The Athletic FC

Welcome to the Athletic FC podcast with me, Ayo Akimilari.

Today, we're bringing you a very special guest, Adam Wharton, in conversation with David Ornstein, talking about England, Palace, and also his roots as well.

But before we hear from him, joining me right now, we have David Ornstein. David, you've interviewed a rising star.

Crystal Palace in England, international Adam Wharton. Set it up for us. Where did you meet him?

Yeah, I went to see him I.O. at his apartment in central London,

Vauxhall, to be precise. It's high-rise, so you get some incredible views over Battersea Power Station

and beyond that sort of West London direction. If your eyes were so good, you could see long into

the distance, and you would actually get to the United States of America

and that is a bit of a theme of the interview that we did because of course he wants to go to

the World Cup with England and I mapped it out to be some three and a half thousand miles away

is New Jersey in the MetLife Stadium in that very direction that we were looking out of his

floor to ceiling windows. And Adam Wharton is a fantastic young man, 21 years old. It's the

first time he's lived away from home, which is Blackburn in Lancashire. And he's

incredibly down to earth, unassuming,atively quiet and shy. He loves his football,

his profession. He's very dedicated. But there's no sort of exuberance. There's no flashiness,

no tattoos, no crazy sort of clothes and cars and things like that. He just goes in and trains and plays.

He's got a really good work ethic.

If he's not training and playing, he's back at the apartment. He's got an obsession with

Topps trading cards, which is relatively newfound. You can see a bit about it online. But even

that didn't prepare me for what I saw. There's like wallets of cards.

There's boxes of cards.

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