IT’S A MARCH evening in 2017 at the Emirates Stadium, and Bayern Munich manager Carlo Ancelotti is burbling urbanely through his pre-game media duties ahead of a Champions League tie knockout tie with Arsenal.
With a Bayern scout recently spotted at Goodison Park, a question goes up from an Irish journalist in the room.
Hello. Regarding Philip Lahm retiring at the end of the season, are you looking at Seamus Coleman as a possible replacement?
A one-word response.
No.
Ancelotti delivers it with a puzzled smile as journalists snigger around the room.
Now fast-forward to a September 2020 press conference, just after Ancelotti’s Everton have gone top of the Premier League table with a win at Crystal Palace.
I’ve had a lot of captains in my career but how Seamus expresses his love for the shirt is really top. He is a great captain, honestly. I don’t want to forget anyone but he is up there as a captain with Maldini, John Terry and Sergio Ramos.
And nobody is sniggering now.
**********
“No matter what manager he has played under, they have all had time for him so it’s no coincidence that Carlo Ancelotti should come in and sing his praises”, says Shaun Kelly, himself a League of Ireland footballer who grew up with Coleman in Donegal. A year apart in school, they both played Gaelic football for Killybegs and soccer for St Catherine’s, the club at which Coleman was first spotted by Sligo Rovers.
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Ancelotti wasn’t lying when he gave his one-word answer at Arsenal a few years ago: Bayern were at Goodison at the time of Lahm’s retirement but were scouting Leighton Baines rather than Coleman. The Italian has learned of Coleman’s value this season, however, because Everton remain much better with Seamus Coleman than without him.
Their defensive record is better with him in the team, and he is still making a significant attacking contribution too.
Only Lucas Digne, James Rodriguez, and Gylfi Sigurdsson have more assists than him this season, while WyScout stats show he has been the most accurate crosser of the ball across the entire Premier League this year. There are other, more subtle contributions beyond what the stats say. Left back Digne, for instance, is more dangerous when Coleman gives opponents something to worry about down the right flank, and the majority of Digne’s assists have come in games Coleman has played.
His tactical flexibility is another trait which has endeared him to his manager. Ancelotti has played Coleman at right-back, in a back three, on the right-wing and, most notably, in a man-marking role on Andy Robertson in February’s long-awaited win at Anfield.
There is a list of right-backs who were supposed to see off Coleman at Everton – see Cuco Martina, Djibril Sidibe and Jonjoe Kenny – but none are currently at the club while Coleman made his 350th Everton appearance in midweek. Injury has robbed him of the chance to make a 300th Premier League appearance against Manchester City this afternoon, a milestone which only 13 Irish internationals have previously hit.
He has also regained his status as the pre-eminent Irish performer in the Premier League. Stephen Kenny had made his mind up long before he took charge of his first game that Coleman was not part of his first-choice back four, but six months later Coleman’s form was such he had to be accommodated and then became one of the few to emerge with credit from the wreckage of the World Cup qualifiers.
But it is impossible to capture Coleman’s contribution to Everton by stats and facts alone. There is still no method of quantifying his captaincy; Opta have yet to develop a stat for Expected Leadership.
No, Coleman’s greatest contribution is in the impalpable benefits of his captaincy.
“At Everton, attitude is the most important thing and Seamus has it in abundance”, says Graeme Sharp, who won two league titles across a storied career at Goodison. “He has fantastic character, he is a leader, has been given the captain’s armband and rightly so.”
As Kelly explains, the GAA has a stake in those skills.
“He is one of those guys who was the captain of all the underage teams growing up. I remember once we were in an U16 county final against St Eunan’s of Letterkenny. We were down by something like seven points at half time and a point down in injury time. We ended up winning the game with the last kick of the game, but I remember that game for how well Seamie played, and how his driving force brought us back. To this day, it still stands out to me.”
“When you speak about his leadership, it starts off with the principles he has as a man and as a professional”, says Coleman’s former international team-mate David Meyler. “He is a real standard-setter, in terms of everything he does. It’s down to the smallest details. If he is going for lunch in a canteen he speaks to everybody, he is polite to everyone, and asks everyone how they are. He is a really affectionate person.
“I’ve often said this as the father of a daughter: he’s the type of fella you would want her to bring home. He’s just a brilliant fella. I could talk all day about him, but there are not enough adjectives in the dictionary to describe him.”
Anyone familiar with Coleman’s post-match interviews will know he is keenly aware of the responsibilities of playing for Everton and Ireland, and he drills those principles behind the scenes. The Athletic reported earlier this year that Coleman had the Everton media team cut together a motivational video (they are not all so controversial) of players’ individual highlights spliced with great moments from Everton’s past, as a reminder of who and what they would be playing for during the enforced absence of supporters.
“He’s one of the first people on to the phones to welcome new players into the club”, says Sharp. “It’s quite easy in this day and age for players to sign and just come in, but Seamus is very hands on in terms of making sure the new players are settled in – whether it be giving advice on houses or the commute – to make sure everything is done right for them. I think some players come in nowadays and just come to a club for the sake of coming to a club. But Seamus will tell them what playing for Everton Football Club is all about.”
His leadership often comes in the basic form of hard work. As Meyler explains, he is constantly reviewing clips from training, and doesn’t restrict his video analysis to himself.
“He takes in a lot of information. He looks at other people’s information, so he is fully aware. He is not selfish in looking only at his role and responsibility, he checks on everyone else’s to make sure they now what they are doing.
“These are small details but they matter massively. An example is set pieces. The majority of time fellas only look at who they are marking or what position they are supposed to be in. But Seamus knows where everybody should be. To some people reading that, they will think, ‘Shouldn’t everyone do that?’ but not everybody does. It’s not a common trait.”
Here’s something else that isn’t too common among the game’s professional elite.
“The Seamus I first met 13 years ago is the exact same Seamus now”, continues Meyler. “Nothing has changed, even though he is the captain of Ireland, the captain of Everton and has played in the Premier League for the best part of 12 years, he is the exact same Seamus Coleman that I met when we were in the Ireland underage teams together.
“It is rare. There are other examples of fellas like that, but Seamus is still the young lad from Killybegs. That’s the way he is and that’s who he is. Nothing has changed.”
Well, one thing has changed. Look through any Donegal newspaper archives and you won’t find many mentions of a Seamus Coleman. No, back then he was almost exclusively known as Seamie.
And he’s still Seamie when he goes back.
“He comes from a good family back here, and when he’s home it is not Seamus Coleman the Premier League footballer”, says Kelly. “You might have a few of the lads in the pub watching a match and he’ll come in and sit as if it’s just a normal person. He does be up above his own neighbourhood, and there’s a place called the Green up where he lives and he still goes out playing football with kids when he gets home.”
Kelly is co-managing a St Catherine’s youth team at the moment and Coleman is in regular contact, sharing ideas from the coaching badges he is presently taking having run a training session for the team when he was last home prior to the pandemic.
This has been another season to show Coleman’s qualities, but it has nonetheless been another frustrating season for Everton, who remain confounding. Top of the early season table, they won away to Liverpool for the first time in more than 20 years, also beating Chelsea and Leicester while drawing at Old Trafford, and yet they look set to miss out on Europe by losing a record nine home games. Since Christmas, Burnley, Fulham, Newcastle and already-relegated Sheffield United have all won at Goodison.
“I remember him saying to me, ‘I need success, Graeme, I want to win something’”, recalls Sharp. “‘I want to remembered as someone who won things, not just somebody who has played 300 or 400 games.’ He still has that desire and hopefully by the time his career at Everton winds up he will have won something. For all he has been through, he deserves to be remembered as someone who has won a trophy.”
The club say Coleman has a contract for life, and he will be offered a route into coaching with Everton if he wants it. That won’t be for some time yet, though. Everton are likely to sign another right-back this summer, but don’t discount Coleman seeing off another challenge.
It’s simply what he does, and he does it through talents buttressed by the lessons he learned from home.
“At Everton games you can still hear his strong Donegal accent coming out when someone does something wrong”, reflects Kelly. “I’d be laughing to myself, ‘It still sounds like the same old Seamie from way back when.’”
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