Since the news that Colin Pascoe and Mike Marsh have departed the club broke a few days ago I’ve been thinking of potential replacements and how Liverpool may go about filling the cavity they’ve created in their senior management. I pondered European experience, previous Liverpool coaching names and even former Liverpool legends, but it turns out the answer was right in front of my eyes. Liverpool’s Academy Director Alex Inglethorpe would be perfect for the job but, most importantly, he’s ready for it.
I first started getting to know Alex a few years ago and looking back on his career I’ve noticed that the path he’s taken has always been exactly what he’s wanted to do at that time and has always followed an upward curve. Youth football coaching is what he knows and also something he’s held in extremely high regard for, but that’s not to say he hasn’t had his own taste of successful first team management at Exeter City.
Maybe the following few points will help you grasp a better picture of who Alex Inglethorpe is, both as a coach and a man…
1. Loved at the club
From the top down Alex is not only loved as a person at the club, but hugely respected. The club owners have a lot of faith in his ability to revitalise the talent pool in Liverpool and find the ‘next Steven Gerrard’ and that’s why Alex’s assent of the management team has potentially been so rapid. He’s also well loved by his players, again from under 8s to under 21s, and has a relationship with them as a mentor more than a school headmaster; something that Borrell instilled with his style.
2. Friends with Brendan
Multiple daily phone conversations between Brendan and Alex occur and this shows the great bond they have with each other, not just because they work together in fairly close proximity, but because they think almost identically in the way they tackle football. They take advice off each other and bounce ideas off each one another before decisions are made – but that goes for all of the Liverpool senior management. It was even Brendan Rodgers that convinced Alex to move from Tottenham to Liverpool – meaning Alex had to move his young family from their lifelong home in London to the all-new setting of Merseyside.
3. Spots talent
He watches every game he can. Everything. Alex is a scholar of the game of football and loves it from the grassroots up. Last time I saw him he was running between an under 12 match finishing and an under 9 training match beginning. He’s got hunger to see more and pass on the knowledge where he can to whoever he comes into contact with that takes an interest. Due to this hunger and drive he’s honed down the ability to spot talent at a very early age. We were talking about Brannagan, Rossiter, Wilson and Kent two years ago or more because he’d earmarked them. There’s always a development scope for each player too, where each individual has something drawn out for the next two years of their career. Read more about that in this interview I did with him here: http://readliverpoolfc.com/2015/01/06/inglethorpe-mapped-out-the-next-two-years-for-academy-players/
4. Developing players is his specialty
Alex has always been honest with me when talking about his career and how he wants to progress and it’s always been focussed around the development of players and that’s why first team management doesn’t interest him in the Premier League. However, Liverpool do offer him great exposure (even at first team level) to develop players into world class stars. Players like Suarez (who he always uses as an example to Academy players) came from Nacional, then through the Dutch system and ended up at Liverpool where he made his name. Alex loves the journey of a player and how they can be nurtured and developed through that adventure. Perhaps in a first team role he’d be able to facilitate the last part of the journey for a player.
5. Top bloke
I’ve not met a nicer, more genuine person in football. Work comes first for Alex but he approaches everything as a family man. He has created an atmosphere in the Academy that makes him resemble a dad that you’re mates with, not a strict headmaster like it had before. The players much prefer his approach. You can read about when I first talked to Alex here: http://readliverpoolfc.com/2013/02/20/hugo-finally-meets-inglethorpe/ and from then on we’ve talked frequently about a variety of different things; often not about Liverpool but about youth coaching and football in general. He’s just a really top bloke and he deserves all the success he undoubtably will get.
Do I think he’ll part of Liverpool’s first team coaching staff next season? No. He’s a developer and every time I talk to him he only talks about that and how he can get players to the first team whilst also making them into good human beings. He’s got a strict plan; both with himself and the club.
The last time I interviewed him back in January he said this of his future:
“I want to be the best coach I can, the best developer of talent as I can. [In five years,] I’d love to think that I am doing the same thing and talking about players that are in the first team and talking about the ones below that are coming through. My intention is to hopefully be in the same role.”
“[Liverpool] are very different from a lot of other teams, at the minute. There is a genuine desire, from top to bottom, to see young players coming through the academy to play in the first team. It’s not difficult to sell that vision to our younger players, because they can actually see it and feel it, by being out there and training with the first team everyday.”
“I can say, if you are good enough, you will be given an opportunity. There aren’t many teams that can honestly say that.”
—-read more from that interview here
I don’t think this is part of the Inglethorpe plan *but* I wouldn’t mind if it was. And neither should you.
