From Pizzas to Futures: Iyiola Adebayo’s Second Chance

From Domino's deliveries back to football: Iyiola Adebayo's second chance

Iyiola Adebayo joined West Ham's academy at eight years old, following a path that produced Rio Ferdinand, Joe Cole, and Declan Rice. By the time he turned 16, he was gone.

"Within six months of being the captain at West Ham and playing in the Youth Cup, I was delivery driving at Domino's," says Adebayo, a defensive midfielder from Tilbury. The academy awarded him a scholarship before anyone else in his age group. A dislocated shoulder in his first year disrupted that trajectory. He still made appearances for the under-21s and under-23s, but the club released him regardless.

Futures programme gives released academy players a route back

The Premier League's Futures programme targets former academy players who have fallen out of the system. It offers structured training, access to scouts, and psychological support for prospects dealing with the transition out of professional youth setups, a period that often leaves players in jobs unrelated to sport.

Adebayo joined the programme six months ago. In that time he has been training regularly and reconnecting with the competitive environment he lost when West Ham let him go. The programme's structure gives him something his Domino's shifts could not: a daily path back toward professional football, with coaches helping him refine his game and scouts evaluating his progress.

Where Adebayo stands now

Adebayo has not signed a professional contract, and no club has announced interest publicly. What the Futures programme has given him is visibility. Each training session and match puts him in front of decision-makers who would never have seen him deliver pizzas.

His story is straightforward enough: a highly rated academy kid got hurt, got released, and got a second opportunity through a programme designed for exactly that situation. Whether it leads to a contract depends on what he does with the minutes he now has.