Boyish no more Bailey Cadamarteri 'growing up' fast in Sheffield Wednesday spotlight
The return of young striker Bailey Cadamarteri has offered a shard of silver lining to what has been an immensely difficult few months for Sheffield Wednesday. Alex Miller reports.
There’s a smile that spreads across Bailey Cadamarteri’s face when it’s suggested he has become something of a bulldozer in moments of Championship action this year, bashing defenders about with the confidence of someone who has been doing it for many years. The young Sheffield Wednesday forward, out on duty with the Jamaican national side as we speak, is a young man seemingly enjoying life.
A few minutes chat after a recent game at Wrexham delivered a realisation that the goalscoring effort seen that afternoon was made by a youngster still very much making his way in life but presented Cadamarteri as someone who is more comfortable in talking to nosy critics with microphones stuffed beneath his nose.
There remains a charming boyishness - Cadamarteri only turned in May - but there’s no question that he’s grown in the 630 days between his first and most recent goals in Wednesday colours. There’s no suggestion of literal growth, but somehow he seemed taller than he’d ever been when fielding questions at the Racecourse Ground. It’s a maturity seen on the field as well, with manager Henrik Pedersen having described a more rounded approach to football and life since his return from a loan stint full of learning at Lincoln City last season.
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Asked whether he feels a different player than the one lent out to Sincil Bank, he replies with a nod. “I do,” he said. “I went away and have come back with a lot more experience, more games, more goals. So I've just come back more ready to hit the ground running and help the team by scoring more goals and contributing. I want to be looking towards 10, 15, 20.
“I just feel like I'm growing up. I feel like I'm playing better because I'm playing games and while I'm working hard on the training pitch with certain things. But I know that at the end of the day it's about replicating the work that you do in the games and performing.”
The noticeable growth in Cadamarteri the player and the person is unsurprising. His loan at Lincoln was a success in that it gave him the opportunity to gain match minutes in a tough and brutal division but saw his wall-to-wall contribution stuttered by both selection policy and by injury. Now, he’s a full international, the subject of seven-figure bids from other Championship clubs and the figure seemingly entrusted with the role of leading the line in Wednesday’s push for points.
And while the sorry thinning of Wednesday’s squad will have no doubt have contributed to that upturn in responsibility, Cadamarteri looks at it as one he was always preparing for. Now-departed Owls coach Neil Thompson was something of a mentor for the West Yorkshire-born forward and would check in regularly throughout his time away, taking in talks not only about football but about life. In an interview with The Star during his time with Lincoln, he made no backward step in making clear his eyes were placed firmly on an eventual spot back in the Wednesday line-up.
“The plan was always to go out on loan, to come back and play a role in the Championship,” he said. “It's thanks to the gaffer for putting that trust in me and hopefully I'm repaying some of that faith... I've gone from being a young player just starting out the last time I was here and now I feel a lot more like a more senior player which is a great feeling.
“It's just experience. Being on loan in League One was good for me because as well as games, it was a lot more of a physical league and that experience has helped me bring more of that to my game. I'm taking everything as it comes, working on the things Henrik wants me to work on and trying to put it into the games.”
A more worldly-wise Cadamarteri is one that has been noted in the Wednesday dugout. Pedersen was assistant to Danny Röhl when the then-teenager was plucked out of the under-21s to be thrown into a side finding its feet in what would become a remarkable great escape from relegation to League One. Within weeks he’d enjoyed a run of three goals in four Championship games and set things up for Ike Ugbo to emerge in January and take the goalscoring limelight.
With his 2025/26 account opened, there’s a sense that he can push on this season and that while chances to score may not prove to be as non-stop abundant as he might like, he’s offering plenty more to the cause than in the rough-and-not-quite ready performances early doors in his career.
“It was good for him to go to another club and get regular first team football,” Pedersen told The Star. “It has given him a big, big value and since he came back I think he has reflected a little more over life; over football, his life, his career, than he did before. How conscious he is now over a gameplan, over his own development, has improved a lot. In general his interest in developing as a human has increased a lot and also his interest to improve as a player has increased a lot.
“He now wants to understand what you have to do in the game; when you have to ask for the ball, when to stay away, when you want to run into the box. It's not a good idea if the defender can see you and the ball at the same time, so when do you stay at the back of an opponent. When do you run? When do you stay away? There is things in his finishing; for the first post, the back post, in the cut-back area.
“I think this interest in general to grow and to learn, he has improved a lot. We see a young guy who improves a lot but has still a lot to learn. Like a lot of the young guys, it is natural, they have some action and then they sleep a little bit, then they have action again. This ability to stay online for 90 or 95 minutes, he still has to improve again, but he is in a really good direction.”
He’s one of many to have been thrown into added responsibility in what are difficult circumstances. But for Bailey Cadamarteri and a handful of other young players, it may well have come at just the right time. There’s a place at the World Cup to fight for, after all.