CLUB LINK IS NOT ONLY REASON FOR COACHING APPOINTMENTS
RYAN Shawcross and Liam Lawrence as well as Jon Walters, Gareth Owen and Mama Sidibe are all former Stoke City players now back at the club in important roles.
It is more complicated than saying that they haven’t got those jobs because of who they are because, in each case, playing for Stoke helped make them who they are today. It was a huge part of their lives and forged a link to a club they are desperate to succeed.
But, as former captain Shawcross takes charge of the under-21s supported by his old team-mate Lawrence and working with Dave Hibbert and Darren Potter in the old age groups of the academy, it is clearly not the only or main reason that they are back at Clayton Wood and trusted with helping Stoke on the long road back to where they want to be.
Hibbert and Potter are both old pros too but not with Stoke. Hibbert, who has a big role in setting up loan deals, was a striker for clubs including Port Vale and Shrewsbury Town. Potter came through the ranks at Liverpool and spent most of his career with MK Dons, winning five caps for Republic of Ireland.
Chris Cohen, who has just joined the first team set-up, is a hero at Nottingham Forest while Alex Morris, who has moved over from academy to first team, is a lifelong Stoke fan who had spent pretty much his whole working life at Crewe Alexandra until last summer.
“It can’t be (just about being a former Stoke player),” said Owen, who has been academy director since 2019. “They have all gone through their badges. Ryan is a pro licence coach, the others are A licence – all the badges that are on offer, those lads have got.
“Then you combine the craft knowledge, that position-specific knowledge and experience ranging from what it takes to be a Premier League centre-half or a midfield player in the Championship or a National League centre-forward when you’re injured and out of the team.
“Coaching is not just putting a session on and how you develop players on the pitch. Coaching, for us, is developing the person and providing challenge and experiences that professional football brings. It’s trying to educate the players. What you see on the pitch is the culmination of hours, days, weeks and years of hard work.
“A lot of stuff goes into becoming a professional footballer beyond turning up for a training in the morning. These guys can provide that. Dealing with the media, social media, dealing with contracts, working with agents. That is what we need from our coaches with
an ultimate task of trying to make the individual the best version of themselves.”
Owen came through the ranks at Stoke and came back as a youth coach in 2013. Sidibe is a key member of the recruitment department and Walters came back in February, taking over as sporting director. Lawrence returned as an academy coach in 2020 and Shawcross has been back since last summer. Ricardo Fuller coaches in the academy too.
There is an exciting crop of youngsters breaking through at the moment, from 18 year olds Emre Tezgel and Nathan Lowe to Jaden Dixon and Sol Sidibe, both 17, and England youth keeper Tommy Simkin, 19, out on loan at Walsall.
The first four – plus the under-21s squad, including first year scholar Jenson Tortoishell – are with Steven Schumacher in Ireland this week, hoping to show they may already be ready to come into his first team thinking. After all, Lamine Yamal’s presence at the centre of Spain’s run to win Euro 2024 has been a pointer that the big breakthrough can come very young. Yamal only turned 17 on Saturday.
Owen said: “Maybe 16 isn’t as young as it once was. We’ve been aware of Lamine Yamal for a long time in the game. You’ve seen at Barcelona how he’s developed over the course of a season and the output now but when you were watching the Euro under-17s last year from a scouting perspective you knew this kid was absolutely unbelievable.
“People are getting younger. Professional footballers are getting younger to the point when they might make their debut (at 16) but if you look at Lamine Yamal you also look at Pedri, who physically hasn’t been able to cope.
“He played 70 games but has now been injured for the best part of three years. He was such a good player that every team wanted him to play and he went off to the Olympics and everything else. His body wasn’t ready and now he can’t stay fit for a sustained spell.
“So when you talk about patience, it’s not just on the pitch and being forgiving of errors, it’s being patient that they are still developing physically. They still are boys. We have to do that as a collective unit, putting a support network around them that allows them to develop on par with rapid growth you might see on the pitch.
“Sometimes that might be education, sometimes that’s just player liaison, sometimes it’s just telling someone to have a crack at something. But you can only do that if you have continuity of the programme, continuity of staff who have seen these boys grow up and know how they work.”