So incessant was the rain in England’s capital city during the week that the flooded roads around North London meant Spurs had to delay the kick-off to their Europa League game.
In an industrial estate not far from the gleaming Tottenham Hotspur stadium, the show had to go on, though.
EA Sports had spared no expense in decking out a warehouse to launch their FC25 game and amid the influencers, streamers and gamers, Eric Cantona and Gareth Bale were among those on hand to sprinkle a bit of stardust.
Having managed to negotiate the traffic, Evan Ferguson joined them on the green carpet a little later than expected. The weather meant it was the same for everyone.
But the Brighton and Ireland striker sharing the carpet with the likes of Cantona and Bale was a reminder of how young he still is.
As a boyhood Manchester United fan, it may have been a thrill for him to rub shoulders with Old Trafford’s former king, but the charismatic Gallic genius was seven years into his premature retirement by the time Ferguson was born while Bale’s coming-of-age moment – his famous hat-trick for Spurs at the San Siro – occurred a day after Ferguson’s sixth birthday.
Even among his contemporaries, Ferguson’s youthfulness stood out.
The Chelsea pair of Cole Palmer and Joao Felix also walked the carpet on Thursday – and they are two and almost five years older than the young centre-forward from Bettystown, who doesn’t turn 20 until the middle of next month.
He could be forgiven if he found the bright lights a little dazzling.
‘Ah, I don’t mind it. Once you get used to it, it’s all the same,’
Ferguson explained a while later, in a quiet room away from all the noise and fervour.
‘They all ask the same questions. When you do something for EA, you know it’s not going to be too out there, it will be all based on the game. It’s a bit different, but once you do one, you get used to it.’
Ferguson has had to get used to a lot over the past 18 months or so. It’s just over a year since he became the fourth striker of 18 or younger to score a Premier League hat-trick.
His wonderful performance against Newcastle had his then-club manager Roberto de Zerbi suggesting that Ferguson had the potential to become ‘the top striker in Europe’ while in the Match of the Day studio that night, two goalscoring legends in Gary Lineker and Alan Shearer were gushing about what the young Irish striker could go on to do in the game.
Like so many youngsters here, the Beeb’s flagship show was a staple of his Saturday night and he admits it almost felt weird to be highlighted on it.
‘I used to watch Match of the Day every Saturday and now they are talking about you on it, so it was a bit different, but a good different. And it was nice to have those type of people talking about you, but it’s all talk at the end of the day. You have to prove you can do it to yourself at the end of the day.’
He admits that the hat-trick against Newcastle was the high point of his career so far. ‘You can’t find fault in a game where you score three goals. It was a good day.’ It also turned out to be the high point of the season.
Given that his dad Barry had lived the life, Ferguson didn’t need any reminder of how fickle the fortunes of professional football can be, but he still got an early lesson in that during the second half of the season.
Not only was he more closely marked by defenders, but a troublesome ankle injury sidelined him in March and in the end, he needed surgery.
He doesn’t want to dwell on the injury but admits that it was a tough time. ‘It was frustrating, but you just have to take it with a pinch of salt. When you have surgery and have to go through all of that, it does take its toll and it is tough, but what can you do? You just have to try and get back in.’
The Seagulls have been careful in how they have eased Ferguson back to full fitness – it is why he only came off the bench for Heimír Hallgrimsson’s opening two games as Ireland manager.
But Ferguson is excited by the prospect of working with Fabian Hurzeler, the young German coach who has made a solid start to life as Brighton boss, and hopes to play a more prominent role in the coming weeks.
‘It is good to be back after a while out and I think it will be a good season. [Hurzeler] is good, I think he will be good for me, the way we play and the way we work. There are some similarities [with the last manager] but there are small differences too, the new manager has his own ways and wants to bring his own things into what we do, so I think it will be good.’
Hurzeler is the third manager that Ferguson has had at senior club level – after Graham Potter and de Zerbi.
It’s a sign of how well-run Brighton are – probably the best-run club in the Premier League – that the managerial upheaval doesn’t affect performances. Or the development of the players. The sense that Brighton was an ideal environment in which to grow contributed to Ferguson choosing the club over the likes of United, Liverpool and Celtic when he was 16.
‘When I went over, there was a lot of Irish lads there. You see the pathway, you see them doing well and I was going over as a young lad, trying to get in with the under- 23s, so I thought I could give myself a chance,’ he explains now.
Only 18 months previously, Ferguson had caused quite the stir when he made his senior debut for Bohemians at 14 in a friendly against Chelsea – the first game of Frank Lampard’s ill-fated first reign.
‘It all kind of kicked off from there, but it’s been good,’ Ferguson recalls of that day in Dalymount when Keith Long called him from the substitutes’ bench.
‘That’s a long time ago now. I just remember being told to get warmed up. You can’t really go wrong coming on as a 14-year-old. No one expects you to do good, so if you do anything it’s going to be a positive.’
Even in his cameo that day for Bohemians, Ferguson displayed a sharp eye for goal. He says that he used to play a bit in midfield, but his physical tools meant that he would always end up front.
‘I wasn’t always a striker, but I always had an eye for a goal, so I was always in and around the box. I played left midfielder for a bit, played in midfield for a bit and then after a while I was thrown up top.
‘I would have looked up to [Wayne] Rooney. I supported United and he is not a bad player to look up to. Maybe I took bits from his game, but it’s hard to model yourself on one person. I think you have to look at different players, take bits from their game and bring it into your game.’
By virtue of his English mother, Ferguson was able to join the Brighton academy at 16, something that is no longer available to Irish youngsters because of Brexit rules. And the player himself feels that those two years, between 16 to 18, were vital to his development.
‘When you come over here, you are first just trying to get into the 23s, then you get training with the first team and just take it step by step,’ he says.
‘It is harder for [Irish players]but it is not impossible. Someone is going to do it, so why can’t it be you? It is tough now they can’t come over til they’re 18 and it is annoying for the other young lads who want to get to England. But there are other routes that they can go down, people going to Italy,’ he says.
‘If I hadn’t come over at 16, would I have done what I done? It is impossible to go from League of Ireland, say you got into the team at 16 and then within two years, go straight to Premier. It is impossible.
‘When you go over that young, and you progress up and go training with the team, at 16 and 17, you get involved with it, you get an eye for it, watch the games and stuff. I would say that those years [16 to 18] were vital, because you don’t understand what it is like over here. You obviously just think it is just football but it is hard to comprehend how different it is.
‘Everything is different, everyone is on it and you have to be on it every single day. It is pressure but it is what you want to do, and it’s what you signed up for.’
Given his father had a career as a professional footballer, Ferguson is well aware of the pitfalls in the game. ‘It definitely helped a little bit, he knew how the week was going to be. It is nice to have someone that knows the game, how it works and how the nasty side of it goes as well.
‘But the football, it is up to me, not up to anyone else.’
Like so many of his generation, Ferguson is on social media, but he has learned not to pay attention to what some might type out on their phone screen.
‘Everyone’s on it, we are all on it, but you try not to pay too much attention to what is being said. You have someone typing on the phone “oh you haven’t scored in so long, you haven’t done this, you haven’t done that”. You can’t let it get to you. It is not about what others say about you, it is about yourself and proving what you can do for yourself.’
On a wet Thursday night in North London, Evan Ferguson’s presence as one of the faces of football’s biggest computer game is a sign of his growing stature.
And despite hitting the first speed-bump of his career, with a challenging few months because of injury, it appears there may be many more events like this in his future.
Evan Ferguson was speaking at the launch of EA SPORTS FC25, which is available now
