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Hull's Sam Clucas goes from £6 an hour in cafe to brink of cup final: 'They said I was too small. I cried myself to sleep... now I'm living the dream'

Sam Clucas takes himself back to 2009. He is 18 years old and it is nine o'clock on a Saturday morning. He is not preparing for a football match. Instead, he is logging into the till of the cafe on the top floor of Debenhams department store in Lincoln city centre.

Between now and five o'clock he will make sandwiches and coffees, clean tables and handle the cash register. He will earn £6.20 per hour.

'I'd pretty much given up on football and I needed the money. But I enjoyed it. I got an A in GCSE maths and I was brilliant on that till,' says the Hull City midfielder, who will play at Old Trafford for the first time on Tuesday against boyhood club Manchester United in the semi-final of the EFL Cup.