For Neil Dewsnip, it was an emotional reunion but one that also featured a sense of peril. The Football Association’s technical lead for the England Under-17 to Under-21 set-ups was working through his first day at St George’s Park – in 2013 – when a familiar figure strolled over from one of the training pitches.
It was Steven Gerrard and, as the pair chatted, they could smile at the happy memories. When Gerrard was a pupil at Cardinal Heenan high school in Liverpool, Dewsnip had been the PE teacher.
“It was a lovely moment,” Dewsnip says. “I’d had a meeting with Roy Hodgson and Dan Ashworth [the FA’s technical director] and we walked down to the pitches. Steven was doing his bit and he came round and stood and talked for an hour. I should say that I was also ducking footballs that were coming from a certain Mr Rooney on the pitch in the middle.”
Dewsnip goes way back with Wayne Rooney, too, having worked at the Everton academy for 17 years. He first saw Gerrard as a 12-year-old, but it was younger still with Rooney, as the player made his way through the Everton youth ranks.
“I hadn’t seen Wayne for quite a while and these really are the sincere, magic moments that coaches and teachers would tell you about that mean the world,” Dewsnip says. “People that you’ve been involved with at younger ages, who become what they become.”
From PE teacher to academy head coach to England level, Dewsnip has seen it all in terms of youth development and he is now primed for one of his biggest challenges – leading the national team at the Under-17 World Cup in Chile.
England get the tournament started on Saturday when they play the curtain-raising tie against Guinea and, thereafter, they face Brazil and South Korea in the group phase. The knockout rounds begin on 28 October with last-16 fixtures.
The biennial tournament has been around since 1985, originally as the Under-16 World Championship before the age limit was raised to under-17 in 1991. England do not have a particularly rich history, having qualified for the first time only in 2007. They made it again back in 2011 and this will be their third participation. On both previous occasions, the team lost to Germany at the quarter-final stage.
For context, Germany have qualified eight times since the country’s unification, with East and West Germany having made it once each beforehand. Spain (eight qualifications), Italy (seven) and France (five) complete the lineup of Europe’s heavyweights. Only three European nations have won the trophy – the Soviet Union (1987); France (2001) and Switzerland (2009).
“Who are the teams to beat this time?” Dewsnip says. “Brazil and Nigeria keep cropping up as past winners, and so do Mexico, who have a good reputation. But at this stage of players’ development, it’s quite wide in terms of who could win it. In the past, Switzerland and Uruguay have got to the final. It will be a wider net than maybe at the senior end.”
England qualified last May, as a result of their showing at the European Under-17 Championship in Bulgaria, where they were beaten by Russia in the quarter-finals but then pipped Spain on penalties in a play-off for Chile. John Peacock, the coach, departed for a first-team position at Derby County in June, leaving Dewsnip – who is primarily in charge of the Under-18s – to take over the squad.
The preparations for Chile have been meticulous, with Dave Reddin, the FA’s head of performance services, who helped to plot England’s Rugby World Cup triumph in 2003 and Team GB’s successful Olympic Games at London 2012, a key part of the process.
Dewsnip’s team played DR Congo behind closed doors at St George’s Park last Wednesday and, having flown to Chile the following evening, they took on the host nation in a final warm-up game on Sunday. They hammered Congo 8-0 and drew 0-0 with Chile, before losing 4-3 in a penalty shootout.
“I’ve spent an awful lot of time with Dave Reddin planning the whole event,” Dewsnip says. “I thought I was good at organisation but Dave has got me organised. He’s told me what time I’m cleaning my teeth.
“We had people go over to Chile on a recce, and the Congo and Chile games were designed to give us experience of African and South American teams, ahead of the Guinea and Brazil ties. To be better structured going forward is a massive plus for all of us at the FA. Will it help? Yes. Absolutely. I feel as though I’ve lived the plan already.”
Dewsnip’s father, Jim, was on the coaching staff at Liverpool under Bill Shankly and Dewsnip has boyhood memories of meeting the great man, together with Kevin Keegan, who joined the club from Scunthorpe United in 1971.
“There was a just a ‘wow’ factor about both of them,” Dewsnip says. “If you’re football-mad, like all of us are on Merseyside, it just has a massive impression on you. It inspires you to want to be involved in football. Obviously, you’d want to be a player and, if you can’t be a player, be a coach.”
Dewsnip was a teacher first. He had played for Liverpool at youth level but his father realised that he would not make the grade as a professional and so he steered him towards the academic route.
Dewsnip spent four years at Carnegie PE college in Leeds and his first job – before Cardinal Heenan and Gerrard – was back in Liverpool at New Heys comprehensive school. Two of his pupils from that period are now managing in the Football League: Karl Robinson (MK Dons) and Jim Bentley (Morecambe).
“There must be something in the water,” Dewsnip says. “I was born in Whiston, at Whiston hospital, which would be Steven Gerrard country. And two of the boys in this squad for Chile were born there, as well. One of them is Trent Arnold, who is at Liverpool, and the other is Everton’s James Yates.”
Dewsnip is a passionate Evertonian and his long service at the club’s academy – where he also helped to develop Ross Barkley – has prepared him for his current role. His contacts and extensive knowledge of the youth scene at clubs around the country have, for example, helped the FA to widen the reach of its talent identification.
Dele Alli, the Tottenham Hotspur midfielder, who has been elevated to the senior England squad, is one illustration. He was at MK Dons in 2013-14 when Dewsnip picked him for the England Under-18s. Dewsnip had, of course, liaised with Robinson about him.
“I think the programme, led by Dan Ashworth, is getting broader in terms of England teams,” Dewsnip says. “You talk about MK Dons. Maybe in years gone by, you wouldn’t go and look at those clubs. Now, we are looking across all 92 and getting them covered.”
Dewsnip’s lineup in the opening tie against Guinea, though, will draw almost exclusively on players from Premier League clubs, with much expected of the Arsenal winger Chris Willock, the Tottenham Hotspur attacking players Marcus Edwards and Kaz Sterling, the Everton midfielder Tom Davies and the Chelsea left-back Jay DaSilva.
The West Ham United midfielder Reece Oxford has been left out of the squad, having made his first-team breakthrough at the beginning of the season. West Ham did not want to release him.
Dewsnip and his players have benefited from the environment at St George’s Park and being on site with the England seniors. Before they set off for Chile, James Milner and Phil Jagielka gave a talk to them, which was described as “inspirational”, and Gareth Southgate, the England Under-21 manager, worked with them in training.
Some of the senior players are close to their junior counterparts. Raheem Sterling, for example, was playing on the X-Box with a few of them in one of their rooms last week. The 20-year-old Manchester City winger, who was a part of the England squad at the Under-17 World Cup in 2011, is one of the clearest role models for them.
“The seniors are one floor up at St George’s,” Dewsnip says. “They don’t ignore the younger players; in fact, they all mix together. It’s just like a club environment – actually, it’s better than a club environment. It’s lovely when they sit and share and talk. It’s exactly what we hoped St George’s would be like.”
Dewsnip talks, like every successful youth coach, of the eureka moments he has felt when he sees a prodigy for the first time. He remembers being struck by Gerrard’s long-range passing and the ferocity of his shooting.
“Even as a baby, Steven could pass it from one side of the field to the other with great accuracy,” Dewsnip says. “It took your breath away and his shooting from outside the box was incredible. I’ve been very lucky to see Steven and Wayne [at young ages] and I might add Ross Barkley into that, as well. When they do come along, you know it’s different. They tend to have something magical, that makes you go: ‘Wow. That’s the one.’”
Dewsnip has three targets for the tournament in Chile – to do well in the matches, obviously, and to broaden the players’ cultural horizons, both on and off the field. The final one is perhaps the most important.
“We want to create a legacy,” Dewsnip says. “We will try to win but what’s more important is that the players who are going to play in the full England team one day gain something from this experience, which will make them not only that future England player but a really successful one. Does that mean a future Wayne Rooney? Well, hopefully, yes. That would be lovely.”
