Split Loyalties - Part One: The Brothers

Hugh

Hugh Capulet had been completely obsessed with football for as long as he – or anyone else for that matter – could remember.

From the very moment that Hugh had taken his first unsteady steps at just over ten-months old, a ball had rarely been far from his feet. As a baby, he would simply refuse point blank to fall asleep unless a football was first placed in his cot, while few, if any, childhood photos of Hugh exist in which he’s not either kicking or dribbling a ball.

In fact, there’s probably more chance of seeing a photo of the Loch Ness Monster and Bigfoot sitting together whilst enjoying a quiet cup of tea on the lawns of Buckingham Palace, than there is of seeing a picture of an adolescent Hugh without a ball somewhere near his feet.

Given the extent of his obsession, it’s probably not all that surprising to learn that Hugh began to exhibit a talent for football before he was even out of nappies. He was as comfortable dribbling a ball as most babies are dribbling their dinner down their clothes.

By the age of nine, Hugh had been selected for League One Portland Town’s Academy team and on his seventeenth birthday he signed his first professional contract with the same club, having won the team’s player of the year award every season since first joining the academy.

It didn’t take long for Premier League scouts to recognise Hugh’s obvious potential. While still a teenager he signed his first multi-million-pound contract with the newly-crowned league champions, Lexington Albion – England’s most successful football team.

Since then, a raft of individual and team honours had come his way. And he’d become a regular for the Italian national team. Yet, in spite of all the trophies that he’d won, the fan adulation he’d received, and the massive amounts of money that he’d earned in the seven years since first signing for Lexington, it was still a love of football, rather than any other associated reward, that made him tick.

Each and every time he stepped onto a pitch, he still received the exact same buzz that he’d experienced before playing his very first match as a six-year-old for the Ashgate Athletic under 7s. His heart beat would start to race and a nervous shiver of excitement would run up-and-down the entire length of his spine, before an involuntary beaming smile would break out across his face.

For years he had tended to be the first player to arrive at Lexington’s luxurious Middleton training complex every single day, and more often than not he would be the last to leave, too.

And when he wasn’t playing in a match or at training, the chances were that he was either watching a match on the TV, or playing one of his many football-related console games.

Yes, it’s fair to say that Hugh Capulet had been completely obsessed with football for a very, very long time.

Until now.

There was just one day remaining before Hugh was due to meet up with his Italian teammates ahead of boarding a plane to travel to Brazil for the World Cup and Hugh should have been buzzing with excitement. This was due to be his first major international tournament, having picked up a tournament-ending knee injury on the eve of the European Championships two years earlier.

Feeling fit and healthy, and having just had the best season of his career with Lexington, he should have been as excited as a hyperactive four-year-old on Christmas Eve at the prospect of representing his beloved Italia in the biggest football tournament of all.

Instead, he was absolutely dreading it.

And it was all his family’s fault.

 

Family ties

There can be little doubt that Hugh’s devotion to football was passed on to him by his Italian grandparents from his father’s side of the family.

From the moment he was born, Nonno (grandpa) and Nona (grandma) Capulet had simply doted on baby Hugh. They had insisted almost instantly upon looking after him full-time during the week, so that his Mum could return to work. Even though she hadn’t really wanted to.

Rather than letting him watch cartoons and play with cuddly toys, like most infants, Nonno and Nona only let their beloved grandson play with balls, while football on the television formed a near constant backdrop to Hugh’s formative years.

Not that he seemed to mind.

By the time of his first birthday, Hugh had little interest in anything that wasn’t round and didn’t roll. The only way his parents were able to soothe his regular screaming fits was by putting football on the TV.  No sooner did Hugh hear the commentator’s soothing voice, or the excited roar of the crowd, did his tantrums subside and he would quickly transform into the most docile baby there ever was.

The love that Hugh held for his Italian grandparents was clear for all to see... much to the annoyance of his English grandparents on his mother’s side of the family.

Nana and Gramps Sampson soon became jealous of the amount of time that their grandson spent with the Italian side of the family; a jealously that only increased once Hugh learned to speak and then spent practically the entire time talking about Nonno and Nona... and football, of course.

Therefore, when Hugh’s brother Monty was born just over four years after him, Nana and Gramps made sure that this time it would be they who would be the ones to look after the newborn. Once again practically forcing the boy’s poor mother into a far earlier than planned return to work.

In the years that followed, tensions between the Sampson and Capulet grandparents intensified. Just as Nana and Gramps had resented the amount of time that Nonno and Nona had spent with Hugh, so too did the Italian grandparents start to begrudge Monty being hogged by the English relatives.

Family gatherings soon started to resemble battle grounds rather than the happy occasions they should have been, as both sets of grandparents constantly competed for the attention of their grandchildren. It was as if they felt a prize would be awarded for buying the best – or more likely most expensive – present.

Such gatherings would often see both sets of grandparents boasting of exactly how much they’d spent on the children, and on more than one occasion the day ended with Nonno, Nona, Nana and Gramps all sat around the dining-room table angrily comparing receipts.  

As the years rolled by, the situation became so bad that Hugh and Monty’s parents decided to do everything they could to keep the two sides of the family separate at all times. Naturally, by request, Hugh still tended to spend more time with Nonno and Nona, while Monty continued to see more of Nana and Gramps.

However, in spite of the ongoing rivalry between the Italian and English members of Hugh and Monty’s extended family, the love that the two brothers held for each other was, and always had been, clear for all to see.

Yet it was a combination of the love that Hugh felt for Monty and the disdain that the English and Italian grandparents had for each other, that was now threatening to extinguish Hugh’s passion for football and ruin his World Cup dream.

 

Monty

Hugh and Monty had always been close.

When Monty was still only a babe-in-arms, Hugh would spend hours upon hours each week showing his younger sibling all the latest football tricks that he’d learned from Nonno. He would then spend a considerable amount of time urging his baby brother to try them himself. The fact that Monty could barely stand at this point, let alone walk, didn’t seem to deter Hugh from what he felt was his duty as the older brother; to get Monty interested in football.

Somewhat inevitably, his attempts were successful.

Although it was hard for any child to be as obsessed with football as Hugh had been, Monty gave it a jolly good go. It was little surprise to the Capulet parents, or anyone else, when their youngest son also started to show a talent for the sport at a fairly young age.

However, whereas Hugh had always been able to dribble a ball as though it was attached to his feet by a piece of string, Monty instead showed more of an aptitude for defending – particularly tackling.

Today, there’s little Monty Capulet likes more than a hard, but fair, crunching slide tackle which leaves his opponent sprawled on the floor wondering what had happened to the ball that had been so safely in his possession only seconds earlier.

Monty’s love for tackling undoubtedly developed from a sheer desire to actually get a kick of the ball in garden kickabouts with his elder brother. During these kickabouts, Hugh would often use his sibling as a guinea pig to try out new skills, safe in the knowledge that Monty would be far less likely to clatter into him than a boy his own age would be.

This often led to poor Monty spending most of the game doing little more than chasing Hugh’s shadow around the garden, as the elder Capulet continually placed the ball through his younger brother’s legs or rainbow flicked it over his head.

It didn’t take long, though, for Monty to realise that the only way he was going to get the ball off Hugh was by taking it himself.

Even now, 15 years later, Monty could clearly recall the memory of his 11-year-old brother writhing in agony on the floor mere moments after his seven-year-old self had lunged into an ugly looking tackle in an unruly attempt to dispossess Hugh of the ball.

Far from being angry, though, the elder Capulet brother had smiled warmly at his sibling and laughed. Not that Hugh ever again used Monty as his practice dummy for trying out new skills, mind you.

From that moment on, Monty had always wanted to be a defender. By the age of ten he hated playing anywhere but defence and whenever his coaches at Ashgate Athletic tried to play him further forward, explaining that children should gain experience of playing in every single position, the younger Capulet would just refuse and go play in defence anyway – even if he was supposed to be in goal!

Not that his coaches really minded. Very few children seemed to enjoy playing in defence, so they were secretly more than happy for Monty to volunteer to do so week-in, week-out. The fact he was an amazing defender was also hugely appreciated by his coaches. 

However, while Monty may have been very good at what he did, due to the fact he wasn’t as naturally skilful, or as eye-catching on the ball, as his elder brother, it took him far longer to be selected for an academy than it had Hugh. By the age of 13, Monty had tried out for three professional lower league academies – including Portland Town’s – but had not been taken on by any of them due to a perceived lack of ability on the ball.

The third rejection had left Monty feeling absolutely devastated and he was all but ready to give up on his dream of one day becoming a professional footballer and quit playing football altogether. It was only thanks to Hugh that he eventually decided to give his dream one more season to come true.

It was a decision he would never regret.

During the school summer holidays following Monty’s third academy rejection, Hugh, who had recently signed his first professional contract with Portland, spent as many hours as he possibly could coaching his brother. He worked constantly on improving Monty’s ball control, encouraged him to become more comfortable using both feet, and showed him the importance of being able to control and dribble the ball with different parts of each foot.

More than anything, though, Hugh gave his little brother the confidence that he needed to take his game on to the next level. Not once during those long summer days did a negative word ever leave the lips of the elder Capulet brother. Even when Monty was struggling, or even completely failing, to execute the various skills that Hugh was showing him, there never once came a time when Monty was made to feel like he would be unable to get to grips with what he was being shown.

By the end of the summer, Monty’s confidence had been fully restored. What’s more, as well as still being a ferocious tackler, he was now as comfortable when in possession of the ball as even the most cultured midfield players of his own age.

Word of Monty’s improvement spread like wildfire. It wasn’t long before a number of lower league scouts, including ones from all three teams that had previously rejected him, were making Monty offers to join their academies – without even the need of a trial.

Due largely to the fact that Hugh was starting to make a name for himself in the Portland Town first team, Monty initially decided that he would accept the offer from his brother’s club. However, this plan was shelved the moment Premier League Westpool Athletic declared an interest in him.

Even though Westpool made it perfectly clear that Monty would have to undergo a six-week trial in order to be selected, and that even then there would be no guarantee of success, the now brimming-with-confidence younger Capulet figured it was a risk worth taking.

He was right.

It was now just under nine years later and, at the age of 22, Monty was coming off the back of his breakthrough season as a professional footballer. Not only had he established himself as a first team regular for Westpool, he’d also been nominated for the Premier League’s Young Player of the Year award.

After a few years of being unfairly labelled in the press as little more than the less talented younger brother of Hugh Capulet, Monty’s own talent was now finally being recognised on a wide scale.

As final whistles sounded across the country on the final day of the latest Premier League season, life for both of the Capulet brothers was as close to perfect as either had imagined it could ever be.  Hugh was just weeks away from playing, what he hoped would be, a starring role for Italy in the forthcoming World Cup in Brazil, while Monty could bask in the knowledge that he had finally started to emerge from his much-loved brother’s sizable shadow.

Yet, an unexpected phone call, received by Monty the day after Westpool’s final match of the Premier League season, had unintentionally reignited a family feud that had been simmering uncomfortably for many years.

Part two released on 9th June 2026...