What happened to Arsenal legend Quincy Owusu-Abeyie?
FORMER Arsenal academy player, Quincy Owusu-Abeyie’s football career never panned out the way he had once hoped.
The journey he had with The Gunners, he admits himself, prevented him going in a direction that would have led to a very different life.
Who is Quincy Owusu-Abeyie?
Born in Amsterdam, Netherlands, his parents are both Ghanaian.
Owusu-Abeyie grew up in Bijlmermeer, which he says himself is regarded locally as “the hood”.
It was clear from an early age that he loved to play football and spent most of his time playing with friends.
With his surroundings, the temptation was there for a lot of negativity in his life and for it to head down the wrong path, but fortunately for him signing for Arsenal kept him away from all of that.
Who did Quincy Owusu-Abeyie play for?
Quincy Owusu-Abeyie was signed into the Ajax youth system at the age of nine before being released at sixteen for alleged attitude problems.
This led to him signing for Arsenal, where he was eventually to be offered his first professional contract, on his 18th birthday.
Sadly for Owusu-Abeyie, he struggled to break into the first team, with Arsenal having such a wealth of stars such as Thierry Henry, Emmanuel Adebayor and Dennis Bergkamp.
He became a bit of a football-journeyman for the rest of his playing career with stints at Spartak Moscow, Celta Vigo, Birmingham City, Malaga and Panathinaikos amongst some of the clubs on his resume.
Owusu-Abeyie headed back to his native Netherlands for his final swansong with amateur side SV Robinhood.
It was a career that promised so much from the skilful youngster who clearly had a lot of natural talent.
He never really settled anywhere, never playing more than thirty-eight games for any one club, before falling out of love with the game completely.
Despite playing for Netherlands at youth level, he opted to play for Ghana at senior level, playing seventeen times and scoring two goals.
What happened to Quincy Owusu-Abeyie?
In 2016, Dutch airwaves were playing a series of tracks from a new artist called “Blow”.
The rapper seemed to want to stay out of the limelight, wearing balaclavas, sunglasses and even a black medical mask in videos to conceal his identity.
As Blow’s popularity increased, so did the interest in the mystique about the rapper’s true identity.
In January 2020, the mask was finally removed, unveiling himself as ex-Arsenal footballer Quincy Owusu-Abeyie.
He retired from football at the age of 30 to pursue a career of being a rapper full-time.
When he was living in Russia, playing for Spartak Moscow, he built himself his own studio to take his music to another level.
Music is a major part of his life, as he says “I love music. I listen to music every day. Wake up, music. Go to bed, music. Shower, music. Every day, music.”
Blow, as he is now known, said he won’t miss football at all saying “This is my job now. This is who I am.”
You can check out Blow’s music by following him on Instagram @itsblowmusic.