[Jamie]
Hello and welcome to CoachCast by England Football Learning, the coaching podcast that brings you insight from people across the game. Today we're chatting to Stephen Daly, MBE, our soon to be national para talent manager, to discover his journey so far and his top tips for coaches.
[Louise]
Hello Stephen.
[Stephen]
Good morning Louise. Good morning Jamie. Thanks for having me.
[Louise]
Nice to have you on. Can we make a start by seeing if you can paint a picture for the listeners about your varied career, what you've done so far and what you're currently doing?
[Stephen]
Yeah Louise, so I've probably got two different types of journeys. Obviously my professional career that I do day to day, which I've done for about 20 years, working for Preston City Council in varied roles within the City Council and then obviously I've got my football playing career, retired playing back in 2019 and my last game for England was the World Cup final, managed to lead England into World Cup finals, which was a dream to try and win a trophy when I set out in 1995 when I made my debut and then more recently moving into my coaching career over the last number of years with a head coach's role at the FA leading the Parsi side of Futsal squad. Recently I was successful and getting appointed as the para talent manager for the FA, which is an exciting role and gives me the opportunity to help develop young para players with an impairment into the England pathway, which looks at talent ID. So when we first discover talented young players and then we help support them on their journey across the four corners all the way to hopefully one day represent England at the senior level. So we've got six national para teams. So it's a little bit come full circle for me because I made my debut at 19 as a young player myself. I was the youngest then and I think football and the structures when football have changed massively over the last three decades for me. So having the opportunity to go back and assist someone else on their journey now to hopefully one day represent England, which is the greatest honor that anybody can have. So I think I'm quite excited about that.
[Jamie]
That's fantastic and a fantastic 25 year career. Does that make that?
[Stephen]
Yeah, 25 years. I was the longest serving England captain in history. I made 143 appearances for England. Unfortunately, my body just started giving up near the end, Jamie, which happens to all of us. But to finish my career in a World Cup final was not many people will ever experience. I was desperate to win a major title for England, but we've come a long way. I remember my first day, my first game, Jamie, and we lost 8-0. So to go from 8-0 to competing in a World Cup final has come a long way, what we were doing, but great journey, great memories and now I'm just lucky I've got an opportunity to help other young people, male-female experience a little bit of probably what I had and hopefully they can go on to win it.
[Jamie]
It's fantastic. I think two World Cup finals is nothing to brush over at all, like fantastic achievements there and over the 25 year kind of playing and then obviously coaching now as well. You might be able to have some top tips I think out of that experience and as this is a coaching podcast, listeners could be on the way to training right now as they're listening in. So I think it'd be good to give them some great advice straight away. What do you think, Louise?
[Louise]
Yeah, definitely. We'll call this your arrival activity. What we're going to do is we're going to give you 30 seconds and we're going to ask you to give as many top tips as you can for coaches. Okay?
30 seconds starts now.
[Stephen]
So my advice would be, always be the best version of yourself. Surround yourself with good people that will give you advice, but only you have to be prepared to make your own decisions. I always say, never forget where you come from. Always remain humble, have some humility, be prepared to challenge yourself before you're prepared to challenge players. And I talk about this thing called the uncomfortable zone. So the more you learn about yourself is when you're in this uncomfortable zone that you can make comfortable.
[Louise]
Fantastic. It went a little bit over after the whistle, but I think that was worth listening to. It certainly was.
[Jamie]
Right, well, we'll move on to then. This section is basically, Stephen, all about you. So we've kind of got a little bit of tiny insight into your journey and your job roles at the moment, but let's really delve deeper and find out a bit more about you. And we kind of start off, I suppose, go back to the very start, back to your childhood and thinking what was your first experience of football like?
[Stephen]
Yeah, so, well, the listeners will probably tell that I was born in Belfast. Really, the two big sports at the time was boxing and football. You know, there were some great role models, George Best, the 1980s Northern Ireland team, which Billy Bingham, sadly who's passed away, really inspired a nation about the love of this game football. But we grew up playing football in the streets. If we couldn't kick a ball, we kicked a can. That was the games that we played. But yeah, we would play all ours. My first real competitive was never letting my brother beat me. He was younger. He was a right footer and I was a left footer. So we tended to always match up because we were on opposite sides. But yeah, he was the first one that really taught me about not losing because you know, the minute you lost to your younger brother, it was probably bragging rights. Whereas if your older brother wins, that's just a given. So yeah, Northern Ireland was a tough place, you know, and really it taught me about this whole thing about no surrender. That was something we grew up believing that you were never allowed to back down. You were never allowed to give up. We were taught about hard work. My father worked for British Telecom for about 30 plus years. So this whole thing about loyalty, about committing to something and family, they were the things that really stood by us. You learn to look after each other. You learn to be part of something that was bigger than just you. And I think when I look back on my DNA as a young person, I think a lot of that came from where I grew up, what it was about and the whole meaning of coming from Northern Ireland before I moved and obviously set myself up in England.
[Louise]
So you've played informally while you were growing up, but were there any kind of organised opportunities to play?
[Stephen]
Well my father run the town team with some other dads. We played organised formal games for the local town and then we played in this tournament, usually known as the Milk Cup in Northern Ireland where we represented our towns at the time against other professional clubs from England, from Europe, from overseas. But in them days, believe it or not, there were no such things as coaching badges. I can't remember my father or any of his other counterparts having any coaching qualifications. The big thing in them days were, could you run? And I remember in pre-season and training, I think it was about an hour before you seen the football. So the first hour was, how far can you run? How fast can you run? And then suddenly we'll get the ball out and we'll play a bit of football. And then funny enough, when my dad would work for British Telecom when he used to work on a Saturday, he would get me out of bed as the oldest to go and run my brother's team. So as a 14 year old, I was then going down to manage my brother's team, which was under 11s. So again, no qualifications, but pick the team, go out and play. And sometimes if you had to be referee, you had to be referee because again, there was no formal officials, but the result would still stand. So yeah, different to what it is now.
[Jamie]
How did you find that experience then being so young and then in the coaching spotlight? So there might be a lot of young coaches just starting out on our playmaker qualification and just thinking, is there any advice that you could give a really young coach?
[Stephen]
It's challenging. At the time, probably now when I think back and I was covering, you know, the opposition would have an adult there as a dad. And again, that could be quite intimidating because obviously you're a young person. You're still learning the game yourself. I think the good thing is I go back to my point about being you. So what makes you the person that you are? Be prepared that you're going to make mistakes. I always remember the biggest question is when do you make a sub and who do you bring off and who do you put on? And the rationale of why you're doing that, I think you're always worried that you're going to make a mistake. And I think sometimes you can't, we talk about, you can't control the uncontrollable. Things will happen in matches that are outside what you can control. But then it's about how you probably manage that situation or manage expectations, maybe manage disappointment because as a young coach, you're going to be disappointed yourself. So I think until you start to learn a little bit about your strengths and being prepared to surround yourself with good people that you can go and ask for advice. Be prepared, mistakes will happen in football matches. Your decisions may not always be the right decisions. We talk about this thing called reflection now. I never did it as a young player, as a young coach. When the game was over, the game was over. But I think a lot more as I've got older, I start to reflect on what happened in the game, what happened with individuals, what was my reaction, how did I communicate? And I'm quick now to look at myself before I look at other people. I think before when you're younger, you'll blame other people. Well, we lost that game because you never scored or we lost that game because you let it in. But it was funny, someone said to me the other day, you know, we talked about it's not necessarily one person's fault if you concede a goal. If you actually analyze the game and break it down, there are probably other aspects that have happened in the lead up to the goal. So suddenly you look at other people's position, whereas really being critical, you'll always look at one person. I think if you really start to analyze yourself and analyze a game, you start to realize there are other aspects of the game that's happening that you don't pick up on as a coach, because you tend to watch the ball, not actually everything else that's around it. Because the game is quite a big game until you start to break it down.
[Jamie]
Yeah, it's very difficult. Like there's so much going on. Trying to have like an observational focus, it can be quite, quite a challenge. Did you find that over the years that you've managed to improve in that regard, and maybe tell people how you might have done that?
[Stephen]
I still think I'm learning, Jamie, if I'm being honest, even at the international stage, I think the difficulty is the game, the game can be very emotional for players, spectators, for coaches. And I think the bit that I'm trying to evolve is how do we try and remove our emotions from the game as a coach? Because everybody gets involved in the heat of the moment, if it's a close game, but as a coach, it's how do you take your emotions away from it, so that you can make clear decisions. And actually, if I think about it in the job that I do here, emotions can make difficult decisions for the wrong reasons. I'm not sure how hard it is for other people, they need to find a way of doing it. I try to look at my assistant coaches, I try and look at my other support staff that can help me pull back. bit rather than now maybe at halftime or at full-time going straight in and talking to the players we try and give the players a little bit of distance so at halftime we'll probably give the players the first couple of minutes to themselves because of the heat of the moment they're emotional and then as staff we try to go and gather our thoughts and reconnect our emotions to say right what we clearly gone in to say ready for the next half and I think that's good sometimes as a coach to give yourself that little bit of a breathing space because if you go straight into it before you know it you're actually given instructions based on how it feels not actually what you're seeing or what other people are seeing I think that's good as well that you've got their opinion before you clearly go in and do what you do so I think there's different elements I definitely that scenario I'm really especially international level because the pressure to win an international game could be the difference again to a final or get knocked out of a tournament.
[Jamie]
It's a really good point that that really goes across all levels of the game is being able to try and take a step back and be a bit more objective and might be that yeah you might be looking to might have an assistant or it might be that you might have parents that are on the touchline that might be able to help and then just letting the team giving them a bit of ownership over thinking about how it's gone talking amongst themselves and then being a bit more objective when we all come together. So if we go back a little bit more to when you was younger Steven you started coaching then and leading aside at 14 is it alright to ask when did your eyesight start to go there and what was your experience like there that led you then into partially sighted football.
[Stephen]
Yeah there was a bit of a transition from primary school into secondary school I was actually playing for Glen Torren at the time I was in Glen Torren's Academy which is the Irish League and I played left back for Glen Torren I was quite quick I was never the biggest I'm only 5 foot 7 now so quite a good player physically fit and physically quick when I made the transition to high school it was actually my mom started noticing that I was holding the book closer when I was reading I was missing stuff on the board and the Glen's actually said he's missed the ball in the air a couple of times so when the balls gone up he's missed it so at the time they just thought he might need contacts he might need glasses obviously get him checked and I remember the day when my mom took me to the opticians and they were showing different cards I was given what I thought they were different animals which turns out they weren't even animals for a start so then that was when the penny dropped I think it was about 12 13 and then I started having to go and see a consultant and they were carrying out loads of different tests before they realized that the cones which do your distance in detail in the middle of your eye people that wear glasses the cones slightly bend and obviously the glasses realign them that gives them the detail the clarity what they noticed was my cones were disappearing so they weren't there but they diagnosed me with a condition called cone dystrophy star guards so it's just a genetic condition that affects young people which what they said is over time like macula degeneration eventually your distance will go so at the time when I was young it was not bad but obviously as the age has progressed then grads it's deteriorated like anybody would with age and that was a real difficult time school started becoming hard because it started not reading the board and in them days there was no technology no fancy computers but the one thing I was always good at was football it didn't affect my game apart from I started missing the old ball that went over the top and then when it came out and the Glens fanned out obviously I played my last game for Glen Torn at 17 in the cup final and then I got released and I think that was the hardest bit one being a young person to now you're being told that you've got a disability so that you're different straightaway growing up in a mainstream education where all your mates are normal whatever that is it's so many unknowns you I had no one with the same condition that could give me advice a lot of frustration a lot of anger a lot of resentment and then you're being told now you're not going to be a footballer and at the time where I thought there was a couple of clubs looking at me and then obviously living in Belfast that the problems in Belfast at the time in the 80s and 90s there were so many temptations because again there weren't many opportunities for young people unless you had a good education. well clearly leaving school with no GCSEs put me at a massive disadvantage and then putting me with an impairment put me at a greater disadvantage so I wasn't it wasn't a good place it was a combination of different things that were leading to what am I going to do here and trouble was only round the corner so that's when the decision was made at 17 by my parents which I resented at the time was to get them out of Northern Ireland and I ended up going to a college in Loughborough and that supported young people with visual impairments so that's how I ended up being around that world of being visually impaired.
[Louise]
So when you moved and started going to Loughborough College when did football reintroduce itself into your life?
[Stephen]
Louise has stopped playing I resented football if I'm being honest I didn't play anymore and it was round about just 18 and a half I played five a side and yeah there was someone there from the county FA seen me and found out I was visually impaired but couldn't believe it because the way I played five a side so suddenly the pitch is smaller the rules are different I grew up playing street football so five a side was a dream for me I had two good feet I had an unbelievable left foot and I was that small to the ground no one could get near me and so it was just perfect and yeah I just someone asked me about a league would I play in a league and I went to my first ever league tournament a cup tournament for Loughborough and we got to the final and in all honesty I just run the show.
[Louise]
And how did that feel like being back in football again? I had a lot of anger so actually it was a way of channeling my anger my release I didn't really have a sense of where to be how to belong be part of something again but at the time I didn't know myself if I'm being honest I didn't know who I was how it affected me what I was doing so I was sort of still in that transitional period of being a teenager but trying to understand what it's like to have a disability I could only get used to it when I could talk about it I still couldn't talk about it till I was about 20-21 so that was the hardest bit.
[Jamie]
It's a lot to go through that transition is obviously massive when do you feel that you felt more comfortable with your situation and falling maybe a little bit more in love with the game?
[Stephen]
Me and my debut at 19 we went to Barcelona for the Euros we didn't win a game Jamie so that made me think yeah that actually got me thinking I wasn't bothered about if I'm being honest at the time I didn't know what it meant to play for England yeah I just got on the plane went to Barcelona played we lost every game because we didn't play this game futsal at the time we thought we were good five-a-side players and then when I watched this whole game of futsal these Belarusians taking 12-meter penalties the Spanish playing tip-tap football they just played us off the pitch we all went back committed to do more trying to get futsal going and we brought in a couple of new younger players and then yeah Tony Larkin made me captain at 21 and then I think the penny dropped that actually hold on I'm now captain of an England team and there's a little bit responsibility here but I want to win I always said if I'm going to play I'm going to play to win and believe it or not we won the bronze medal so going from our first tournament to not winning a game to two years later to be in the semi-final and beat Italy but then that was the moment I made the decision to commit and be comfortable with who I was and then realized that I've got a talent that I want to share but not just with my colleagues but on the international stage and then I could talk about being Partially-sighted because I realized I was representing the Partially-sighted team so I think that was a big moment for me Jimmy to do that and be around other young people that had a visual impairment so I think you have to accept it.
[Louise]
Do you think any of your coaches gave you any standout messages that kind of helped with that realization as well?
[Stephen]
Not necessarily for being visually impaired the best thing is when I played for England I've only ever played on the three England managers Ian Bateman, Graeme Keighley and Tony Larkin I think it was more they treated you as a player I think that was the key bit for me I think when I packed in playing football it was because they knew I had an impairment and actually they didn't know what to do whereas when I played for England well they knew I had an impairment but we're here to play football so it was a little bit it flipped it on its head a little bit so actually being Parsi-sided wasn't the issue anymore it was actually about you've got to be good and how do we get good well how would you develop any player so really yes you have to be aware the eye condition or the impact that has on the game but actually you can only get better if you're physically better technically better you make good decisions psychologically better and this whole aspect of social you can only win a team game as a team and that took me ages to learn that the early days was very much give me the ball I'll put it in the net but that that took me years to learn how I need to make other players better not just about making myself better
[Jamie]
To just explain a little bit like the classifications with and the partially cited team if that's right yeah Jimmy so we play futsal and most of the listeners if you understand futsal it's the European version of five-a-side the UK are the only country still that play the traditional five-a-side game the rest of the world play futsal hockey sized nets by lines kick-ins size for football obviously you've got foul count so the partially cited game is similar to the mainstream game the only difference is in our game the sighted keeper is restricted to the D in the mainstream game the sighted keeper can play out as a sweeper or a fly keeper and the keeper when they distribute the ball has to bounce before the halfway line in the partially cited game in the mainstream game they can distribute it the full length of the pitch so they're the only two differences between the mainstream futsal game and the partials with regards to the classification system which is linked to the Paralympics to play international futsal you have to be either a b3 or a b2 now what does that mean my simplest way of summarizing it is any listener that's shortly sighted is got 60 60 vision for someone to be a b3 they will be classified as six over sixty basically what that means is they've got ten percent vision off a fully sighted person a b2 is got five percent so I'm classed as a b2 player because of age my eyesight deteriorated so in my good eye with correction I've got three over sixty so basically we can still see distance but we can't see any of the detail for me to see what you would see I have to see it at three meters so if the football was at sixty meters away and you could see it perfect for me to see what you see I have to see at three meters so we have to adapt how we play in this country in England we don't really worry about classification we just want people to play so our rules in our National League is are you partially sighted or visually impaired you can play if that means you can see greater we don't care because only we just want to get people playing the game and then you only need to worry about classifications at the international level so to get into the England talent pathway then we'll be a little bit more right we now need to know this what you can see and how you go we just want people to play the game if you're good enough then we'll support you what the classification looks like so it is a bit of a minefield I'm sure people that watch the Paralympics when you hear all these different phrases b2 b3 ft1 ft2 for CP I think it can blow people's mind but it's just the fairest way that people will compete based on their impairment
[Jamie]
That's great to be able to get the insight into that and really understand it a little bit more for any listeners that are tuning in maybe they're partially sighted as well. How could they get involved? Where would they go?
[Stephen]
So there's a couple of different avenues. Obviously your local county FA should have some knowledge. It may be sporadic depending where you are in the country because some people develop games differently. If you go on the FA website there's a whole section around para football. The other one is British Blind Sports but it covers every single sport but again it's another good way that people can link into the infrastructure of what blind and partially sighted people can take part in. You can go on the partially sighted football league. They have got their own official website so again there's round about 10 teams up and down the country from London up to the North West, Merseyside, Nancewich, RNC College and the league just finished this year and the great thing about that Jamie, the league winners played the cup winners live on BT Sport at St George's Park. When you talk about what level and what platform we're putting these players on that's the level. We have the European championships this year in Turkey. We've just come back from a tour in Benidorm. We got beaten the final by Spain 1-0 but again we just wanted to have some young players experience what it's like to play for England.
[Louise]
From a coaching point of view is there as many opportunities for partially sighted coaches?
[Stephen]
Unfortunately not Louise. Believe it or not I am the first head coach with a disability within in the setup but that's great news because now we've opened the door so I think the FA are really committed to the next stepping stone for transition of players or for coaches. I think the coach education system is getting better about how we support individuals through their coaching journey but I think coach education and awareness is getting better. I think there's opportunities where mentors, the FA have a number of mentors at different places that can support young people with disability if coaching is what they want to do but again it's about going back to I always say know about yourself, know about what your strengths are and where people can help you because if we don't talk about it or we don't ask for the help then it's difficult for people that don't have a disability to understand how they can help people on their journey and I think that's the starting point for me is we have to be able to talk, we have to be able to ask the questions and I think we have to remove this fear factor where people are scared to ask how can we help you, what do you need and create a safe environment like we do in football to play but a safe environment that that we can talk about coaching. Are we there yet? Definitely not but the wheels are moving in the right direction and I think the more good role models we get out there the better and Ian Bateman who never worked with disabled people before who was my head coach, what a challenge for him not only to understand playing but now to start understanding how people's condition changes body shape so if you think about the traditional way of coaching a player well if someone's got an impairment their body shape will have to change because where they see the ball if they've got CP their left the right side might be affected so suddenly when I talked to Ian now about the early days what it was like for him as a coach it was mind-blowing because he has to understand the impairment and develop players so I would challenge anybody mainstream or disability if you really want to challenge yourself as a coach try and work with players with disabilities because it will really get you to think outside the box you will be uncomfortable and I go back to that how do you know about yourself unless you're on an uncomfortable situation and you will make mistakes and again I've gone and worked in the mainstream game of an academy and that's a challenge for me so I would flip it on its head and say will you come and try and work in our environment where it's going to challenge you as a coach.
[Louise]
Yeah and I think I suppose the main thing to take from that is to when managing difference of any kind it's kind of getting to know the actual player and getting to know what they need and just kind of spending time to kind of figure out how you can help and kind of how you can develop them so that doesn't just go for any kind of visual impairment or disability it's for anything I guess I think it's just understanding your players.
[Stephen]
Listen the best bit for me is what relationships have you got with people if you don't actually develop a relationship with people how do you know what they're going to be like on a pitch how do they know what they can trust in you you've got to be honest with players I think if you're a good coach you create the right environment where people can support each other I think it's about how you make a safe environment so that people can talk about it and not be afraid to open up and be a little bit vulnerable I think people are always worried about being vulnerable because it exposes them as being weak but actually when you know people's vulnerabilities then I think that that for me is the moment where you've made a real connection because people are willing to share that information with you go back to my point it took me nearly seven eight years to allow coaches and people to ask me about my impairment well suddenly now I'm vulnerable and I think that's a real moment in time when you've done that and you can really delve deep but then it's about being responsible what you do with it as a coach I think that's the crucial bit.
[Jamie]
Some fantastic insight there Stephen do you think some of those things are what you would recommend would make a good coach?
[Stephen]
I think if you ever look at a team or a place of work their biggest asset is people so if you want people to perform then you really have to get into what are their motivating factors are playing but the whole big thing for me when I work with our England lads is belief self-confidence in themselves as young people or as players to really be able to express themselves we talk about this go and play and not have any risks but then suddenly you want to control the whole environment and control the game I think sometimes you just got to trust people and give them the belief that they can actually just go and be themselves either on the pitch or off the pitch and most of the time we have young people believe or not is off the pitch but we do very little coaching with them off the pitch it all tends to be what we're training or we're playing a lot of what we do with the England lads when we're with them is 90% is off the pitch because there's very little coaching we can do during the game but we want to give them all the weapons that they can go and just be them and go and implement what we've been doing on the football pitch so I think the social area is a big area for me that we probably don't value as much as technical physical psychological but I always think when people are in a good social environment and they're happy you get the best from them.
[Jamie]
I think that helps bring your players inspirational opportunities.
[Stephen]
Massively I always believe even when I played up to 43 I retired at the age of 43 I was like a 21 year old again because I just wanted to be happy and if you're happy and I think you're enjoying the environment you're in you perform at your best and suddenly then you can go and express yourself I go back to my last four major tournaments I played in four semi-finals and two finals I always say as a coach when we get you to that point there's nothing else we can do you have to believe in yourself and your colleagues that you have got everything possible to go and win it great memories if I ever look now all my greatest memories have been around football and some of the closest people have got around me is because of football because I've been in them environments but if I look back when I was a teenager it was some of the worst so it's about being in the right place at the right time with the right people. Medals are medals listen a medal for me is a piece of metal the one thing people can't give you the memories they're the bits that'll stay with you no matter what you do.
[Jamie]
Talking about memories there a really big one for you a couple of years ago you was awarded an mbe for your services to para football and futsal how did that feel?
[Stephen]
First of all when I got the letter I thought it was a wind up because it was during the covid pandemic they didn't come in the post because obviously there was the whole thing with the pandemic so got it in an email and at the time I didn't know anybody had done anything and lo and behold Ian Bateman and my wife Sonia had been doing a lot of work behind the scenes which I wasn't aware of but it listen when you play in sport you very rarely get individual honors so to have someone recognize your career your investment in the game what I do away from the game so I do a lot in academies and at grassroots football I don't just coach with England I'm passionate about making the game a better place for everyone it was just a great honor and a pinch myself because I go back to me early part of this podcast gma where I was just a young lad growing up in Belfast from a rough area never in a million years did I think I'd play over 100 games for England or go on to get recognized for an mbe but I have to say the mbe for me is as much for other people that helped me on my journey because I couldn't have done it what other people my family my coaches my friends my teammates so it's a recognition for me for other para players who sacrifice just as much as me I haven't sacrificed anything more than any other international player but to have the honor is a great honor listen you couldn't put it into words but receiving it from Prince William the president of the fa was just a an amazing day really but it doesn't change me as a person remain humble never forget where you're from.
[Jamie]
Did you think that you'd ever reach where you are now when you was younger at all?
[Stephen]
Never - listen it never if I'd have played for the Glen Torren I thought I'd made it and I would have probably been happy with that and this is where I do the full circle I now accept if I wasn't visually impaired I would not have achieved anywhere near what I've achieved so actually having a visual impairment has made me the person I am has given me the success that I've got and the key bit is whether it was visually impaired or not you have to work hard at what you want to get just because I had a visual impairment I just had to work that little bit harder and I had to realize that no wasn't an answer so when I wanted to go on a coaching course and the answer was no well why not I want to go on the course well you won't be able to do this well who said I can't do that but I just got to work harder at it or I've got to put in extra time to do it but I genuinely believe if you're passionate about it and you want to get somewhere in life you can't accept no as an answer you have to question why not and you better be prepared that you'll have to work harder than someone else and I do say that to a lot of our young players be prepared that this is going to take effort and if you're willing to do that then I always say good things happen to good people so set yourself a dream and believe in it and keep chipping away at it because if not you're going to walk away the rest of your life
[Louise]
Yeah and I think um I think one of the other really great things about what you've achieved is letting other people see that there's a route that you can go to and what you can achieve and kind of I think things like that are really inspirational to people and also I think just hearing from you that it's not just straightforward and there will be challenges along the way but if you kind of dig deep you can achieve.
[Jamie]
Yeah I think um taking in all of your experience so you 143 appearances for England, head coach as well, and of course now moving pretty soon into your new role as the national para talent manager. How are you going to use those experiences in that role to help the next generation of players pull through into the partially sighted game?
[Stephen]
I just stick with the principles that I've got, is that I can only be me, I can't be anybody else. I think being able to provide people with opportunities on their journey and that you play a small part in that is something that you should take as a responsibility to do that. I can only give people advice, so again I go back to where you can share advice but at the end of the day you have to make your own decisions. So you can prepare people as much as you think but only it's in your hands, your journey. Louise is right, you're going to get knock backs, you're going to have challenges but are we, as the FA, as coaches, are we preparing young people on that journey? Either psychologically, physically, technically, socially. We talk about the four corners and I genuinely believe when I look back at my career I've experienced all of them, to the highest, to the lowest and I think as coaches I think that we have a lot of empowerment and a lot of responsibility on young people and we have to treat that with respect. I think we have to be able to be prepared that we take that challenge on and I think we just have to be prepared that we do the best that we can do. We may not always get it right but if you look at English football across all the international teams there's no coincidence that all the men, the women, the Paris squads are all competing at the highest level and are all potential medal winners so that tells me that these four corners, whatever way we do it and how we educate our coaches is making a difference and we have to obviously look after the young people to make sure that we do give them those opportunities to do it and if they come off the reels, which I did as a young player, how do we put them back on rather than, well that's it. I think sometimes we're too quick maybe to give up on young people but we have to understand that there will be challenges on their journey.
[Jamie]
Brilliant, thank you. I think we'll put some of your experience and some of your knowledge to the test next.
[Louise]
Yeah, so the next section that we're going to take a look at is our community questions. We get a lot of questions about preparing a team for a tournament. So obviously you've worked in tournaments at a high up level but is there anything that you can pass down as ideas for grassroots coaches?
[Stephen]
One thing that I always remember from Graham Keeley, who was my second England manager, unbelievable coach but really taught me about this responsibility of being an England captain because obviously we play tournament football all the time, we don't play in groups but it was about always breaking it down. So setting yourself objectives as a coach rather than everybody thinks, oh what does the final look like? But there's a process to how to get to a final and he talked about climbing this ladder. There's no way you can enter a tournament suddenly go and win it. You have to learn what are the stepping stones to get you there. So we always talked about breaking it down to what does your first game look like? So if you're entering a tournament, what does your first game look like? You then talk about how do you win a group? So what does the group stages look like? And then when you get out of the group, how do you win a knockout game? Because then people talk about this thing called pressure. I don't really, listen this could be me, but I don't really buy into this thing called pressure. I don't know what it is. I talk about uncomfortable. It feels uncomfortable because the game has meaning rather than, oh if we lose that game in the group, well now it's uncomfortable because, and this is where I think as a coach you come into play because as players you start to overthink the game a little bit when actually you go back to what your default is. Well no, this is what we did in training. This is what you're good at. This is what you have to believe you can do. And then suddenly when you start understanding the process of what a tournament looks like, you can start to paint the picture of where your players can peak or where they can drop off. I think the problem is again, you go back into the emotions takeover or we've won our first game. We're in a knockout. So emotions, we get dragged into the game and then ultimately you learn how do you get to a final? And I suppose where I'm at with my squad, how do you win a final? Because it's a different experience. Suddenly it brings different uncomfortable moments. So as players do we falter? Are we still able to play under that environment? Because the final could be at a different venue, spectators get bigger, TV comes in. So I always think about as a coach, always go back to what your default was. What are you trying to do with your team? What are their key strengths? What do you believe in your players? Just because the environment's different. So you might be traveling to a tournament. You might have to stay overnight at a tournament. As a coach, it's not now always about what happens on the pitch. There are other aspects that you have to take into play in preparation before you go to the tournament. And then the key bit, what have you learned after it? So if you go again, what would you do different? What did you do well? Why would you change it? What would make it better? And I suppose a lot of that is what you're getting from your players. So I constantly always ask our England players, go on then, what have we learned as players and as staff and as squad? If you don't talk about it, then you just start to make assumptions. As a coach, you only get your opinion rather than everybody's opinion. But now you as the coach have to make decisions. And I think that's probably where I would break it down and look at it that way.
[Louise]
So one of the other things that we get a lot of questions about is how to manage difference in your players. So that might be different skill sets or ability, or it could even be things like disability like we've mentioned before. But what would your advice be on managing difference from a coach's point of view?
[Stephen]
So I like different, if I'm being honest. I think sometimes we expect that every player has to fit a certain model. When I first started playing for England, I was different. I had a left foot and I was prepared to beat players. Some coaches like this traditional type of player. Well, we want big players. We want small ones. But I think difference for me is great. So as a coach, I'd say, how do you embrace it? How do you feel that difference can make you a better coach because it's going to challenge you for a start because you're not used to someone coming with that particular skill, someone that's very much maybe a maverick, someone that's maybe had a different upbringing, come from a different area. And I think you as the coach have to accept that challenge because as a coach, sometimes we probably think, oh, I don't want that. It's the unknown. And actually, I'm not sure how I will cope. But actually, by you being able to think, I'm going to have to think outside the box here. I'm going to have to do something a little bit different. Because again, I go back to, you have to understand the player and what they're bringing. And the only way you can do that is to have a relationship with a person. And maybe it's about how do you get behind the front of what they're maybe portraying to you. So I think sometimes as coaches we might give up because the challenge is too hard. It feels uncomfortable. So actually, I don't want to deal with it. When actually, I think you need to look at yourself before then you start looking at how you embrace that when the squad. So I think difference is a challenge. Challenge brings uncomfortable moments. And I always say, how long can you stay in that uncomfortable situation before it becomes comfortable? And then suddenly, you get this unique moment, or they will bring something different that you weren't expecting. I've got a couple of players like that for England, where people said to me, they'll not make it. And I'll always say, why not? And they'll go, well, maybe their attitude, maybe they haven't shown the same commitment. But I think that's because your first impression gives you a perception of what this person's like, rather than actually digging deeper and actually really challenging it. I'm quite open. I love people that bring something different, because they might do something different on the pitch. And again, that could be their inspirational moment that you actually believe in them. I think a lot of times we give up. And maybe you don't realize that everybody else is giving up. So going back to my experience at school, when my teachers give up on me, they didn't think that I could make it. So actually, if he doesn't get any exam results, he doesn't get them. He's from a rough area. So he doesn't want to do any better. But no one actually sat down and asked, what do you want? It was more, this is what we think you can achieve, not actually, what's your dream. And I think that's where I start from. Well, how do you know until you sit down and actually be patient and find out where they want to go in life? What's my role to help them get there? And like I said, I've got a couple of players at the minute that if I'd listened to other people, I'd have never bought into them. But actually, I see a little bit of a spark. And when you see the spark, you just got to light the match, and then they'll take it forward. So yeah, it can be a challenge, I think, as a coach, but I think you want your players to be challenged, you have to challenge yourself. I think that's the starting point.
[Jamie]
Right, well, we're coming to the end of the show now. And it's been fascinating. And it's been great for us to listen in to such a powerful journey.
[Stephen]
No, listen, thanks both of you. If it helps other people on their journey, then I think we have an obligation, we have to share it. So again, something I've got better at, because before, it wasn't something I like talking about. But again, you have to realize that you got to help others, or we don't progress. So listen, thanks both of you.
[Louise]
Definitely. And I look forward to seeing you maybe around the corridors in SGP. Yeah, thank you very much for your time, Stephen.
[Jamie]
And obviously, good luck when you do. And you know, by the time this is out, you will be in your new job. So good luck. And yeah, we look forward to hopefully seeing you soon.
[Stephen]
Thanks. Cheers, Jaime, Cheers, Louise.
[Jamie]
That's all we have time for today. But don't forget to check out the episode description for all the links to our platforms. There you will be able to click through to the England football community. This is where you can post your coaching questions for us to discuss on the podcast, or just to connect with loads of wonderful coaches.
[Louise]
We'd love to help you with your coaching questions. So do check it out. We'll be back soon with another episode of CoachCast. So if you haven't already, hit subscribe to make sure you don't miss an episode. So from all of us at England Football Learning, thanks for listening.