Interview with John McDermott (Head of Coaching and Development)

[Hoddle_Ledge]

Thanks to Robzillor for posting this on Reddit. Pasted below for those who have Reddit blocked at work like me. Fascinating read!

Source: Notes from a Pomona College talk in Southern California- Rose Hill Theatre

John says to a member of the audience that he is sitting exactly where Harry Kane sits, always at the front, looking him in the eye and ready for questions.

John accepted an invitation from Pomona College because he sees the commonality between an elite school and Tottenham as an elite football team. He also came here to be challenged and never wants to be complacent as a coach.

Seminar outline:

• How he teaches the players to live in an extremely tough environment- injuries, fluctuation in form, being released and outright failure
  
  
• How he develops the staff and himself- How did he get from an economics degree to coaching Tottenham
  
  
• How do you identify and develop talent- ‘the gold medallist at 16 is not the gold medallist at 24’

Showed the audience a picture that Pochetinno showed him and which he loves- we all want out lives to be a smooth process- reaching whatever our goal is in a straight line but in reality life is not like that- there are ups and down and we have to keep working. Compared it to the 800 game rule- 200 games 9/10, 400 games managed a 6/10, 200 games dreadful

In order to be a footballer to get those 200 games you need the persistence and character to live through those other 600 games- and he has to try and make the players hardened to cope with that but finds this difficult when you work in a Disneyland training ground- a dichotomy

A picture that he shows all the players in pre-season- a picture of a horse with a man pulling and a man pushing into the water- the environment can be right, the coaches can be right e.g. John and Poch but ultimately it is down to the player- the external factors like coaches and environment can contribute but you can’t make a silk purse out of pigs ear- but they still have a job to develop the players within the best of their ability

Showed a roll of honour of the Spurs academy- the guys who did not quite make and said players like Mason, Kane, Rose, Carroll, Bentaleb, Townsend would not be where they are without those guys and they are often overlooked but you need the boys that do not make it to make the ones that do and John is just as proud as every single one of those as he is of the players that do make it- these guys are not just cannon fodder- if Kane can score 30 goals for England then great he is capable of that but for others, it is still John’s job to make sure they are successful even if they are not good enough for the premier league.

John states he is a purist and a dreamer, he loves football but he is becoming more aware of the business interests, and says at what point do you fall on your sword- and with more and more money coming into the game- clubs treat children like they are Modric or Bale and he thinks English football has got gout- rich man’s disease.

Premier League vs FA- they should keep in each other check but unfortunately the Premier League polices the Premier League and states that we are living in very dangerous waters and questions whether the foreign companies from the U.S and Russia etc. are really passionate about English football or are they here for the money?

He said one club in the PL is paying £24,000 a year for a 9 year old and one of the 16 y.o lads at Spurs (Edwards?) was offered £250,000 to go up North (City?) John said to the player that we are not going to do that, you stay here and get your £30,000 but if you want to go, go and all the time he has to fight against the corruption and business interest of the game. It is our job (him and fans) to make sure that we stop the game falling into this hole.

Migration vs Opportunity- boys being taken from all over the planet and are being screwed by deceptive agents

Short vs Long Term- Education is long term but football is short term- he then went through the Tottenham managers since 2005 to show how quick the turnover is- 6 in 10 years- States Pochetinno is so good, he could do John’s job and by far the best manager he has ever worked with- This is the industry we live in and the players have to deal with- showed a photo of one the Spurs senior players ‘WhatsApp’ display picture- a child in the centre looking aimlessly with all hands around him that have luxury goods like shoes, money, cars, holidays etc. – says football for young kids should be about playing the game

Young coaches now think it is all about the stats, their W/L ratio and their own ego.

Parents vs Coaches- parents who think they know better than the coaches, and the parents who go for the highest bidder

National Games- more and more national games at all ages- the national bromances at under 15 and 16 who think they have made it can be ultra-negative for their development and John knows that most of them won’t be playing at 24

Football clubs are flooded with coaches but John thinks there are not that many great coaches- how do you make sure your best players are with the best coaches and the best staff- believes a lot of learning is contagious- as staff has gone from 15 to 70, how does he make sure everyone is doing the right thing for the right players Howard Wilkinson is John’s boss- who employed an amazing politician and the direction was football but now the admin/politics is focused on business John says he is glad he is not 25 and just starting in the football industry- far too many courses and information- sometimes the more you study and examine, the blinder you get- Mauricio believes this- you may be looking but you don’t always see – an example is when Tottenham physios went on a course- came back and within 2 months apparently our players had a fatpad injury but we had never had one before, what is this all of a sudden?

Everything about the education system is structured to pass the exam not to necessarily learn and football is not like that- it is the art of teaching – when is the best time to teach the right things and coaches now don’t hit the bullseye- example one of our coaches, coaches a player about working on the wide areas but John does not think it is the right time to do that- putting the penthouse suite without the foundations- a tendency not to do the dirty work- repeating the basics- sometimes the coach gets bored and wants to do something different but that is not what the player needs.

When John got his A- coaching license he thought he was God’s gift to coaching but after working with Kenny Jacket he realised he was not very good- one of the best things that ever happened to him- one of things he is trying to do for the staff and the players- do you have the humility to realise you are not as good as you think you are- he was extremely lucky that he managed to work with giants within the coaching spectrum who were a lot older and brutally honest with him- example when Kenny Jacket used to test him and put him under pressure and outside his comfort zone- worst telling off he ever had was when Kenny asked him to give a half time talk after 5 weeks on the job- John was nice and polite to the team and Kenny came in and just went off that the team was not good enough- Kenny did not say a word to John but John knew how wrong he got it- his number 1 advice to anyone looking to be successful in their respective field- try and stand on the shoulders of giants- but you need to have something of value- John gets 1000’s of email everyday asking if a said individual can work with him at Tottenham for nothing- you need to provide a gift to the heavy weights

Lots of trendy words in England- Philosophy- it took John until he was around 35 to figure his out and he think there are different ways- football run by spreadsheets vs respecting the game as a religion- he is very much like the latter

When John thinks about teaching- he thinks about frame of reference- when he was younger at Watford he could see he was a good player (Paul Robinson), he was a good player (David James) and he was a good player (David Connolly) – they were obvious, John thought one guy (Fisken) was going to be the next big thing and you fall in love with the player and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy- and (Ashley Young) Watford’s most successful academy product, John did not see or believe. Similar to Mariappa, John did not see his potential. A lot of evidence right now that the most talented players are not obvious and players can very easily slip through the cracks. He says Pritchard and Carroll are little dots that John has taken a chance/risk on because of his experience with other players.

I LOVE THIS: John says that we have a player right now called Shayon Harrison who is pretty good and trains with the first team, Pochetinno came over to John and said ‘John, Shayon is lazy’ just loud enough so Shayon would hear him. Shayon came knocking on John’s door later asking him what that was about. John says to Shayon, Poch has worked with Veron/Maradona, he played a year with Aguero, he trains everyday with Kane- Poch’s frame of reference is so high that he is not saying you are actually lazy but when he is comparing you it can be deemed mediocre.

John is worried that coaches in the modern game are so focused on moneyball stats that players will start to slip through the cracks. Harry Kane at 14 years of age, was relatively fat, August birthday, immature, and was ‘forgettable Harry’- his peers could jump higher, they could run quicker and his agility was 30% lower than the average- ‘runt of the litter’ – so what was it that John saw? He thanked God that he had experienced Ashely Young and Mariappa- there was something beyond stats and sport scientists- an intuition.

Continues below...

 

[Hoddle_Ledge]

Part 2:

The problem now is that we are giving the kids everything before they make it, the contracts, the nikey boots, the praise etc. and how do we keep them grounded when another club is offering more. We need to tell them they have not achieved anything yet.

What does he look for in coaches- do they understand kids, do they know when to be tough, have they got an intuition/not just qualifications, do they share the same philosophy in coaching, do they understand the player development continuum? It is not about the coaches ego and winning the under 15 cups, it about getting individuals into the first team which might be of detriment to results, do the coaches have a work place knowledge and also do they have passion for coaching.

What does he look for in his players- extreme talent alone you will fail… personal values/characteristics and doing the brilliant basics right= good chance of making it, having those two with extreme talent= might become a top player

John does not want U18’s to like him… Respect him but not like him, he says Kane did not like him at U18 because John kept telling Kane 'I want more' and he used to fall out with Kane and Townsend all the time.

The older John gets, the more coaching, the more he realises he doesn’t know- at Tottenham they are very player centred, not about the team, it is about the individual and now our players are very individualistic and not understanding the collective enough- something he needs to work on and links it back to the art of teaching

End of Talk

Question: Playing with injury vs Playing at all

Physio needs to understand that in football a player is not 100% fit all the time and if they are prevented playing all the time, they will not be prepared and you are killing them with kindness. John thinks some clubs are being too nice to players which means they can only play when they are 100%, you have to teach players to play through that to make it in this game.

Question: How important is it that the players come from local areas?

John thinks it is very important. Other developers get a buzz from going all over the world, such as Man City- galactico academy. John thinks a lot of research shows if you leave your country 16-20 years of age, it is not helpful for development, except for a few. John drew a diagram of London area and showed where most of our academy graduates come from- Mason, Townsend, Caulker, Daniels, Kane, Onomah, Carroll, Smith, Stewart, McGee, Winks, Pritchard, and Livermore. Two exceptions, one exception is Bentaleb, a very interesting story, the team he was playing for went bust and Bentaleb ended up playing street football as a player/coach. He went to Birmingham, found nothing, came to London and asked for a trial. Tottenham signed Nabil after that trial. The other exception is Rose, who we bought. Told a story about Townsend who was dropped and refused to be released and kept turning up, eventually John and Chris (Ramsey) stopped caring because he refused to be told no. John says that he thinks this is evidence to show local players work and our foreign academy players usually go back home for a number of reasons e.g. socially, culturally etc.

John also thinks it is beneficial for foreign players to stay at home, play a few games in their domestic league then maybe go to the big European leagues where development and opportunities are harder to come by. John feels unbelievably privileged and lucky that Poch was given his opportunity at 17 years of age. John says that Poch wants 5 things in a player, technically good, tactically good, physically outstanding, mentally strong and faith- they have to believe in what we are about. A player must unconditionally believe in the plan, for example: If Poch tells Kane, run around that pitch three times, do press ups and it will give you a better chance of scoring, Harry is going to do it. Poch has the young players in the palm of his hand and the synergy that comes with that John thinks is amazing.

Question: How does John deal with a player like Bentaleb who has tasted success, and now seems to be overlooked in the first team frame and is having to play for the U21’s for game time?

John says that Nabil has had his injuries, same with Andros and that he would like to talk about Andros as he is no longer at the club. He says that Andros is an orthodox winger and did not really fit in with the way Poch plays. John then started talking about the ‘bomb’ squad- Adebayor, Capoue etc.- that were out of favour with Poch and John said that Poch never told them to play with the reserves and would treat them as equal as other first teamers and there will be nothing in any of their books that says Poch treated me like a dog. Bentaleb and Townsend both asked to play for the U21’s, it was NOT a punishment of any sort. Poch would not work like that nor would he want to put a bad apple in the U21 and poison the side. John did say that it is one of the hardest things to manage, winning after a win and you hope a kid has an internal drive to keep going and gave an example of Mason who never stops, an incredible internal drive even though he only started properly playing at 22, and John used the quote ‘You stay on the train long enough and the scenery will change’ but you have got to be good enough to stay on the train and we hope that for Nabil/Townsend as you need your 600 games to get your 200 great games.

Question: Does the academy assume any responsibility for players that do taste success and fall off completely and does the club have a contingency plan?

John wants to help the players education, improve socially, and develop individuals- not just produce footballers but produce characters. On tour they get the academy kids doing odd jobs like cooking, charity work etc.

Question: Does it matter who the manager is for you when they do not care about development? – This question is extremely paraphrased as it was really long winded and I struggled to grasp what he was actually asking, very broken and stuttered.

John said that he thinks his relationship with the first team manager is very important and there has been 1 or 2 managers that were like chalk and cheese to him. One manager in particular had very different values to John’s and had no time for John. I think John said that he did not get on well with Harry Redknapp, so Spurs brought in Sherwood- who John and Harry both really like to act as the mediator- so John must find a way to make a connection to the first team manager if he has 19-20 year old players he can trust. If he does not, he is doing a disservice to them because they will be dismissed. Finding that relationship with Poch was easy, they spend 2-3 hours a day with each other, Sherwood was also easy, Redknapp very difficult, Ramos very difficult, AVB brilliant start but went into his shadow a little bit which made it difficult. When he has worked with managers that are not interested in the academy, he sometimes goes home and thinks what the point is? Cash? Something to do? Only 2-3 times in his career has he wondered why he is going into work, once at Tottenham.

Question: Missed it (sorry)

John replied saying that he could spend all day reading the data after a game, everything is measured from spit to agility- far too much statistics but he thinks he knows what is important and they have experts working on those. Something that is interesting about Poch that John thinks he has right- Poch is a leader of people, a very warm, Latin, touchy feely man, he has got something about him, an X factor- if you took Poch from Tottenham right now, they would not be half as successful- with him he has Jesus Perez who is a sports scientist- very clever and analytical, a goalkeeping coach- Toni Jiminez that is an outward, outgoing personality that brings humour and his assistant who is someone that Poch trusts more than anyone- this group filter and contextualise everything- John looks at statistics but trusts his eye also and cross references- Poch will often say something does not feel right- uses his intuition- example: Bentaleb when your face is not smiling, your feet are not smiling- an intuition allied with statistics

Question: What does distinguish Tottenham’s academy from others?

Unique selling point- pay less wages than anyone else- treat them mean, keep them keen, they still get well paid but we do not chuck money at them- very stringent on agents- keep as many away from the club as possible who can disrupt the system- create cracks in the team and the players heads- it keeps John awake, trying to work out how he protects the old values and resist the temptation to throwing money at them- John likes to take the academy players on 30-35 international trips a year to get a worldly experience that show the players different ways of playing football- we need players that know how to play against players from other countries because they need to be prepared as the premier league is 70% foreign

Question: How much easier is it for you with a manager like Poch in charge to persuade our youths to stay with us versus the rich clubs like PSG, Man City and Chelsea?

John said that gametime his selling point regardless of the manager but the Poch factor is interesting because he is the brightest manager he has worked with, best strategist in how he has the club working, and something that keeps John awake at night- How do I make sure our academy keeps pace with Poch because he has taken it to another level- we now have more academy players in the premier league than anyone else but in the last 4-5 years John has lost 6 hugely influential staff members- Ramsey, Sherwood, Alex Inglethorpe?, 2 guys working with England (no names) and Perry Suckling- a lot of the staff now have not worked at Tottenham for a long time- lots of red carpet coaches- that have done this, that and the other but really they haven’t achieved anything- they need to start knowing that they don’t know and right now John feels like he is trying to hang on to Poch coattails because he is moving forward so fast- so yes it is brilliant all these young players coming through like CCV, KWP and Onomah but his worry is to make sure there is not a gap after this period. John needs to remain credible to Poch, right now Poch trusts him but John needs to keep giving him gifts.

(THAT IS ALL FOLKS)

Apologies for the lack of grammatical coherency, I just got everything down as quick as possible.

 

[oskathegobshite]

Brilliant posts. Thanks very much

 

[dudu]

amazing, Thank you.

 

[waresy]

great read, really interesting and thoughtful insight into what is definitely a successful component of the club at the moment.

It's exciting to think that we have several more young players on the cusp of breaking through into our side.

 

[littlewilly]

Thank you so much. That's brilliant material and absolute credit to you for jotting it down.

 

[Wirral Spurs]

I have some friends up here who are very close to John. He is clearly a top man. Hope we can keep this regime together.

 

[Gassin's finest]

Magnificent read. Thanks!

 

[Gilzeanking]

Lot of big stuff in there , fantastic find by the OP .

When Bentaleb is not smiling his feet aren't smiling.....Hmmmm

 

[piedpiper]

Truly engrossing read. Thank you for taking the time to post. I am much more enlightened With how the academy works as a result.

 

[michaelden]

Part 2:The older John gets, the more coaching, the more he realises he doesn’t know- at Tottenham they are very player centred, not about the team, it is about the individual and now our players are very individualistic and not understanding the collective enough- something he needs to work on and links it back to the art of teaching.

I thought that Poch was all about the team? This seems strange

 

[tottenmal]

I thought that Poch was all about the team? This seems strange

Remember, Poch has only been at the club a couple of years. The academy players we have coming through now are all a result of the old regime, and while most of them have left the club like he says at the end, they would have used a particular kind of teaching and mentality that I guess Poch and john are trying to change.

 

[dixiespurs]

Awesome insight!

 

[McArchibald]

Good read!

So glad he didn't join Yanited...

 

[JUSTINSIGNAL]

Amazing. This has to be my most enjoyable period in 25 yrs as a supporter. I am loving everything from top to bottom at the club right now.

 

[Roynie]

Very informative. The time and trouble you took to report on the talk is very much appreciated. Thanks muchly!

 

[Bus-Conductor]

Some very interesting stuff in there.

The stuff about working with players, developing them as people, on their individual strengths, but also making them tactically better so that even if they don't make it at Spurs they have a better chance of careers, is something many of us have spoken about in the development thread.

Sounds like Sherwood was originally a good conduit between McDermott and Redknapp who he didn't get along with but then became the reverse with AVB.

The relationship between Pochettino & McDermott sounds like a great thing, but there is a flip side to this. It sounds to me as if/when Pochettino makes his next move, he could very well want McDermott with him and by the sounds of it McDermott may well want to continue working with Poch as he seems to hold him the highest regard.

The stuff about losing good academy coaches and some the current group of coaches not being quite as good is something we've all been discussing in the development thread for the last couple of years. I think Inglethorpe particularly was a huge loss and someone we should have done more to keep.

The stuff about bringing in foreign kids is interesting and in some ways a little troubling. I understand some of what was said, it's only logical, but I also think with some kids it is actually a character building thing to be taken completely out of their comfort zone, and they will thrive for it. But it also struck a chord as we have seen Azzaoui shifted out & Veljkovic feel less than appreciated by the club and now we see Bentaleb being slightly ostracised as well and placed behind the (talented but inferior) Carroll in the pecking order. Hope I'm wrong but McDermott's words and what we have seen in the last 12 months do seem to have some "local" bias correlation. I guess Townsend was also a local lad so maybe I'm reading too much into it.

Really not sounding good for Bentaleb - being mentioned in the same breath as Townsend, Adebayor, Capoue etc - all of whom left after becoming "problematic".

I quoted this in the development thread:

What does he look for in his players- extreme talent alone you will fail… personal values/characteristics and doing the brilliant basics right= good chance of making it, having those two with extreme talent= might become a top player

It would do a massive disservice to try and summarise in a single sound bite the all encompassing philosophy and working practices that McDermott has introduced and overseen at Spurs over the last few years, but that sentence above is pretty good.

Whenever I try to weigh up young talent one of the things I always look for is character, because I think no matter how skilful if a kid doesn't have this they won't make it and I think Kane is a brilliant example. A few days ago people were discussing his abilities in the ratings thread, saying how he'd improved this and that, and I said I think his greatest strength is his mentality and someone even "spammed" me for it - but I wasn't being derogatory. He isn't the quickest, he isn't the most agile, he hasn't got the deftest touch, sometimes he's downright clumsy. I remember him fluffing easy chances in his first few appearances for us. But what Kane has by the bucket load is a cast iron mentality, unswerving self belief and drive. He fucks up, misses a sitter, he goes a month when he can't hit a barn door with a banjo but he just keeps relentlessly going, picks himself up, goes again, and again and again. I think this is what McDermott was referring to when he spoke about Kane.

Alli, Lamela, Dier, Rose, even fucking Walker. All of these players are flawed, some deeply (cough... Walker) but they have character (this is one of the reasons I like Bentaleb too - that hate to lose thing) and Poch taps into that more than any other quality. It's what the best managers do, it's how Ferguson won titles (like his last for example) with teams less talented than teams they were sometimes competing against. Same Mourinho.

 

[Donki]

I think Bentaleb not smiling is more to do with his recent injuires, the fact that he has gone for an operation would seem to confirm this. He was not sent to the U21s he asked for game time to improve his fitness, just hasn't seemed to have worked so had to have the op?

 

[Spursidol]

I thought that Poch was all about the team? This seems strange

This talking about the Spurs Academy, which is all about producing good players who play a team game. But we really are not concerned about Spurs u18 results, its all about whether the players individually did well at showing that they put into practice the things they had been taught.

There is clearly a balance between the individualism of players and building a team, and that is what the Academy is always trying to balance up such that one common trait to all the players coming through the Academy is that they are 'team' players, however individually talented they are

 

[Bus-Conductor]

I thought that Poch was all about the team? This seems strange

I think Poch is and what JM is saying is that this needs to be better integrated into academy teaching, which he's saying has been more individually focused. Although, as I have said elsewhere, I've always thought one of the most encouraging things about the ethos JM had put in place was the collective tactical awareness being taught in our academies. Maybe Poch has just moved this to a higher level and JM is saying it's his remit to make sure the academy aspire to that level ?