Written by Jazzin Renee
There are easier ways to be 19.
University. Friends around the corner. Family dinners that don’t require a time difference. A bedroom that still feels familiar.
Conrad Ambursley could have had that.
Instead, he packed his life into a suitcase, left East London behind, and moved nearly 5,000 miles away to Phoenix with nothing guaranteed except another opportunity to prove himself.
For someone who has spent much of his life chasing football, maybe that isn’t surprising.
Like so many football stories, his begins in front of a television – Arsenal. Goals. And Neymar.
“The 2014 World Cup, I was seven and remember watching him (Neymar) as a young player be Brazil’s best player which was insane to me. He was scoring on the biggest stage whilst having fun and playing with a smile. From then on, I knew that’s what I wanted to do and be like.”
For a young boy, it wasn’t tactics that captured his imagination. It was expression. The freedom to beat a defender. The confidence to try something unexpected. The joy of playing without fear and for the love of the game.
Years later, Ambursley still describes his own game with many of the same words: creative and expressive. He wants supporters to leave talking about something they hadn’t seen before.
The path wasn’t mapped out for him though.
“My parents would’ve rather I went to university,” he admits with a smile.
Football wasn’t the family plan. It became his plan.
The people who were hesitant at first became the ones who sacrificed the most and were along for the ride every step of the way—late-night drives to training, support when things weren’t going well, and the ability to let him figure life out on his own terms.
Football also forced him to grow up quickly. Releases from clubs became lessons instead of excuses. Rather than becoming bitter, he became better.
His journey wound through grassroots football – Tottenham, Charlton Athletic, and Coventry City – before his first professional contract finally arrived. He still calls signing it “a blessing”—not because it meant he had made it, but because years of uncertainty had finally been rewarded.
Now, Phoenix represents another beginning.
He was drawn to the club’s reputation for developing players and giving them the freedom to grow and move on to higher levels. For someone who says he’s “addicted to watching himself improve,” it felt like the right place to take the next step.
Away from football, Ambursley is exactly what you’d expect from a 19-year-old. He jokes about being the favorite middle child, talks about the friends he hopes will visit Arizona, and describes himself as calm, funny and relaxed.
It’s a reminder, that beneath the contracts and expectations, he is still a young man growing up in real time.
Ask him about the legacy he hopes to leave, and he doesn’t mention goals or assists.
“I want to be remembered as someone who came in as a boy… and left here as a man who made a real impact.”
Perhaps that’s the real story.
Not simply that a talented winger from East London has arrived in Phoenix, but that every training session, every setback, and every mile traveled has shaped someone determined enough to become more than just a footballer.
