The England star who saved Italian giants – and the Englishman who helped save him

‘Other than God, I wouldn’t be here without Dave,’ says a smiling Keinan Davis, a day after his star role in Udinese’s win over Fiorentina.

His manager, Kosta Runjaić, told talkSPORT that the 28-year-old has ‘everything’ but it was a coach from Biggleswade who spotted it first.

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Davis marked his return from a three-game absence due to an abductor injury with a Player of the Match performance on Monday.

He looked every inch his 6ft 3in frame when he puffed out his chest and scored from the spot in Udinese‘s 3-0 win against Fiorentina.

As such, it remains remarkable that Davis was once released by a League One club for being too small.

Born in Stevenage, the forward would walk the six-mile round trip to his hometown academy, where he was spotted by Dave Northfield, who had family ties to the Boro at the time.

Davis told talkSPORT.com: “I was walking to training from my house, he would see that – we’d finish at like 8pm, and I’d have to walk all the way home an hour away, so he would just begin to take me, drop me home and stuff like that.”

That act of kindness could have ended as a fleeting experience when Stevenage released all but one of their Under-16 squad in 2015.

However, Northfield, who runs a successful logistics company, intervened to set up a team for non-league Biggleswade Town.

“The day that all the guys were released by Stevenage, I spoke to them all and said we would look to set up an Under-18s side to keep them all playing,” Northfield explained to talkSPORT. “They were all released, and we started training the following week.

“I sent a letter out at the time to probably 25 pro teams saying we’d set up this team and they’d all been released from pro clubs, and from that they came and watched and saw Keinan.”

Davis became the focal point of the newly assembled team alongside released youngsters from Ipswich, Cambridge, and even Tottenham.

‘Size of a bloody mountain’

“At the time, Stevenage had been playing Keinan down the left-hand side, and all the time you can see that he was a centre forward cause he could finish,” Biggleswade coach Northfield told talkSPORT.com.

“Bear in mind, all the lads from Stevenage were released because they were too small.

“Obviously, Keinan now is the size of a bloody mountain. Someone did their maths well; that is a sure fact.”

Biggleswade’s U18s now-defunct X page shows Davis scoring hat-tricks in three successive months from September-November 2015.

By the end of the year, Aston Villa handed him a professional contract after he’d impressed during a week’s trial at Bodymoor Heath.

Northfield continued: “Villa were the team interested, and all of a sudden you had Ipswich come in, Fulham, Colchester, and all of them said, ‘Are you sure he doesn’t play on the left?’ I said, ‘He’s not a left-sided player. I said he is a centre-forward.’

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“To be fair, Villa knew, and the one thing I liked [about] what Villa did is I probably spoke to those guys maybe about October, November, and they watched him the whole of the rest of that season.

“Then we went into the following season, and that’s when other clubs were coming in, which maybe forced them to move a bit quicker.

“They got him across. And I say the rest is lovely history now, isn’t it?”

Except that the history books show an even more touching story, with Northfield desperate for Davis to avoid being taken advantage of when making the leap from non-league to an English giant.

“I put out the information we were looking for an agent,” he added.

“We probably got six or seven people involved, and a couple of them asked me what I wanted, and I said, ‘I don’t want anything, I just want him to be looked after.’

“They were offering me money, and we got them involved, but it was always Keinan’s choice.

“So I set up and went to all the interviews with him, but it was Keinan who made the decision on who he wanted to go with and who he didn’t want to go with. I just sat beside him and listened.

“And the one thing with Keinan I have his trust with is that I’m not a guy that wants to hang off his coattails.

“He came over in the summer to my house, he came and saw my wife and me, and was there a couple of hours with us.

“Still the same lovely, lovely lad that he always was, and so he trusts me. It’s never been about… Other than that, he’s given me two shirts by the way that I’ve hung up. So I have had something off of him…

“I did get a Villa and Udinese shirt, so I’m not gonna lie, I did get two shirts which I’m absolutely proud of!”

‘Two shirts are nothing to what he deserves’

When told that particular anecdote days later at Udinese’s Bluenergy Stadium, Davis burst out laughing.

The former Watford and Nottingham Forest loanee replied: “He just put me in the best position possible to get me where I am now.

“I think he bought my first iPhone, stuff like that. My parents couldn’t afford it.

“When I was like 16, 17, he just helped me, two shirts is nothing to what he deserves, you know?

“So that just gives you what he’s like, you know, as a person. He’s just a great guy.”

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The one time I said what he should do

That trust between the two meant Davis had little hesitation over who to ask for advice when his time at Aston Villa ended in 2023.

Northfield recalled: “He said, ‘I just want your advice, I’ve got Udinese, Hull City, or Stoke’, and I said, ‘It’s a no-brainer.’

“It’s probably the one time I actually said what he should do. You’re playing in the Premier League in Italy, and you’re not getting the opportunity to play at the San Siro and all the big clubs in Italy?

“You’re always going to be able to come back and play for Hull City and Stoke City if it doesn’t work.

“If you go to Hull City or Stoke, and this is no detriment to anybody, but if you don’t make it there, then your next step is only potentially lower, isn’t it?”

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Scoring at San Siro

Fittingly, three years later at the start of this season, Davis scored and assisted as Udinese secured a famous 2-1 win over Inter at San Siro.

“Those are the things that – this is meant to be, you know?” the man himself told talkSPORT. “And I take what he says to me, I actually think about it.

“A lot of people can say, ‘Oh, I think you should be at Inter,’ but when he says, ‘I think you should be at San Siro,’ I really look into it.

“Like he said to come here and said that you played in the Championship, imagine playing in Serie A against Inter Milan.

“It’s something different. You’ve never done it before. So when I really thought about it, I made the decision, ‘Okay, you know what, he’s actually right’, because I played in the Championship.

“But I don’t know, try something different, you get one career. And then, yeah, thankfully, I did. And it is where I am now.”

That Inter strike was the first of nine Serie A goals Davis has scored this season, having only managed two and one in his first two years.

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Yet that latter goal, which was his first in Italy, remains arguably the most important of the England Under-20 international’s career.

In May 2024, Davis scored a 76th-minute winner at Frosinone that preserved Udinese’s Serie A status and, in turn, relegated the hosts.

Fast forward 22 months, and fans still thank him for ensuring Zebrette’s 31-year stay in Italy’s top-flight hadn’t been allowed to come to an end.

“It’s just crazy,” Davis recalled. “Obviously, here is a small place. So if you do well for the club, everyone’s going to know who you are, or if you do something good, they’re going to know who you are.

“So it’s just nice that people can recognise that and obviously just give their love back to them by just taking time out, taking photos or signing and stuff, whatever they want.

“That’s what I try to do, just make them feel happy, like they make me feel.”

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And that’s exactly what Davis did again on Monday – having given away another one of his shirts, but this time to a fan in the crowd.

“That’s how Keinan is,” Northfield told talkSPORT. “Honestly, he’s just a good lad. If he’d been my son, he does everything I would want my son to do [if his son had become a professional player].

“If kids come and speak to him, he gives them some time. He is polite, and he’s courteous to everybody.

“He’s not big and brash and arrogant. He’s the absolute opposite.

“I know one of my good friends went out there a month or two ago and had a meal with him, and it just went silent when they walked in.

“But he still gave a couple of children a picture, and he gave them the time for a picture, and I think that’s how we’d all want our sons to be.

“I get how famous these guys are, and they earn so much money, but when you think on a Saturday, they play, there’ll be Italian children out there with Davis on their shirts.

“You can’t get any bigger than that, and you give them five minutes to go, ‘yes, I’ll have a picture.’ It’s just different in my opinion.”