Ben Greenhalgh won a TV show, joined Mourinho’s Inter and lost his Champions League medal on a golf course

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“And next he’s gonna meet the big boss, Jose Mourinho. I think it will finally sink in that he’s an Inter Milan player when he’s given that shirt,” Jamie Redknapp, the former England midfielder and Sky presenter, says.

Ben Greenhalgh laughs as he remembers what happens next. “I nearly leave Mourinho hanging in a minute!”

We are watching a rerun of Football’s Next Star, the television show that was broadcast on Sky One in 2010 with the prize of a six-month contract at Inter for the winner. More than 7,000 boys entered before being whittled down to the final 10, who stayed together in a villa overlooking Lake Como.

“Every week, it was a case of, ‘We want to be here next week, and that’s all we were fighting for’,” Greenhalgh says. “I don’t think we were ever fighting for who was going to win.”

Essentially, it was football’s version of the X Factor with Marco Monti, the technical director at Inter’s academy, playing the role of Simon Cowell.

Greenhalgh not only ended up winning the show and signing for Inter but, remarkably, also finished the season with a Champions League medal around his neck (he later lost it on a golf course, but that’s another story).

It was a surreal experience for a 17-year-old A-level student who had never been around professional football before.

“Look, that could have been terrible!” Greenhalgh says, cringing as we watch the moment when Mourinho, who was Inter’s manager at the time, congratulates him and waits for the handshake that almost never comes.

Greenhalgh was too busy trying to take in the enormity of it all. A TV show that he had entered in the early stages “as a laugh” was now turning his life upside down, propelling him from the fringe of the first-team at non-League Welling United, who were playing in the sixth tier of English football at the time, to training alongside some of the greatest players in the world at Inter.

Those close to Greenhalgh were every bit as excited as him. “I’m still with Grace!” Greenhalgh says, his face lighting up as the camera pans to his girlfriend. “I’ve got three kids with her now!”

Greenhalgh’s relationship with Inter didn’t last anything like as long, which was probably to be expected. By the start of 2011, the left winger was back in England, on trial at Brighton, following a successful loan spell with Como in Serie C, Italy’s third tier. He rejoined Welling later the same year.

The experience at Inter, however, was unforgettable. Greenhalgh brings along to the interview a signed shirt that Patrick Vieira gave him, tells stories about Mario Balotelli and his Lamborghini, marvels at the way the Inter players worked so hard for Mourinho and, more than anything, feels privileged to have had a front-row seat for the most successful season in the club’s history.

“My six-month contract began in January (2010), so it went to the end of the season,” Greenhalgh explains. “Everything was high-flying because they were on for the treble at this time – they’ve got through the group stage in the Champions League, they’re in the quarter-finals of the Coppa Italia and they’re top of the league as well. It was some experience.”

Inter created history by winning all three competitions, and although Greenhalgh played for the reserves and the under-18s rather than the first team, he was in the right place at the right time when it came to the Champions League final against Bayern Munich at the Bernabeu.

“Before the final, we played a game at Real Madrid City (the Spanish club’s training ground) against Bayern Munich,” he says. “It was called the ‘UEFA Under-18 Challenge’, and that’s now become the UEFA Youth League. We also won 2-0 (the same scoreline as the first team).

“Some of us then travelled with the match-day squad, staying in the team hotel, and then sitting just behind them at the game. Just being able to experience those types of matches was ridiculous, really.”

And what about the medal? “We managed to get one because… they were just handing them out in the changing room afterwards!” Greenhalgh says, smiling.

All of which explains why the supporters at non-League side Margate, who play in the Isthmian League South East Division (the eighth tier of English football), sing what they do on a match day.

“Champions League, he’s won that too. Now he’s at Margate, playing in blue.”

Greenhalgh, who is the player-manager at Margate, breaks into laughter. “That’s a good song. I’ve had some bad songs,” he says. “At Tonbridge Angels – and I loved it when I was there – I’m about to take a free kick on the edge of the area, and they go, ‘We got Super Ben Greenhalgh, he runs around the park…’

“I’m listening to it thinking, ‘Oh wow, I’ve got a song.’

“And then they go, ‘He looks like (British TV celebrity) Rylan Clark’, and I think, ‘Oh no!’’

In his younger days, when he was still at school and before he grew a beard, Greenhalgh looked more like Cristiano Ronaldo, so much so that he was a body double for the former Manchester United and Real Madrid player in a television commercial.

“I started coaching for a guy called Mike Delaney, who also ran a company called Select Sports Artists,” he explains.

“Mike was one of the big ones at the time when it came to body-doubling adverts and he managed to get me Ronaldo, which was obviously massive. I was 16 and this was Ronaldo in his prime. And, fair play to Ronaldo, I’ve been to so many shoots where the players are there for 10 minutes maximum. But he was there for about three to four hours. He was even doing kick-ups with us.”

Greenhalgh with Ronaldo at a shoot where he was the Portugal captain’s body double

That line of work provides another chapter to a colourful life story that includes a playing CV unlike any other. Greenhalgh’s list of clubs, in order, reads:

• Welling United (Conference South, 2009-10)
• Inter Milan (Serie A, 2010-11)
• Como (Serie C, 2011, on loan)
• Welling United (Conference South, 2012)
• Ebbsfleet United (Conference, 2012-13)
• Maidstone United (Isthmian League Premier, 2013)
• Concord Rangers (Conference South, 2013)
• Inverness Caledonian Thistle (Scottish Premiership, 2013-14)
• Stenhousemuir (Scottish League One, 2014, on loan)
• Maidstone United (Isthmian League Premier, 2014-15)
• Concord Rangers (National League South, 2015-16)
• Maidstone United (National League, 2016-17)
• Hemel Hempstead Town (National League South, 2017)
• Concord Rangers (National League South, 2017-18)
• Dartford (National League South, 2018-20)
• Tonbridge Angels (National League South, 2019-21)
• Margate (Isthmian League Premier, 2021-24, Isthmian League South East Division, 2024-)

His time at Inter jumps off the page and, naturally, is a constant source of ribbing on the non-League circuit.

“I get banter all the time about it,” says Greenhalgh, who is also the academy director at Dartford Town, whose first team are one league above Margate. “When it comes down to it, it’s always going to be the thing that I’ll be known for. It’s been 15 years and it’s still memorable.”

Looking back, the fact that he joined Inter via a reality TV show was always going to pose challenges for him in Italy. There was even a wrangle at the outset between Welling and Inter, Greenhalgh recalls, over whether the non-League club were entitled to a transfer fee for him, delaying his registration. “Welling started asking Inter for £100,000,” he says.

Greenhalgh also felt under added pressure to prove himself, not helped by the way the reserve team coach spoke about him in front of the other players. “I remember him introducing me and it was like, ‘He’s won a TV show, he’s with us now.’”

Perhaps that kind of reaction was inevitable, even if it didn’t need to be announced in that way.

With or without his unusual backstory, Greenhalgh quickly realised that elite professional football is a dog-eat-dog world, especially for those who are still trying to prove themselves.

“When you’re in the reserves or the under-21s of a top club, the chances of you breaking through are so slim. So these players are doing absolutely everything to get in, even injuring people,” Greenhalgh says. “I used to play against a right-back who went on and played for Bayer Leverkusen. Not a very good footballer, in my opinion. But he would smash me every training session.”

Not that Greenhalgh is in any way bitter or resentful about any part of his experience at Inter. He had the time of his life at the club, still speaks to several of his former team-mates and cherishes all the memories, including the episode on the television show when he was thrown in at the deep end with the first team.

“That was probably one of the biggest times ever in football where I did freeze a bit,” he says. “I hadn’t warmed up and you’re suddenly playing with Lucio, (Ricardo) Quaresma and players like that, who you’ve seen on TV. I got the ball and I’d just pass because you didn’t want anything to go wrong.”

Some of the Inter first-team players went out of their way to be friendly towards Greenhalgh, including Vieira, who gave him a shirt that he had worn in the Milan derby. Greenhalgh also warmed to a teenage Mario Balotelli.

“At the time, I was 17 and he was 19 – he did not look 19. He was absolutely huge. He could have still played for the under-21s, that’s what we found funny.

“To be fair to him, he’d come and watch us. He rocked up in his Lamborghini for one game and he blocked the gateway for the coach to come in. The coach driver gets out and says, ‘Can someone move this?’ And he just said, ‘No.’ So they ended up having to park down the road and all their players had to walk.”

As for Mourinho, Greenhalgh was fascinated by his approach. “Interestingly, he wouldn’t run training sessions too much. But you respected him because of his aura. Everything he said, you believed.

“I couldn’t believe the manner that the players worked so hard for him, but then also how relaxed training was. There was no intensity to training. But then loads of tactical information, and then absolutely 100 miles an hour on a match day.”

Realistically, Greenhalgh was never going to make it at first-team level at Inter, although he does sometimes wonder whether he should have stayed for longer at Como, where he spent half a season on loan and enjoyed his football. Instead, he came back to England in search of a professional club but was left with the feeling that he had been out of sight and out of mind in Italy.

It was a different story for Connor Smith, the Irishman who finished second to Greenhalgh in Football’s Next Star. “I still speak to Connor, he’s Barnet’s assistant manager and they’ve had a brilliant year (winning promotion to the Football League),” Greenhalgh says.

“After we finished the show, me and Connor trained with Watford for four months because my contract (with Inter) didn’t begin until January. I was still back and forth to Italy, but more for the camera stuff. Connor managed to get himself a deal at Watford and that probably propelled his career in England. And I think that’s the one thing I always struggled with: my career never took off in England.”

Greenhalgh ended up in Scotland at one stage, playing for the former England captain Terry Butcher at Inverness Caledonian Thistle, although it was another sport that grabbed his attention there. “I was always a reasonable golfer,” he says. “I was something like a 12 handicapper. But Scotland completely changed me.”

In fact, he spent so much time on the golf course in Scotland that he turned professional in 2015. Two years later, Greenhalgh posted a picture on Twitter showing him finishing first at a pro-am tournament. “I ended up winning a little bit of money, but I was still a footballer playing golf,” he says.

Over the moon to win my first PGA professional golf competition & to break the course record! Still hasn’t sunk in Thanks to @TheAddingtonGC pic.twitter.com/mWUwWUJw3g

— Ben Greenhalgh (@BenGreenhalgh) July 14, 2017

That much was clear to anyone who played golf against him – and not because of his swing. Greenhalgh – and he shakes his head when he tells this story – used his Champions League winners’ medal as a golf marker for a while.

“I took it off the ribbon mainly because I think, when I was young… it was brilliant, but I felt like I hadn’t played in it (the final). So we were doing it as a laugh with my friends, just as a story to try and get in other golfers’ heads. Like, ‘Oh, what’s that?’ Because everyone uses medallions anyway.

“But it went missing at Aldenham Golf Club and, luckily, I knew the pro, who’d had it handed in. When I look back now, I think I was an absolute idiot doing those sorts of things. From there, I got it back on the ribbon, put it in a glass box and it’s at my mum and dad’s house now.”

Greenhalgh hopes that Inter get their hands on the famous trophy again on Saturday, when they face Paris Saint-Germain in Munich in the Champions League final.

There are similarities, he says, between the current side and Mourinho’s team. “They’re hardworking and they’ve got that tenacity where when things are going badly for other teams, they really jump on it. They’re almost bullies – and that’s what the Inter team were under Mourinho.

“I look back at it now and that was an unbelievable Inter team. But I do think they overachieved – they beat 2010 Barcelona in the semi-final! But that was when Mourinho was at his finest.”

It was also when Greenhalgh was living the dream.

(Credit: Ben Greenhalgh)

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