Neil Finn (soccer player)

Neil Finn
Personnel
Surname	Neil Edward Finn
birthday	December 29, 1978
place of birth	Barking ,  England
position	goal
Juniors
Years	station
until 1998	West Ham United
Men's
Years	station	Games (goals) 1
1996	West Ham United	1 (0)
1998	→  Dorchester Town  (loan)
1998	Barnet FC
1998	Aldershot Town	0 (0)
	Harrow Borough
2004-2010	Romford FC	126 (0)
1 Only league games are given.

Neil Finn (born December 29, 1978 in Barking , London ) is a former English football goalkeeper. Finn became the youngest player in the history of the Premier League with his use on New Year's Day 1996, but did not come to any other professional use afterwards.

Career

Neil Finn was a goalkeeper at West Ham United's youth academy when he left on New Years Day 1996, just three days after his 17th birthday and with the experience of 3 reserve games, because of the failures of the two regular goalkeepers on the professional team ( Luděk Mikloško was suspended, Les Sealey injured) debuted in the first team in the away game against Manchester City and became the youngest player in the history of the Premier League . The 2-1 defeat was his only competitive game for West Ham, with the youth team at the end of the season at the side of Rio Ferdinand and Frank Lampard in the final of the FA Youth Cup , which they lost to Liverpool . While he was the youngest ever player in the English elite class to be replaced by Mark Platts a month later , until today (as of May 2018) no goalkeeper was younger than Finn on his Premier League debut.

In March 1998 he was loaned to Dorchester Town before leaving West Ham at the end of the season. As a result, he came to Aldershot Town via Barnet FC , where he played three cup games in late 1998 without a contract, and then moved on to Harrow Borough . After a break of several years, he joined the amateur club FC Romford in the summer of 2004 , for which he played 199 competitive games over the next six years, 104 of them in the Essex Senior League and 22 in the Isthmian League . In the summer of 2010 he took over the post of goalkeeping coach at Romford, which he gave up in the following years due to family obligations.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Barry J. Hugman (Ed.): The 1996-97 Official PFA Footballers' Factfile . Queen Anne Press, Harpenden 1996, ISBN 1-85291-571-4 , pp. 85 .
2. ^ Neil Finn in the barryhugmansfootballers.com database. Retrieved August 16, 2020.
3. ^ Tony Hogg, Who's Who of West Ham United . Profile Sports Media, London 2005, ISBN 1-903135-50-8 , pp. 82 .
4. ↑ independent.co.uk: Football: Yesterday's deadline-day deals (March 27, 1998)
5. ↑ shotsweb.co.uk: SEASON 1998/1999 - Every competitive game ( Memento of the original from October 9, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
6. ↑ shotsweb.co.uk: SEASON 1998/1999 - The Players ( Memento of the original from February 22, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
7. ↑ romfordfcarchive.co.uk: 372. Neil Finn , accessed on 29 June 2018
8. ↑ theshots.co.uk: Ex-Player News (June 18, 2010)  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.