THE story of how Massimo Luongo, a Sydney youngster from a modest Indonesian-Italian family, became the ‘David Beckham of Australia’ is a fascinating one.

Seen through the eyes of the man who scouted Luongo as a 13-year-old playing parks football in Australia’s biggest city, David Magrone, who to this day plays a guiding hand in steering the Socceroos star’s career, Luongo’s story is one of commitment to making the most of his raw talent.

Magrone, now a senior scout at QPR, had his own personal experiences of trying to make it as a professional footballer in Europe and was also a coach with Ajax. From that vantage point, he felt he was best-placed to guide the precocious Luongo when he first spotted him.

“He had unbelievable balance and could carry the ball forward, though at those times, it was only in straight lines. He could beat players by dropping his shoulder because he could maintain balance so well,” Magrone told the Advertiser.

“At that time, I was getting a reputation as a very good trainer and I decided to create a private football academy (that Luongo joined), which mimicked what happened in Europe around school hours.

“We were training at quarter to six in the morning until half seven, then I would drive Mass to school on my way home.

“After school, I would pick him up and we would train again in the afternoon. We’d be doing that at least four days a week and then we did sessions on the weekend.”

The idea of Magrone’s academy was to give Australian youngsters a flavour of what would be expected of them if they were to try and make it in Europe. The academy team garnered a fine reputation in Australia and Magrone decided Luongo and his teammates were ready to try and succeed where he had failed.

“As part of the development process, they needed to expose themselves to different levels of competition. We travelled around Australia and played what were supposed to be the best academies and beat them,” the 41-year-old explains.

“So we travelled to Europe and spent two-and-a-half weeks playing high-level competition. That was the catalyst of where Mass is today really.

“We played against the top academies in Holland, Germany and Belgium - every club wanted Mass.”

Luongo trained for a couple of weeks with the hometown club of his father Mario, Ascoli, who were then in Serie A, but recently admitted he was not suited to Italian football.

However, Magrone had a trick up his sleeve. He was lucky enough to get hold of Tim Sherwood - a contact made during Magrone’s previous time in Europe - and convinced the Tottenham academy director to give Luongo a shot.

“Tim gave us half an opportunity. He said: ‘it’s pretty hard. This is the top academy here and if they’re no good, I’ll have to send them away after one or two days.’,” said Magrone.

“It was a real big risk. Ajax were interested and so were Club Brugge but I thought he would excel in the English environment.

“I just thought culturally it would suit him and with my affiliation with the country as well, I knew I was going to be able to come and help him if he was successful.

“We took a risk with the two days that Tottenham gave us but that was all he needed - two days.”

At this stage, Magrone decided to get his licence as an agent and represented Luongo in the negotiations with Spurs.

However, after bringing a few more players to Tottenham and being offered a job as the North London club’s European scout, he gave up his agency duties but remained Luongo’s adviser.

“Mass and I had built a trust of three of four years. We had conversations and Mass said to me ‘I don’t want anyone else’ and I said ‘you don’t need anyone else, I’m there’. I’m like a father figure but more like a brother figure, we had that sort of relationship really.”

With the pair at Tottenham, Magrone was able to keep a close eye on his charge and help him through the early years in England.

He watched the midfielder blossom, initially in the youth ranks at Spurs Lodge and then on loan at Ipswich before the first loan move to Swindon.

After Luongo’s initial spell on loan, he could have returned to the County Ground on a longer temporary deal the next season but the opportunity arose for the then 20-year-old to join Town permanently.

It gave the player and his advisor the chance to gain more control of his future and they took it.

“We looked at the Tottenham situation with Andre Villas-Boas there was no chance of him making the first team.

“So it was a loan, and let Tottenham control his career, or it was get out of Tottenham and get a little bit of control ourselves. That’s what we decided to do.”

“He’s flourished at Swindon thanks to the style of play and the coaching staff. We got the result that we wanted - look at him now.”