In August 2015, Winston Reid helped fund an annual scholarship program that saw two young New Zealand footballers attend Wellington Phoenix’s academy.
One of those recipients was a lanky 16-year-old set to make the move from Auckland to Wellington in order to chase his football dream. His name – Sarpreet Singh.
Four years later and after impressing in the A-League, Singh is now on the cusp of playing in the Bundesliga for Bayern Munich after impressing for his new club in pre-season.
Back in 2015, Reid could hardly have imagined just how much his investment was going to pay off but stressed it was a matter of giving back.
“I’ve been very privileged in life that I’ve had the opportunity to do this, so for me personally it’s the least I can do,” Reid said at the time.
“I hope there’s a lot more young players [from New Zealand] in the next generation who will come over here and succeed and hopefully do better than I’ve done and maybe even push on to a higher level.”
Singh meanwhile was pinching himself at the prospect of simply training with the Phoenix as he hoped to impress for their reserves.
“We get to train with the first team occasionally, and you can never get training as good as that anywhere else in the country, so it’s a good start,” Singh said.
Fast forward a few years and Singh was most recently filmed singing Justin Bieber in front of the Bayern Munich first-team as he was welcomed with a few laughs into their fold.
Despite initially signing to play for Bayern’s reserve side, Singh’s impressive performances in pre-season mean he’s now likely to stay with the first team with Niko Kovac praising his abilities earlier this month.
“He’s a good catch,” Kovac said.
“He was planned for the second team but he’s shown that he’s already a long way ahead of many others.
“I’m very pleased for him and pleasantly surprised.”
As Singh soars four years after Reid opened the door for the young Kiwi, it’s worth noting that the fellow recipient of that program in its first year, Max Mata, is also doing fairly well and recently made his debut for Estonian side Nomme Kalju in a Champions League qualifier against Celtic.
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