Manchester United academy player and coach Tom Huddlestone has revealed that Fulham manager Marco Silva played a vital role in convincing him to become a coach.
Huddlestone was without a club in the summer having ended his second spell with Hull City. But a call out of the blue from former teammate Paul McShane resulted in him taking up the offer from United to be player-coach for the club's Under-21s.
As Erik ten Hag's side prepare to take on Fulham this weekend, the former Tottenham man explained how their current manager Marco Silva inspired him to make the switch from player to coach.
In an interview with the club's magazine 'Inside United', he said: “There have been a few [main influences]. I think, as a person in general, you pick up different traits from people you work with or are managed by. I’ve worked with a range of good managers.
"I think one that really clicked my coaching ideas into a process was Marco Silva. I only had him for five or six months at Hull but I thought about the detail he went into around the training pitch, the analysis videos before and after every training session and definitely the matches. Maybe that coincided with my age at the time but I thought he sparked an excitement from a coach’s standpoint in me.
"I think with the training aspect, you still get that competitiveness that you crave daily, from the training side of it. It has been interesting and sort of almost being apologetic to coaches in the past, where you don’t understand, as a player, all the details that go into the planning of sessions and why you are doing certain sessions. The setting up of equipment before training and clearing it away afterwards.
"From a player’s perspective, you come in an hour and a half or two hours later than the coaches, you do your training and everything is set up ready for you, and then you go home. So I think, even from playing obviously last season, you do probably take that for granted, more so when you realise what goes on with training and every single session daily."
Huddlestone revealed that he considered making the switch fairly early-on in his playing career, as he relished the opportunity to put his coaching methods into practice on the pitch.
He said: “Probably in my late 20s, I had an interest. One of the summers, I did my coaching badges. When I was away from it, it wasn’t something that I necessarily thought about it, but when I was doing the coaching sessions, I loved it.
“Getting my ideas across and seeing them implemented in training sessions is something I looked to do and I thought about doing sort of the second chapter in my career. To be honest, I have enjoyed doing a few media bits as well so, down the line, coaching and media is something I am looking forward to doing.
“Ideally I think, if you see a lot of coaches, a lot of them go away from the style of play they had as well. I think you’ve got to find a balance. There are always going to be three or four different ways of playing and getting the best result, whether that’s based on the personnel you have available to you or your system. I wouldn’t like to pigeon-hole a team I coach or manage down the line into one set style of play. I think it can be very varied.”
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