There’s sometimes as much beautiful symmetry associated with the “beautiful game” off the field as there is on it.

Last week’s signing of Bermudian Nathan Trott by Barclays Premier League stalwarts West Ham United is one such example.

Described by the East London club “as one of the best young goalkeepers around”, the Bermudian has signed a deal that should keep him at West Ham until at least 2018 after he impressed their coaching staff during trials held last summer.

At Upton Park, the dynamic Trott will join another talented young Bermudian, Djair Parfitt-Williams, among the first-team’s reserves as he continues his training with its development squad.

Parfitt-Williams, arguably one of the best under-21 forwards around in Britain, played for West Ham against Lusitanos, of Andorra, in the Europa League qualifiers. He was an also unused substitute in the club’s Premier League match against Aston Villa on Boxing Day.

The competition, rigours and world-class skill levels involved in becoming a professional athlete in any sport are almost unimaginable.

So that two Bermudian footballers are now under contract to one of the most pre-eminent clubs in Britain, and training with their first team, is itself worthy of note and commendation.

But there are also some historical and cultural dynamics at play, which add a special resonance to these young men having signed with West Ham. These factors provide that touch of beautiful symmetry touched upon at the outset.

Just 17 years old, Nathan Trott is exactly the same age Bermudian football legend Clyde Best was when he was recruited by West Ham in 1969.

Best, of course, went on to a stellar career with West Ham as a striker, scoring 47 goals and playing with the club until 1976.

The second Bermudian to play professional football at such an elevated level, after Arnold Woollard, Best was also one of the very first black people to break the colour bar in English sport.

As such, he became a powerful and eloquent symbol of what was now possible for black people as the winds of radical change began to blow through the Western world in the 1960s.

That symbolism had a particularly profound impact in Bermuda, then in the midst of dismantling the barricades of its own racially divided past.

Success at the international level always has a positive role to play in boosting the national morale of any country — but it holds particularly true of the self-esteem and self-regard of those who inhabit micro-states such as Bermuda.

The actuarial tables tell us the odds are always overwhelmingly against Bermudians ever making a significant impression on the world stage in any field whatsoever. The success of supremely talented individuals such as Best show us that odds are in fact made to be defied.

Best’s storied West Ham career brought Bermudians of all races and backgrounds together as perhaps never before to cheer on a world-class sportsman as well as a sterling ambassador for our island.

Throughout his time with the East London club, he provided us with an unflagging sense of national pride. He also generated an awareness among young Bermudians, particularly young black Bermudians, that the world was in the process being remade and the old categories and barriers and artificial limitations no longer applied.

Clyde Best remains an inspiring and transformational figure in both the history of English professional sport and in Bermudian history.

Nathan Trott and Djair Parfitt-Williams, like all Bermudian footballers who have since gone on to international careers, are fully aware they are standing on a giant’s shoulders: a gentle, dignified and unfailingly sportsmanlike giant.

Clyde Best’s prowess on the field was, of course, fully matched by the courage and determination he demonstrated in confronting some very real, and very unpleasant, manifestations of racism that he encountered in the UK.

His pioneering efforts and personal example helped to ensure younger footballers of colour in that country no longer have to contend with the same hostile circumstances, certainly not to the appalling degree he did.

Best is naturally delighted that these latest Bermudian recruits to the English leagues will be playing for his former club.

And Trott and Parfitt-Williams are doubtless fully aware of the celebrated legacy they are now heirs to. There’s no way they couldn’t be. Given that Best remains an icon at Upton Park a full four decades after he played his last game there, they are probably reminded of whose footsteps they are following in on an almost daily basis.

The symmetry and also the symbolism involved are indeed beautiful.