albion instead of Tottenham Hotspur is the very definition of a first world problem (and then some).

In last year's documentary, Adrian Chiles interviewed an ex-Albion player from the Regis era who had his career finished by a knee injury before it even began, went to work on the bins and struggled with alcoholism. *That's* having your dreams smashed. For more recent and less drastic examples, you have to wonder how the likes of Romaine Sawyers and Kemar Roofe felt when they were told they weren't good enough for the Prem and got sold down the leagues. But they worked hard and have built themselves respectable careers in spite of the disappointment.

Saido's troubles are, at this stage, 90% of his own making.