How quickly can your life change? How slight is the margin which separates triumph from disaster?
For 16 months now, Fankaty Dabo has wrestled with these questions. The full-back now contemplates them at Stark’s Park, Kirkcaldy. He might well have done so from the dizzying heights of the English Premier League.
Towards the end of season 2022-23, Dabo and his Coventry City team-mates came up the home straight to finish in the Championship play-off spots by a point.
After a goalless draw, they won at Middlesbrough in the second leg of their semi-final. Luton Town awaited them in the final at Wembley on May 27.
Worth an estimated £140million to the victor, a predictably tense affair played out between two teams who’d met in League Two five years previously.
In front of 85,711 fans, the Hatters took the half-time lead through Jordan Clark only for Gustavo Hamer to level for Mark Robins’ men. With no further goals in extra-time, the most lucrative game of them all was to be settled by a penalty shoot-out.
Fankaty Dabo can’t believe it after watching his penalty attempt fly high and wide at Wembley
Dabo steps up in sudden death but fails to trouble Luton goalkeeper Ethan Horvath
The former Chelsea youth struggles to take in the enormity of his spot-kick failure
Not named among the Sky Blues’ first five takers, Dabo watched spot-kick after spot-kick converted with unerring accuracy. The moment former Kilmarnock midfielder Liam Kelly found the rigging with the 10th attempt, the full-back’s heart skipped a beat.
His prayer for Dan Potts to miss Luton’s sixth attempt unanswered, Dabo trudged forward and spotted the ball.
‘It’s a long walk although I didn’t feel any pressure walking up,’ he recalled. ‘Someone was talking to me, but I just zoned out.
‘But when you actually put the ball on the spot and realise the task in hand, however simple it is, the pressure becomes a lot more.
‘And for me the pressure felt more because I knew I had to score, not just to keep us in the shootout, but to not let anyone down.
‘I was confident. I said I wanted to take a penalty. It wasn’t forced upon me.’
Coventry players console their team-mate in the immediate aftermath at Wembley
Players in such moments often talk about being in the zone. Dabo’s downfall stemmed from momentarily leaving his.
In the blink of an eye, he leaned back and lifted the ball over the bar. The joy of the Luton fans housed behind the goal was unbridled. The other end of the stadium was a scene of total devastation. How cruel that the hopes of a season should come down to this.
‘I felt like I had let a lot of people down because playing in the Premier League is not only lucrative, but it’s also fulfilling because it’s people’s dreams,’ Dabo recalled.
‘So, me missing the penalty felt like I’d stopped a lot of people’s dreams. I have always been one to take accountability and take a lot of pressure on myself for others, so that’s how I felt in the moment.’
What followed was depressingly predictable. Just like Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho and Bukayo Saka after England’s ill-fated Euro 2020 final with Italy, Dabo was subjected to abhorrent online racist abuse.
‘I was made aware of it, but thank God I didn’t see it because I don’t know how I would have reacted,’ he said. ‘There are so many much better people out there than ignorant people making stupid comments.’
Dabo has now pitched up in Kirkcaldy as he tries to rebuild his career with Raith Rovers
The sheer brutality of football was made apparent to him in the days that followed.
The former Chelsea trainee had spent loan spells at Swindon, Vitesse and Sparta Rotterdam hoping it might lead to a breakthrough at Stamford Bridge.
When that didn’t materialise, he signed for Coventry in 2019 hoping to help reawaken one of England’s sleeping giants. He helped lead them out of League One, but that aberrational moment would ensure the journey would not be completed.
With the confetti still swirling in the air that evening, Robins took him aside and told him that he was surplus to requirements. Talk about adding insult to injury.
‘Me and the gaffer had been in dialogue since the start of the season,’ the 28-year-old recalled. ‘But I really found out after the game at Wembley, which was the cherry on a s*** cake really.
‘It is what it is. That’s football and the industry we are in. You know what you’re going to get half of the time, and so it’s just a case of deal with it and move on.
Coventry boss Robins consoles Dabo… but later that day told the player he was being released
‘You get inklings in life; you get gut feelings. It is what it is and I have no hard feelings. It’s just football.’
After a summer of solitary suffering, he would have been entitled to believe that he was due a break. If only it was that simple.
He signed for Forest Green Rovers at the start of September only to find that the ambitious Gloucestershire club were inexorably on the slide.
When manager David Horseman was replaced by Troy Deeney at the turn of the year, matters got even worse.
Unable to halt the decline during a chaotic 29-day tenure, the former Watford striker publicly lacerated his players, with Dabo the focus of his ire after one defeat at Harrogate Town.
‘I said to him in front of everyone, six months ago, you had a kick to get to the Premier League. Now you won’t even get a game in the National League,’ Deeney stated to the astonishment of the assembled media.
Dabo insists he was confident walking up to take his spot-kick and won’t let his miss define him
Deeney’s conduct was disgraceful but there is always a danger of mud sticking.
Forest Green were, in fact, relegated to the National League under Steve Cotterill and Dabo, despite featuring 35 times, was again cut loose and left to contemplate his future.
But the remarkable story of the former England youth cap isn’t over yet.
Unveiled as Raith Rovers’ latest signing earlier this week on a deal until January, the player arrives in Fife hoping a change of environment can bring a change on fortunes. He’s certainly due some.
And while he can’t change the recent past, the Scottish Championship might just prove to be the place where he carves out a brighter future under Neill Collins.
‘I’m delighted to be here and looking forward to getting back to playing and enjoying my football again,’ he said ahead of this weekend’s game with Falkirk.
Dabo could make his Rovers debut this weekend at home to Championship high-flyers Falkirk
‘My agent said to me that there are better players who have missed bigger penalties than I have. John Terry missed one in a Champions League final and his career was still amazing. He wasn’t defined by that penalty miss.
So, it’s just another piece to my own puzzle; or another piece to my armour. I don’t feel like one shoddy penalty defines me.
‘Hopefully, I can remain fit and it’s a new chapter and story to be told.’