Chris Powell made a poignant return to St George’s Park this week. The former England defender sat in the dressing room named after him. He watched young talents he helped coach, Jude Bellingham, Phil Foden and Bukayo Saka, training with England. Powell then had lunch with Gareth Southgate and his staff, and all the memories came flooding back.
Powell, 54, first got to know Southgate when they were both 16 at Crystal Palace before the left back went on to play for Southend United, Derby County, Charlton Athletic, West Ham United and Leicester City as well as winning five England caps, including a memorable debut against Spain in 2001 at Villa Park when he nutmegged Pep Guardiola. Three of his caps came alongside Southgate. “Sometimes I look at my journey and realise how much I’ve done,” Powell says, reflectively.
“From when I was 16 and very fortunate to be taken on by Palace, I didn’t realise the journey I’d embark on as a young player from south London, and 24 years later I retire at 40 and go straight into coaching and management. Along the way I’ve been in so many privileged positions, not by luck, maybe the odd time, but what I’ve done myself. It hits me now and then.”
Powell went on to manage Charlton, who he steered to the League One title in 2011-12, Huddersfield Town and Southend United. He’s been a highly respected first-team coach with Derby County, ADO Den Haag in the Netherlands, briefly with his beloved Tottenham Hotspur, and on Southgate’s staff for three years, ending after the World Cup in Qatar. Their lunch on Tuesday was their first real catch-up since then, partly because Powell was busy as head of coaching for Tottenham’s under 17s to 21s, a role he recently vacated.
Powell enjoys a good relationship with the “emotionally astute” Southgate
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Powell joined England initially as part of an FA Elite Coach Placement Programme — “and a lot of hard work by Garth Crooks, Brendan Batson and Paul Elliott way back in 2015” — to have more black coaches embedded with the national teams. “It was a platform to show what we could do. It’s been very powerful for me,” he says.
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“I was only meant to do a year. My ability with the players and the staff to lend my knowledge and experience meant I ended up staying three years. I’m ever so proud of being part of the journey of Jude, Bukayo and Phil because they’re humongous talents.
“Jude’s quite unique in his knowledge and understanding of the game. What Birmingham City and his family particularly have done with Jude and his brother [Jobe] — his brother’s equally as good from what I’ve seen — is he has a real persona about him that’s not normal in a 20-year-old, or 18 when I first met him.
Powell is impressed by Bellingham’s ability to be unfazed by increasing expectations
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“Jude’s absolutely fearless. Just look at what he’s doing at Real Madrid. Fearless! It’s not normal. But it is to him.
“He’s just taken on every challenge as if it’s normal. OK, it’s the England national team, fine, I’ll get on with it. It’s the Euros, it’s the World Cup, it’s Dortmund, it’s Real Madrid, I’m going for £100 million, OK! He gets on with it.
“Jude just looks at the game and understands what the coach and manager wants. It’s the values he was taught growing up. His dad [Mark] was a good player. Apparently, I’m his dad’s hero, bizarrely. His dad’s from Essex and supported Southend United in the Nineties. That’s when I played. His family are really, really good people.
“If we produce more like Jude, it’ll be great for England. He is going to be a future England captain. He will be Madrid captain.”
Powell sees similar fearlessness in Saka and Foden. “Bukayo’s adaptable, likeable, intelligent, a quick decision-maker, good deliverer, scores goals now, plays off the right but drifts inside and connects. He’s such a good player. Phil does exactly the same. He’s so good.”
Powell praises the academy coaching at Arsenal and Manchester City, as well as the managerial skills of Mikel Arteta and Pep Guardiola, in the emergence of Saka and Foden. “They develop talent and these guys [Saka and Foden] understood early what you do on and off the ball, where you should be when the ball’s in certain areas,” Powell says. “They get it and then their speed of thought and their decision-making is of a high calibre, elite level.”
Powell earned five caps during his England playing career and even nutmegged Guardiola, left
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One of the reasons why Powell proved so popular with England players was the human touch. When Saka’s penalty was saved by Italy’s Gianluigi Donnarumma in the shoot-out as England lost the Euro 2020 final, Powell walked towards him. “There’s quite a famous picture of myself standing with Bukayo after the final,” Powell says. “I saw my son and daughter and I just thought they’re the same age as Bukayo [19 at the time], and I just stood with him because it was the right thing to do. I put my hand on his shoulder, just saying, ‘I’m with you, I know what’s coming.’ ”
Saka, as well as Jadon Sancho and Marcus Rashford, endured a toxic wave of racist abuse. “Sadly, I knew it was coming,” Powell said. He himself suffered to his face as a player. “Now, you can’t hear it but it’s still there, there’s still hate. Racism will sadly always be there, you will always have ignorant people.”
I ask Powell whether it is harder for a black player to represent England than a white player? “It has been over the years,” he replies. “I can allude back to John Barnes and how a unique talent wasn’t utilised in a way it would be now.” Barnes was never fully appreciated playing for England.
Powell looks at Saka and admires how he rose above the abusers. “His character is brilliant,” Powell adds. “You just see with players like Jude, Bukayo and Phil when they come into England that they’re just going to develop more and more and be mainstays for their country for a long time.
“The academy system has helped that. We’ve always had unique talents but we’re producing more now on a regular basis. As you can see now with the younger England teams [under-19s and under-21s], they’re winning tournaments. I’d love us to produce even more. I think we will over time.”
Powell is confident that England will win trophies with the amount of talent coming through
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Powell’s five caps came alongside members of the so-called “Golden Generation”. He adds: “This generation has definitely got similar traits [in quality] but there’s more to choose from now. I was in eight squads, and seeing Paul Scholes was a bit like seeing someone like Phil Foden. I played against Scholes many times but when I saw him up close, in training, I just thought, ‘How have we developed a player like this, because he’s unique?’
“He had vision and an understanding and a quality of pass and shot — obviously not the tackling as everyone knows — but he had everything else that [if] you put him in the Barcelona team of that time, he’d be fine. He’d actually improve them.”
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Now England have more depth of talent. The obvious pressing concern is finding a long-term successor to Harry Kane as centre forward. Mason Greenwood is no longer a consideration. Where is the English Evan Ferguson? “Good point,” Powell says. “I think that player’s out there but he has to go through the same pathway and development like Harry did, whether that’s loans and then breaking into the team. You just hope that they are given the time and platform to show that they’re good enough to be the heir apparent to Harry.
“Listen, Harry’s not going anywhere soon. Looking at Harry he’s going to play for the next ten years knowing his mentality.
“I’m sad to see him go [to Bayern Munich] in many ways. He enriched not only Tottenham Hotspur but the Premier League. But there comes a point where maybe he felt, ‘I need to now test myself.’ ”
Powell is a Spurs fan — “Steve Archibald was my first hero” — and has always marvelled at Kane, even when working with him at Spurs. “When you look at the types of goals Harry’s got and his game intelligence and you think he’s from just down the road from Tottenham . . . that rarely happens.”
Powell details why Kane stands apart from other strikers. “His understanding of where to be, where the spaces are, where the spaces are for other players when he drops deep . . . but then equally when the play’s being built up in wide areas his timing of when to run, you can’t coach that,” he says.
Powell says you “can’t coach” the intelligence that Kane displays while on the pitch
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“You can coach players to be inbetween the sticks in the ‘second’ six-yard area but you can’t coach timing. Timing just comes from your understanding of when that ball is going to be delivered, the detail on that ball is going to be right for me to take it on the volley, take it on the half-volley, take it with my left, right foot, header. Harry does that quite uniquely consistently.
“He’s had a great upbringing at Spurs and some quite unique figures along his way — Bradley Allen initially, John McDermott, Tim Sherwood, and Poch [Mauricio Pochettino]. Every coach and everyone that helped him saw a player who can score goals, all types of goals. You could always count on Harry to score 25-plus goals.”
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There was always going to be life after Kane at Spurs. Ange Postecoglou has come in and got them attacking. James Maddison has come in and got them smiling. “I followed him [Postecoglou] in Japan through my love of the game,” Powell says. “When he came to Celtic, who were in quite a transitional period, I thought he’s going to be good for this club and he was. Then, of course, you have people say it’s only Scotland, but you have to deal with a goldfish-bowl life being up there and eight pages every day on your club, eight pages on the blue half.
“He handled it brilliantly. I admired the players he brought in that people didn’t know and they became really top players [such as Kyogo Furuhashi]. He’ll be good for the league and for Spurs after what’s gone on in the last few years.
“Maddison always seemed a Spurs player, and Spurs fans love a player like that, a player like Glenn Hoddle, [Micky] Hazard, [Luka] Modric, Gazza [Paul Gascoigne], [Chris] Waddle, [David] Ginola. They want a player like that, whether it’s out wide or a number ten, and have not really had one since Christian Eriksen or Dele Alli.”
Powell loved being at the club. “It was my decision to leave Spurs. I went to the club I’ve always loved, working in the academy. When [José] Mourinho leaves, we’re in the League Cup final against City [in 2021] and I’m desperate to get a ticket because I’ve been to most finals, but I couldn’t get a ticket for love nor money. Ryan [Mason] takes over, myself and Nigel Gibbs help him and I’m sitting on the bench for the final, a game I would have paid X amount of money to get a ticket for!”
He’s looking for a role back in the game. He’s never lost his hunger. “Oh God no. The hunger’s even more now. I want to stay in the game I love in whatever role.”
Powell’s still on our screens because of his involvement with the Ted Lasso series. “I got a phone call from an agent who said a script’s landed on my desk about an American taking over a Premier League team and they need someone to coach the ‘SAs’, the support actors, you can’t call them extras any more.
“I went to Hayes & Yeading — Warner Bros studios are across the road — and met the director. He said just have a look at the players and tell me what you think. I coached 15-20 players, they weren’t very good. Some developed. Brett Goldstein, who is one of the writers, big Spurs fan, and plays Roy Kent, he just can’t play. I just walked up to him and said, ‘I can see you’re not enjoying this so come out’. He said, ‘Thanks!’”
Powell is part of the show Ted Lasso on Apple TV
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Powell was then asked to do co-commentary on AFC Richmond games for the series alongside Arlo White.
“I told them, ‘I’m not an actor’. ‘You’ll be fine!’ they said. I did season one and during that time I got the England role and the role at Spurs. They said, ‘We’ll work around you’. I ended up doing three seasons.
“The show works because it’s honest and relatable. What they’ve done quite cleverly was embrace the English game. It’s an American manager and assistant manager but it’s about the English game. Football was the vehicle to actually talk about relationships and how players deal with certain issues.”
It’s time for the real world, and Powell’s off to lunch with Southgate. “He’s very emotionally astute. He understands people, understands players. He and the staff want to win so much.
“We were very close in the Euros, the better team against France [in their quarter-final defeat in Qatar]. It’s now about getting over the line at Euro 2024 and I feel we will.”
