It is 2012 and a six-year-old Omari Kellyman is in a sports hall at Moor Farm, Derby County’s training ground. He is sporting a buzz cut and meeting the club’s coaches for the first time.
Kellyman has been playing two years above his age at his local side Pride Park Juniors, unbeknown to most talent-spotters who were under the impression he was eight.
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“From that moment, I’ve said the kid could be anything he wants to be,” says Josh Butler, local recruitment manager at Derby.
Alan Green, a scout at Derby, was one of those unaware of Kellyman’s age. He noted how the young boy effortlessly moved with the ball. Kellyman had played just a few games for Pride Park Juniors and held little interest in football. He only went training because his mother’s friend said her son’s team were short on numbers.
Paula, Omari’s mum, took him to games and parked her car close to the pitch, watching the games taking place through the windscreen. It wasn’t long before Green knocked on the window.
“I was running the pre-academy at the time,” says Butler. “Alan saw something he thought was worth looking at. When we filled out the forms, we realised he was an under-seven and not an under-nine. He came in and we were completely in awe of him.”
Kellyman was born and raised in Derby’s city centre and is one of three brothers. Paula is Northern Irish but moved to England in her younger years. His father Marlon is Jamaican and moved to Britain to forge a new career.
Paula and Marlon describe Omari as an “angel son”, never in trouble, nor, more recently, a teenager who went out late. He did not go to the shops by himself until he was 16. Football quickly became an obsession and Kellyman preferred staying in and practising.
“If there was a weak point, it was a lack of confidence,” Butler says. “He sometimes daydreamed as a younger boy. Nothing malicious or intentionally not doing his best. His dad is one of the hardest-working guys I’ve ever met in my life and Omari always recognised that.”
Kellyman was a key cog in a successful Derby youth side and played with the same core of team-mates for nearly a decade. Between the ages of nine and 11, his age group were among the top four nationally and regularly reached Premier League tournament finals.
“Omari still plays with the same personality,” says Butler. “He tries flicks over people’s heads, shots from ridiculous distances and plays with freedom. I’d love to say this was something we did for him — in truth, we just gave him a platform to practice.”
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Kellyman became a paradox. He was a tall, slender figure but could manipulate the ball in tight pockets of space and operate anywhere across the frontline. His strides were long but his footwork was short and sharp.
“He would play off the left, as a No 10 or up front,” adds Butler. “Omari always had his place in the group. There were other players who were a bit louder but he was the chilled one. I’ve known him for 12 years and he’s always been the same; low maintenance, no dramas.”
Along with his brothers Jahmi and Mehki, Kellyman attended Landau Forte’s primary, secondary and sixth-form schools situated in the heart of Derby. He was a conscientious learner, excelling in art and design, English language, geography and, naturally, PE. He won individual awards with teachers enamoured by how he balanced school work and football, even if he missed a day every week to play at Derby.
Just last week, he returned to his old college to see former teachers and spent an hour talking to students. Before the visit he rang ahead, asking if the college wanted his match-worn shirt from Aston Villa’s Carabao Cup tie against Everton. The shirt is now proudly framed and adorns one of the walls in the communal area.
“He worked incredibly hard,” says Landau Forte College principal Alison Brannick. “He did so well in his GCSEs last summer, achieving scores between six and nine (A*, As and Bs in the old scoring system). That is Omari, though. He was always very ambitious and understood he needed a backup plan. With the grades he got, multiple careers are open to him.”
“When he was getting those awards, he had just made the bench for the manager, Wayne (Rooney),” says Butler. “It was against Bournemouth in November 2021 and Wayne wanted to play him.”
Against the backdrop of Derby’s administration, a 21-point deduction in the 2021-22 campaign and the club being forced to sell players of any worth, Kellyman was fast-tracked into the first team. Yet two months after his initial inclusion, Derby still needed to sell. Academy talents were picked off, with administrators regarding youngsters as the next route to generate funds. Team-mates True Grant and Malachi Sharpe left for Manchester City and Manchester United respectively while Kellyman was the last to depart.
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Aston Villa expressed an interest and Derby’s administrators pushed to move him on. Circumstances largely proved out of Kellyman and Derby’s control, with the fee the club received in February 2022 — around £600,000 — critical in paying staff wages.
“He kept the club afloat,” says Butler. “We needed to sell Omari to keep us going. Selfishly, I was absolutely devastated when he left. I don’t think he wanted to leave.”
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A similar case transpired just this month when another member of the Kellyman family — Jahmi — left Derby to join Villa. The 14-year-old decided against a new contract, with following in his brother’s footsteps seen as preferable for his development. Remarkably, Jahmi was earmarked by Derby earlier than Omari, who encouraged him to attend toddler practice before he was formally allowed to sign for the club aged five.
Jahmi, now in year 10 at Forte Landau, admits that his older brother is his role model. When Omari returns home, he takes Jahmi shopping or, as a keen golfer in his spare time, to the driving range. The eldest sibling, Mekhi, has little interest in football and is in the third year of university in Bangor, Wales, studying zoology.
Those close to Omari describe his progress over the past year as exceptional. There is a sense his tactical and technical understanding has been elevated markedly, having signed his first professional contract in September 2022, five days after his 17th birthday.
Kellyman lives in digs on the outskirts of Sutton Coldfield, Birmingham and is, peculiarly, beginning to develop a West Midlands twang. It has become an inside joke among family and friends, with his accent dependent on where he has recently spent time. He would return from Northern Ireland camps with a temporary Irish inflection.
Linda, who looks after Kellyman in digs, is close to the family. She was invited to his 18th birthday last month, along with Butler and several of his former team-mates at Derby.
“He’s the most down-to-earth, family-orientated 18-year-old you’ll ever meet,” says Butler. “For me and Linda, who travelled an hour and a half out her way to be welcomed to his party, shows he’s not big-time in the slightest. Although he is introverted, he’s confident in himself to do stupid dances with Jahmi. He will put an Instagram post up about his mum and not think, ‘All the lads will take the mick out of me’.”
Earlier this summer, Kellyman sensed an opportunity. Villa’s first team were headed for the United States for pre-season. He began his conditioning work early and asked Butler for a couple of individual sessions, wanting to fine-tune certain facets of his possession game. As it turned out, Kellyman convinced Unai Emery to include him on the tour and be part of the first team this season.
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Despite making his first Villa start in the UEFA Conference League qualifying round against Hibernian — providing an assist for Leon Bailey on the night — Kellyman’s participation in the competition has been curbed. An oversight resulted in him being omitted from the group-stage squad as he had not been at Villa long enough to qualify as an academy graduate. Director of football Damian Vidagany and president of football operations Monchi explained that the 18-year-old should not take it as a slight, given Emery wished to involve him.
Recent months have signalled further change. On September 1, Kellyman received an England Under-19s call-up and made his debut five days later, deciding to switch allegiances from Northern Ireland, who he represented across two junior age groups. It was a fraught period, exacerbated by current FIFA rules around eligibility meaning a player cannot swap nations again. Relatively speaking, he was taking a step into the unknown, having never been on an England camp before making the decision.
“If he stayed with Northern Ireland, he gets in the first team,” says Butler. “Paula spoke to me and was in a dilemma. He didn’t do it on a whim, but Omari backs himself to go and do the business with England.”
“I’m still in touch with his mum and he deserves every success,” says Brannick, Kellyman’s former school principal. “He’s very humble. He was never a lad who showed off. He would only tell you about his football if you asked him about it.”
The quiet confidence in Kellyman is shared by those who know him. A loan elsewhere is not out of the question as progress will be phased and gradual. But Kellyman has never been a young man in a rush. Even if excitement builds around him, he has as much time on his side as he appears to have on the ball.
“The extent of his success will be circumstantial because it won’t be down to talent or attitude,” says Butler. “His greatest strength is that you can’t not like him. He’s an absolute dream for a football club.”
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(Top photo by Craig Foy/SNS Group via Getty Images)