Bursting the bubbles

'The Coca-Cola Kid', Colin Kazim-Richards told Soccer AM how he is always being brought back down to earth.

He may be the 'Coca-Cola Kid' and he may have gone from League Two to the Champions League in three years, but Colin Kazim-Richards is still waiting for a warm welcome. The Fenerbahce striker took advantage of Turkish football's winter break to drop in on Soccer AM and relive his rise to stardom. Kazim-Richards was of course the first player signed under the Coca-Cola scheme that allowed fans to choose which player their club signs. He joined Brighton and from there went to Sheffield United and on both occasions, he was hardly given the red carpet treatment. "It was Charlie Oatway at Brighton, when I went there in my first couple of weeks," he explained. "I'd just been signed as the Coca-Cola kid and we went away to Le Havre. "We getting on the bus to go to training and he's thrown a shirt me and said as captain Coca-Cola rang up and said I'd got to wear this top. "I'd just come from Bury where the banter was a bit different as well. But there I was wearing this shirt 24/7, running through the forest, whenever there was pictures taken having been told Coca-Cola have got more money and it would go into the players' pool. "Then one day he's just gone 'I can't believe you've done that. They haven't spoken to anybody at all! Who do you think you are?" Despite that welcome he did enough to catch Neil Warnock's eye and was soon on his way to Sheffield United. But again it, pardon the pun, it soon went flat for the Coca-Cola kid as he became the latest footballer to feel the full force of the one and only Neil Warnock. "It was good for me, another experience," he said. "When I signed, the firt day he just told me 'I'm having none of your rubbish. I don't care who you are'. My dad was sitting in the room as well, but he just said 'I'm having no rubbish, or you're gone'. "It was a good thing because he just put me straight and I knew that was how it was going to be." What he didn't know then was that inside two years he would be playing in Turkey and scoring in the Champions League. Fenerbahce is the Coca-Cola kid's latest port of call and while he is loving the chance to play at the very highest level as part of a table-topping side, he was not so sure about his first real taste of Turkish football. It came in the first derby with Galatasaray, and put Charlie Oatway's prank and Neil Warnock's no-nonsense firmly in the shade. "For the last derby we were driving in on the coach with police and security everywhere - that's how bad it is - and Galatasaray fans everywhere walking in the streets," he explained. "Then all of a sudden there was a loud bang and I jumped and was like 'what's that?'. All the players were telling me not to worry, it's normal but they were chucking bricks at the coach. "And we were driving into our own stadium!"