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  ‘I had gone from being the next big thing at Lens, to the one that no one really wanted. I began to ask myself, what have I done wrong? I’m captain of England, playing well, training well, and working hard. They started leaving me out of the squad for silly little details, a bad pass in training or a recovery run they said wasn’t good enough. The coach came for me, in front of the whole team. After a while the politics became too much to live with.’

  Moore’s next trial, after his return to England, was to be sent on loan to Bury for the second half of the season, but few successful footballers are frightened fawns. The fortitude of Hull City’s Moses Odubajo, another England under-20 graduate, was second nature to him. The pain and uncertainty of two serious knee injuries in three months paled alongside that endured when his mother Esther, a nurse, died from malaria when he was aged 13. He and his older brother Tom hid their plight from social services, and survived on Tom’s monthly salary of £300 as a scholar at Barnet’s academy.

  Yet many young players, thrown into a maelstrom of insecurity and inconsistency, fail for want of a credible mentor. Freddie Woodman has found his in Steve Black, a conditioning coach and motivational speaker hailed as ‘a second father’ by rugby legend Jonny Wilkinson and as ‘a spiritual guide’ by Joey Barton.

  Garrulous, engaging and keenly observant, Black can best be described as a People Whisperer. A proponent of kaizen, the Japanese philosophy of continual improvement, he works informally, often scribbling furiously on a notepad as he draws out the personality traits and charts the value systems of his subjects.

  His sessions with Woodman are as likely to be held in a garden centre’s coffee shop as a gymnasium. He relishes the instinctive curiosity and relentless work ethic of the young goalkeeper, who has Southgate as a godfather because of the England manager’s enduring friendship with his father Andy. The tone of their relationship was set at their first meeting, when Woodman was 16.

  ‘What do you want to do?’ Black asked.

  ‘I want people to regard me as one of the best goalkeepers in the world.’

  ‘I’m with you one hundred per cent, son.’

  Woodman is energised by the memory; unlike some of his age, he is unabashed by his idealism, comfortable with the scale of his ambition. He has the conviction of the convert, a freedom of expression which hints at the distinctive character of those attracted to goalkeeping’s perverse mixture of isolation and centrality:

  ‘I pick people’s brains, pepper them with questions. I like to do extra, on and off the pitch. I’d looked at sports psychology, but didn’t find anything I felt I needed to make me mentally stronger. Then I met Blackie. He is simply the best at what he does, even if it is sometimes difficult to explain exactly what he does.

  ‘It’s weird, so different. I had a six-month spell when we didn’t work together. I didn’t go off the rails or anything, but I was definitely not as focused. Without him, I felt vulnerable. Then we got back together and broke down my career goals. My mindset changed, so that I felt unstoppable. Nothing was going to get in my way. It is me on the pitch, but Blackie’s voice is in my head.’

  Black encourages him to dissect his matches into five-minute segments, to guard against the magnification of mistakes. A mental device to consign any errors into the past as soon as practically possible, it is designed to reflect the exposed nature of the job. Significantly, when we spoke, Woodman brought up the example of West Ham’s Darren Randolph, who had redeemed a handling error, which allowed Liverpool to equalise at Anfield the previous evening, with a world-class save to protect a point.

  He has the additional advantage of being able to filter the experiences of his father, who moved from Newcastle to become Alan Pardew’s goalkeeping coach at Crystal Palace, the club where he began a playing career that spanned twelve clubs. Father and son have only recently confessed to conspiring in Freddie’s truancy from primary school, so he could see Andy train at Oxford United.

  ‘I was about eight. Mum thought I’d been dropped off at school, but I’d be in the car begging Dad to take me training instead. I used to sit by the goal, with a ball at my feet, and watch him. Seeing the players, hearing the banter, had an impact on me like no other. From that moment on I wanted to be in a football environment.’

  He used to join in sessions as a teenager, when his father was starting his coaching career at Charlton; their professional relationship deepened when they were at Newcastle together. Freddie never forgot the desolation in his father’s voice when he described a brief period out of the game, selling photocopiers to keep the family finances ticking over.

  The young keeper spent two months on loan at Crawley in 2015, ‘loving the pressure of Saturday–Tuesday–Saturday, where the result really matters’. Rafa Benítez, preparing for an immediate return to the Premier League with Newcastle, delivered on his promise to provide similar experience by sending him on loan to Kilmarnock in the second half of the 2016–17 season. This enabled him to complement lessons from ‘people who live and die for the job’.

  Woodman cites Yohan Cabaye, Andros Townsend, Matt Ritchie and, above all, Tim Krul as key influences. The goalkeepers, from separate generations but identically motivated, would spend long hours on distant pitches at the training ground, honing their reflexes and deconstructing their craft. The lessons would continue in the analysis room.

  ‘Tim basically became my coach. He handed out bollockings, but praised me when he thought I deserved it. We would watch my matches together, analyse the good and the bad. He’s back in Holland now, but we still speak all the time.’ He cherishes one particular text message, congratulating him for England’s win in the 2014 European under-17 championships.

  ‘You’d better get your bags packed,’ it read: Krul, who was at the World Cup with the Dutch squad at the time, had paid for two sets of flights, match tickets and accommodation in Brazil. Freddie, thrilled by the respect implicit in the generosity of the gesture, took his father to watch Holland come from behind to beat Australia 3–2 in Porto Alegre.

  Andy, who became manager of Whitehawk in the National League South in February 2017, is a huge influence, but Freddie describes his grandfather, Leslie Bates, as his ‘hero’. The intimacy of their relationship, based upon familial love and a respect bordering on awe, compresses the generations and touches on the themes of courage, resilience and fellowship England coaches are seeking to use in creating a stronger sense of identity in representative football.

  Leslie’s service as a sailor on a minesweeper engaged in the D-Day landings in 1944 acquired life and texture when his grandson visited the beach at Arromanches, where Allied troops and warships had come under murderous fire from German artillery, with the England under-19 squad in 2015. Freddie sent Leslie a photograph of the scene, and was suddenly struck by the fact he was the same age, 19, as his grandfather when he went to war.

  Leslie’s medals, which he has given to Freddie, are a reminder of the sacrifices made by men who grew up too quickly and died too young. Football cannot match the intensity of the memories those medals generate but it demands maturity, rarely a smooth and consistent process. Woodman and Moore share leadership qualities but their distinctive responses to an identical question, about the advice they would offer a young boy incubating the dream of following in their footsteps, were enlightening.

  Moore’s scars were revealingly raw: ‘I have learned you have to be a team player, be respectful of those around you, but you have to put yourself before anyone else. You can’t trust what people say, whether it is teammates or managers. You’ve got to be so careful of the difference between what people say and what people do.

  ‘A lot of stuff at clubs happens behind closed doors. Keep thinking, keep working, keep learning. Everyone’s pathway is different and in football anything can happen tomorrow. You never know what is coming. Be on your toes, alert to everything, and don’t let your dream slip away because of a bad attitude.’

  Woodman’s sense of privilege endures: ‘
We’re in danger of taking enjoyment out of the game. I’m determined that won’t happen to me. I’m stringing my boots up every day, training on the best pitches at one of the biggest clubs in England. If you’d have told me that was going to happen when I was ten I would have cried. It’s amazing.’

  He smiled. We both knew the relevance of the message that accompanies every autograph he signs: ‘Work Hard, Dream Big.’

  17

  Men at Work

  THE REAL WORLD OF PROFESSIONAL FOOTBALL

  (OR, 11 RULES OF SURVIVAL)

  1: Football is not fair – get used to it.

  2: The football world gives nothing about your self-esteem. Coaches and pros expect you to achieve something in the game before you pat yourself on the back.

  3: You will not earn a fortune on your first professional contract. You only get the money when you play for the first team.

  4: If you thought your teachers were rough – just wait until you cross the manager.

  5: Keeping the changing room tidy, being a ball boy, collecting balls bibs and cones, is NOT beneath you. Just welcome the opportunity to be in a professional footballer’s environment. Relish every moment.

  6: When you mess up on the pitch it is not your teammates’ or your coaches’ fault. Don’t throw a dummy out and sulk. Learn from your mistake.

  7: Schools may have done away with winners and losers, but football hasn’t. Football is competitive, so make sure you are a winner.

  8: There’s no such things as winter breaks, or Christmas and Easter holidays in football. There are no half terms either. Do you want to be a footballer or go on holiday?

  9: FIFA and Football Manager are electronic games. They are not real life. Living in the real football world is demanding and sometimes it does not go well. Handle it. Do not get caught up in the world of fantasy and make-believe.

  10: Once you cross the line, no one will care that you have a sore throat.

  11: Before you talk a good game, make sure you can play one.

  The signs are tacked on to the thin walls of a cluster of whitewashed outbuildings in which the needs of academy players, senior professionals and their respective coaches are met by a rudimentary gymnasium, a small kitchen and an overworked tumble dryer. There are few frills on football’s factory floor, and it seems appropriate that Mick Harford heads the welcoming committee.

  Luton Town’s chief recruiting officer carries the scars of his former life, as a centre forward with the instincts of a cage fighter. His fearsome reputation is not entirely undeserved, but he is good company and has a native intelligence that doesn’t support the enforcer stereotype. We exchange gossip as Paul Hart, the primary reason for my visit, finishes a phone call. To my shame, I dredge up the most clichéd question in the book.

  ‘Any kids coming through?’

  Harford nods slowly: ‘Two or three good ’uns.’

  If anything, he is guilty of underselling the club he has also served as player, coach, manager and director of football. A Luton team containing nine academy products won 2–1 at League One Gillingham; seven homegrown players featured in a 2–0 defeat of a hybrid West Bromwich Albion side at Kenilworth Road.

  Their reward, since the victories were in the ill-conceived, disastrously received Checkatrade Trophy, was a maximum £15,000 fine for supposedly fielding under-strength teams. A grievous blow when every penny counts, such retribution shredded the credibility of the Football League and its chief executive, Shaun Harvey.

  Compounded by fines imposed on a further eleven clubs, it was a revealing example of corporate obstinacy, hypocrisy and sycophancy. Not even a concerted lobbying campaign by the Premier League, which sought a competitive outlet for their academies against League One and Two teams, could sustain the disingenuous notion that a competition boycotted by supporters was fulfilling its stated objective of promoting young talent.

  The refusal of Arsenal, Liverpool, Manchester United, Manchester City and Tottenham Hotspur to compete accentuated the Football League’s subservience, and highlighted a strange contempt for the strategic independence and financial welfare of its member clubs. Once again, politics had polluted the development process.

  Chelsea, whose belatedly confirmed presence smacked of tokenism and expedience, were allowed to start their fixtures two weeks later than the rest. A young developmental team was eliminated in the group stages, leaving Adi Viveash, their academy’s head of coaching, to contextualise the compensatory benefits of failure:

  ‘The competition has been a real eye-opener for players as to where they are,’ he said, after a 3–2 defeat at Exeter City. ‘A lot of them think they are in certain positions where they should be playing, but are they good enough for league football? There’s the question mark. I’m saying to them, “Are we playing at being a player or do we really want to be a player?”’

  Hart could at least relate to the tone of that challenge, issued by a diligent tutor to a callow group of aspiring professionals whose first car is invariably a customised Range Rover, judging by the automotive beauty pageant at Chelsea’s training ground. His principal role at Luton is to assist Nathan Jones in his first managerial job at a club whose youth policy owes more to economic necessity than philosophical purity, but, at 63, he has a world-weary grasp of realpolitik:

  ‘The Premier League wants the best players, playing against each other for the biggest clubs. They don’t give a monkey’s about anything else. No one can question them. They rule. The Football League is in their grip and the FA haven’t got a voice, but the league that is going to develop future England teams is the Championship.’

  Hart has managed seven clubs, been caretaker manager at another two, and established acclaimed youth development programmes at Leeds United, Nottingham Forest and Charlton Athletic. Leeds used seven of his academy products, Harry Kewell, Jonathan Woodgate, Ian Harte, Alan Smith, Gary Kelly, Paul Robinson and Stephen McPhail, in reaching the Champions League semi-final in 2001; he nurtured England internationals Michael Dawson and Jermaine Jenas at Forest.

  Those sceptical about his continuing relevance will dismiss such achievements as ancient history. Football is prone to the myopia of modernity and the pretension of progress, but the big, broad-shouldered man, wedged behind a small desk on which last night’s polystyrene coffee cup lingers, has a lifetime’s experience to offer in his defence.

  His bloodlines are authentic. Father Johnny scored sixty-seven goals as an inside forward for Manchester City between 1947 and 1960, broke his leg a week before he was due to appear in the 1955 FA Cup final, and succeeded Malcolm Allison as the club’s manager for six months in 1973 before retiring due to pancreatic problems.

  He was a shy man, who preferred the private rituals of coaching to the front-of-house exposure of management. He saw pessimism as a parental duty when his son attempted to combine football with A-level studies, and pointed out the potential perils of a playing career that eventually extended to 567 appearances as a centre half over eighteen seasons.

  ‘Dad was right,’ Paul says, his voice moderated by reminiscence. ‘I was not particularly brave, not particularly quick. I just had this inner desire. I took a risk and ignored everything else. This was a time when you found out you had been released by looking on the noticeboard. That was it. There was no consoling arm around the shoulder. It was, “Nah, not good enough.”

  ‘I went on trial to ten or eleven clubs, and got knocked back before Stockport County gave me my chance. I didn’t think I was a strong person until I coped with that. Rejection has stayed with me. You never become immune to breaking that news, as a coach. All you can do is deliver it with as much honesty as you can. There’s no question that whatever front the kid puts on, he is devastated.

  ‘My father told me to keep my mouth shut, and my eyes and ears open. If anyone wants to discuss anything with you, good or bad, you listen and say thank you very much. I was a subservient type of pro, in the first team at Stockport at seventeen. My nose was broken six times b
efore I was eighteen. I wouldn’t wish that on anybody, but it was the type of environment that did me well. It grounded me from minute one.’

  He comes from a generation that remembers the sting of corporal punishment, the welt left by a teacher’s strap across a penitent’s backside. He now works in a world of learning objectives, HR protocols and structured permissiveness. Coaching is a tightrope walk across a dangerously slack line slung between the old and the new.

  ‘I have been hung on the peg by a teammate, slapped on the face when we were on the pitch. I never complained. I thought, yeah, you are right. I made a right pig’s ear of that. I didn’t do it again. Part of the strength of my development style is enabling a player to overcome criticism, or cope with a dressing room environment.

  ‘I can tell you exactly what you need to do if you are good enough, but when you deliver the truth you are seen as some sort of ogre. We’re dealing with a different breed, so the critique, good or bad, is always followed by a “but” or an “if”. I have consciously tried to appear an ordinary bloke who works hard, and wherever I’ve been I have dealt in the basics, humility and respect.

  ‘We had some disasters further down the line at Leeds. Woodgate went off the rails a bit, but he was intrinsically a nice boy who got in with the wrong crowd. They were a good group, lads who pushed the boundaries but knew right from wrong. They were taught how to play first-team football. That’s what is missing today.

  ‘England players being taken home in limos is not the problem. I sat on a PFA committee fighting for freedom of contract, so I believe players have the right to be paid whatever is in the club’s budget. Wealth is a part of life, but I worry that players are not respectful of that wealth. There is no need to flaunt it. Don’t ram it down people’s throats.

  ‘We have lost the common touch I try to engender. Too many average players are earning too much. Some seventeen-year-olds are being paid huge sums. It is alarming, all about shaking off the competition. If the boy comes on and makes the first team, great, but if he doesn’t it is a drop in the ocean to Premier League clubs.