Drawing on the walls of the concrete sides gardens give the impression that it is a lines -based location. They mention 'no parties', 'no barbecues', 'no ball games' and at the metal gates to the football cage where a group of boys kick a ball around, 'no under-12s'.
But when it comes to football here there are no rules, actually only free spirits.
In the cold of the late afternoon, a dispute is briefly about that age limit with two boys who look at least 15, although the heart is no one in the argument and the game continues.
Half an hour earlier there were three boys played here, but by 5 p.m. it will be seven in one team, nine to the other, with players who drop off, wander around and do not matter. Do not ask them the score, just ask them how they scored their fifth or sixth goals.
“Do you remember my name now?” Ryan, who is 10, tells the others after a cruyff bend and bustling goal at a distance. Jordon manipulates the ball around Troy, one of the older boys, who cannot set foot on it. Ryan, the best player here, Nutmuskaats Calvin, a maneuver that seems to bear more compliments than score. There is a social stigma to be 'megied'.
The setting is a careful, non -preparation and sometimes dangerous place surrounded by blocks of flats, for which 'gardens' is a wrong name and where murder detectives were present a few years ago.
But in the absence of something else, the 50m square cage in Bermondsey, South Londs, is Paradise. It contains an identity for these boys, usually black or from another minority, who are so packed in showing their skills that they play in school uniform.
It is also a microcosm of what has been the most productive new breeding ground for football in the past decade, a 10 square mile piece of urban South London where cages-astro-turf enclosed by chain-link fences producing for British football that parisian banlieues (outskirts) supplied for France.
In the center of more and more competitive attempts to tap the talent, Crystal Palace, the South London Club that has a seven million population has within a 20-minute radius of its land, who will try to win their very first silverware ever in the FA Cup final against Manchester City.
The stars that the cages have delivered for Palace reveal the rich potential. Victor Moses, Wilfried Zaha, Nathaniel Clyne, Aaron Wan-Bissaka and Ebereechi Eze, the 26-year-old to whom the hope of so many palace fans is being attached today.
Players whose hours and hours of free, unstructured inauguration of the game trend them with a sense of the ball, a beautiful touch and innate feeling of the possibilities when they receive it in a closed space.
The lack of space forces them to see cracks that are not appreciated by those who have only played in structured football. The Koostermuur is both an obstacle and an assistant for those who take the 'bounce ball' against it.
Palace manager Oliver Glasner conquered it this week, when defining Eze's Brilliance on the Men in Blazer's podcast.
“He's not a robot,” said the Austrian. 'No, he is a human and you need this freedom. For me there is a balance between telling a player what he has to do, especially in the attack, and let his creativity work. Creativity needs more freedom. '
For Gary Issott, the director of the Academy of Crystal Palace, the cages are a form of street football that has disappeared from a large part of the UK. “We call it” Unorganized practice, “he says Mail Sport. 'It can be teams of two V two or two V five in which players, of all ages, get a fantastic feeling for the ball, a capacity to protect and manipulate it that you don't get in organized football. The best players in the world can all process and treat the ball in tight pressure situations.
'It lends itself to creativity and flair in the way Street Football used to be when we were children and would play until it was dark. We lost that there were once more TV channels and telephones in the early years of the 2000s. Cage Football brings it back. '
Palace has invested more than £ 20 million to create one of the best category one academies in Britain, an attempt to keep this local talent closer to home and to become the club for young players in South Londs.
It is the mission of club chairman Steve Parish, who saved the club from liquidation 15 years ago. “We love the amount of local talent at our door and how we are part of the area,” he tells Mail Sport. “But also, the overseas guys have also bought it all brilliantly.”
Palace has more than 50 scouts in South Londs alone, and around the cages everyone is aware of their goal to make a piece of club history this weekend.
Most of them talk about Eze and Marc Guehi as players they are looking forward to, but it says that young people also want to discuss other clubs – Arsenal, Barcelona, ​​Liverpool and Paris Saint Germain.
The obsessive control of the rich clubs of every edge who can find an opponent that Palace has no free run in the lump of South Londs that is known as the concrete Catalonia. Everyone is also over, while the fleet of smart Addison Lee Taxis had themselves on the ferry to sail talented boys directly from South London schools to the training grounds of Richere Clubs proves. “Arsenal issues a fortune in this respect,” a source of Mail Sport tells.
The Elite Player Performance Plan from the Premier League of 2012 removed geographical limitations and gave clubs with category one academies the right to sign young players all over the country. Palace, Charlton and Millwall continued to run successful youth systems, but City has a dedicated explorer from South London. Brighton are also active recruiters in the area.
It was Arsenal who signed Eze, a player born in Greenwich, 12 miles north of Selhurst Park. He was released by them at the age of 13, again by Fulham on 16 and Millwall at the age of 18 before he found a solid foot at QPR. He has become the poster boy for Palace and their 'South London and proud' identity.
Palace has made herself attractive for South Londoners who withdraw from the Elite-Guehi, signed from Chelsea and Eddie Nketiah from Arsenal-Evenes the natural step for players such as Romain Esse from Millwall, or who want to go on loan, such as Chelsea's Trevoh Chalobah and Ruben Loftus-Cheek.
The fruits of Palace's investment in their academy were clearly in their 6-0 defeat of Chelsea under the age of 21 on the site of Sutton United, although the Star Performer was the Sierra Leone Talent Hindolo Mustapha. It is proof that Palace, like everyone else, is not only looking for talent in their own backyard.
For Cal Murray, author of 'Something in the Water: The Story of England's Football Talent Hotbeds', the emerging talents confirm that street football has always been the best Academy and Cage Football.
“The ball never stops,” he says. 'There are more accents in a tighter room and more contact. There is an extra lead because one of the goals is to embarrass your opponent and not to embarrass you.
'You see it in Zaha with dribbling, in Wan-Bissaka with the one-on-one tackling and in Eze with the way he slides, with balance on the ball. There is almost an arrogance because he is not afraid to have the ball in difficult situations.
“The YouTube skills in a competitive environment has created a hotbed in southern London and it produces a different type of English player than the traditional hotesters of the 70s and 80s, less of the hard transplant, body-on-the-line player and more on the French players of Paris's BanliUes.”
In many ways, the Academy of Palace is exactly what the youth arrangement of City Ploatt Lane was led by Jim Cassell, in the years before the club was purchased by Abu Dhabi. The fans of Palace have the way their club strives to stay locally at a time when the richest global entities are.
One of the biggest weapons in Palace's Armory in Wembley Today will be the Holmesdale fanatics, the Fangroep in Ultras style whose legendary Tifo banners have become a large part of the club's local identity.
A banner rammed famous when Palace played City 11 years ago: “You have the money, we have the soul.” And although city fans would challenge that, one of the characteristic moments of the third FA Cup FA Cup will today be the Tifo or Banner, which is planned for the occasion by fans who have collected £ 40,000 to create it.
The extraordinary £ 13,000 tifo produced for the semi -final against Aston Villa released the image of a seven -year -old who received the shirt of Andros Townsend eight years ago after a victory in the city, above the words: “Take my hand, take my whole life.” The song 'Can't Help Falling in Love' has an age -old meaning for Palace.
This FA Cup-Laatste appearance comes in a period that, for some Holmesdale fanatics, the best of Palace has been since 1990, when they played that heartbreaking 3-3 draw against Manchester United in the showpiece before she lost the repetition.
It has been as topsy-turvy as always-heavy defeats in City and Newcastle in April, in recent weeks over Aston Villa and Tottenham-Mars Glasner has built a team that is organized, but also on the front foot. He was a smart and daring management appointment by Parish and Dougie Freedman, the sports director of Palace with whom Parish has forged such a great working relationship. Freedman's decision to leave for a role in Saudi Arabia creates a new recruitment challenge for the parish when the season ends.
“For me, the success of the club was built on four pillars,” former striker James ScowCroft tells Mail Sport. 'They have had Steve Parish, who has been a brilliant owner and chairman. Oliver Glasner, that pound for Pound is one of the best Premier League managers outside the top three. Dougie Freedman as a brilliant sports director and identification of talent and the Holmesdale fanatics, who have contributed that Palace keeps this identity through and through and through the south.
'They have also mined these rich seam from street football players who are technically brilliant, close control, balance, pace and a change of direction. It has contributed to the fact that Palace becomes one of the most over -performing clubs in the Premier League. '
Eze told men in blazers last year that the cage had given him the resilience to deal with the way clubs rejected him.
“It's the mentality to fail and just go again,” he said. 'Make mistakes and don't be afraid to make mistakes and against the fourth, fifth time, you will get it. That level of resilience in your mind is the thing. '
At De Cage, a schoolboy, says he can be everything a team needs.
“Winger, striker, whatever you need, I'm there,” he says. “Everything I have to say to defenders is:” keep your legs closed “. All I have to say to the keeper is: “Make sure you have your breakfast”.
He will have many skills to demonstrate this weekend. Just don't expect him to stop for the FA Cup final.