DELETED CHAPTER: THE NAMING OF A SOCCER LEGEND -
HOW LUHITH KHALIL BECAME LUCKY

Lucky says: It just happened. I’ve been called it since I was a toddler, for as long as I remember. It’s not a media thing, like Becks for Beckam or Gazza for Gascoigne, or Zizou for Zidane; it wasn’t a PR stunt. Even my mum calls me Lucky; everyone does apart from my dad.
Ming Bruce, former Royal Borough team mate says: I’ve known Lucky Khalil since we were ten. I’d always thought that Lucky was his real name, but just a bit of a hippy one. Like Tiger Woods or Venus Williams. It’s the sort of thing that media savvy parents do, give their kids memorable names, and Lucky’s mum is a media type. Or used to be. Anyway it’s no mystery how he’d get a nickname like that – he’s been playing in the junior leagues since he was a kid, and he used to play midfield, and have a fantastic free kick with his left foot. His lucky left foot, we used to call it. So that’s how it must have started. Luhith Khalil with the Lucky Left Foot.
Portia Scott says: I think Lucky gave the name to himself. He never liked Luhith, didn’t like how it abbreviated, just to plain old Lou. Not a nice abbreviation, really, like being called John in the States. And I can sympathise about having a name with a cruddy abbreviation. My bloody pretentious father gave me a Shakespearean name, but he had to choose one that sounds like a car. In my case the quality of mercy certainly was bloody strain’d. And if you shorten it, it either sounds like Porsche, or Poo, or Po, like the little red teletubby. Anyway, you’re not asking about me, are you? No one asks about me anymore, not since Lucky’s been doing so well for himself; I’ve just been dumped in with the other footballer’s wives and girlfriends, a load of not-made-it singers and models and council house chavs who haven’t an A level between them. And no, neither do I, so you can’t say I’m being a snob.