Promise David reflects on unlikely path to Premier League: ‘Don’t do what I did’
Promise David walked up to a self-checkout in Estonia with four apples, some bread and no way to pay for it all.
It was 2023 and the well-travelled Canadian striker, after stops in Croatia, Oklahoma, and Malta, was playing unpaid soccer for Nomme Kalju’s reserve team in the small European country’s third tier. On the morning of an away match, David was so hungry he resorted to shoplifting.
“I woke up, I went to the grocery store and I had to steal apples,” David recalled. “I couldn’t even pay for all of it, so I hid a couple items in my bag, God forgive me.”
That was just the beginning of a long day that included hours of bus and scooter rides from Tallinn to Estonia’s eastern border and back — with 90 minutes, a goal and a gas-station KitKat in between — before ending with “sleep for dinner.”
And though he laughs about it now, the 25-year-old from Brampton, Ont., looks back on that period as one of the lowest points on an improbable journey to Brighton & Hove Albion in England’s Premier League.
The six-foot-five David, whose charismatic personality matches his size, eventually cracked Nomme Kalju’s first team and scored 30 goals in 44 appearances, catching the attention of Belgian Pro League side Union Saint-Gilloise.
In two seasons there, he scored 41 goals in 82 matches and helped the club win its first league title in 90 years. David’s rapid rise continued with Canada at this past summer’s World Cup, where he scored off the bench in a group stage loss to Switzerland, before signing with Brighton over several other suitors in mid-August.
“I wanted to give myself the biggest challenge on the biggest stage, and see what it would do to me as a human being and as a football player,” David said at a downtown Montreal hotel last week before Canada beat Peru 2-0 in a friendly.
“I thought it would be very funny to think to myself that like three, four years ago I was like not even professional, and then now I’m playing in the Premier League.”
The move to England’s south coast came together so quickly, the timing of the transfer caught him completely off guard.
Some 10 days after learning of Brighton’s interest, David was on a beach north of Bruges, dancing in a mosh pit at a music festival, when his phone started ringing off the hook. He ignored three calls before finally picking up and learning his Brighton medical was scheduled in just a couple of days.
“It was shocking because I was already having fun and I was like, ‘Oh my God, I just got transferred,'” he said. “I remember looking at my friends like, ‘Damn, you guys are not gonna see me for a long time.'”
David made his Brighton debut Aug. 30 at Stamford Bridge, coming off the bench in the 80th minute of a 4-3 loss to Chelsea.
The Canadian has faced stiff competition for playing time in a crowded forward group that includes talented Greek teenager Charalampos Kostoulas, logging just two appearances and 24 minutes so far — much to the dismay of Canada coach Jesse Marsch.
“I’m always supportive of the guys, but the fact that he’s not playing is not good, right? He’s not as fit and not as sharp as he was the last year and a half,” Marsch said after training last week. “He’s gonna have to push there, hard. He’s gonna have to make sure that he’s on top of himself in every little way professionally.
“If he’s not getting playing time, then he may have to think about what alternatives are out there, because he needs to play.”
Marsch used David as a substitute in Canada’s first two friendlies of the international break against Chile and Peru. That leaves Tuesday’s match against the United States in St. Paul, Minn., as David’s final chance to start during the window.
David, meanwhile, is confident he has what it takes to be successful in the world’s best league. Why?
“Gaslighting and manipulation,” the candid centre forward quipped, before adding: “I just got there, and time will tell. When I got to Belgium I didn’t play for four months, and then after the first goal everything clicked, so I guess the same is bound to happen.
“I’ve just made the biggest move of my life. I’m OK right now.”
David always believed he would make a living playing soccer, even when he stole groceries to make ends meet. But the former Toronto FC youth player — cut from the Major League Soccer club’s academy at age 15 — didn’t think he would one day take to a Premier League pitch.
He’s taken a different path to getting there, one that David doesn’t necessarily recommend.
“Don’t do what I did,” he said with a laugh. “I feel like the reality of the situation is for every one Promise, there’s about hundreds of thousands of people that have tried this route and it didn’t work out.
“But yeah, I feel if you have a goal, make objectives, plans, checkpoints, write them down and seriously make realistic preparations to reach them, then you’ll be fine. And if you don’t make it, at least you gave it your all at the end of the day, and you were serious with it.”