Gareth Owen’s new key role at Stoke City explained
The first question Gareth Owen fielded about his new role as Stoke City academy technical director was, well, what does it mean?
Owen came through Stoke’s youth ranks himself and played for the first team under Tony Pulis at the start of a career which involved almost 300 competitive matches. He returned to Clayton Wood as a youth coach 12 years ago and became academy director in 2019.
The 42-year-old almost left during the reign of Ricky Martin but stayed on to help oversee the progress of prospects such as England juniors Nathan Lowe and Emre Tezgel, Sol Sidibe, Jaden Dixon and Tommy Simkin, as well as Italy youth Laurence Giani.
And then last month he was unveiled with this new title, which will see him work closely with sporting director Jon Walters across all areas of the club.
So what does it mean?
Owen said: “I’ve managed to find a few more hours in the day for a start!
“Day to day wise, a lot has changed and I’m focusing on a lot of different things. I still have an oversight on the academy and making sure in the interim that it’s still running, functioning and players are still developing, staff are still developing and recruitment of the new academy manager is ongoing. We’ll have some final interviews next week.
“That’s part of the week. I’m also assisting with first team recruitment and obviously supporting Ian coming in but also going out to watch games and first team players and trying to assist any way I can in that way.
“Part of it is also been looking at the women’s team and the girls’ section and what that looks like. We had a fantastic day with the cup final but how do we build on that? How do we grow the girls’ game and provide more opportunities for girls from Stoke-on-Trent to play for Stoke City, similar to the boys’ academy.
“I’m still working with the lads on loan and speaking with Tommy (Simkin) and Freddie Anderson, who is over in Cork, and making sure they are developing and still enjoying it and embracing the challenges that being on loan provides.
“Then it’s anything else that falls in between and anything that Jon Walters wants to get me to do. There’s a lot of stuff that’s going on, a lot of projects that will put the club in a better position moving forward and then hopefully I can add some expertise and contribute to more players and better players playing for Stoke City.”
Walters came back to Stoke just over 12 months ago, taking over from Martin as interim technical director before being appointed sporting director. The duties and responsibilities are wide-ranging to the point of being endless.
“It’s a non-stop role and a lot of things to get under involving all aspects of the football club and every second of the day you’re wearing a different hat, whether it’s the doctor having a baby this week or a player’s mum being in hospital, someone being late to the chef, recruitment, the first team, sports science and scans and medical… There’s always something going on,” said Walters.
“When you have someone in the club with the DNA of the club, you have to make sure there are pathways and really show that for people who have that work ethic, there is a chance to move on and help with other things.
“The idea behind Gareth was multi-layered, which he has touched on, and it’s including working with the academy to have synergy in game model between all the football teams all the way through. We want to see one style of Stoke football team all the way through from academy to first team, with a real identity. We’ve been working on that for six months and been rolling it out through the youth teams.
“With recruitment, we’re all involved – myself, Ian, Gareth – and it’s so important to have people who understand Stoke City. It’s not so much a job for us but a club we love and a club we’ll work relentlessly hard for, all the time, and we enjoy doing so.
“Gareth is underway with recruiting a new academy manager and he’s talked about the women’s side and John (Coates) wants to have a pathway for local girls to progress through. There has been improvement year on year with the women’s team, who are doing really well – so how can we improve on that?
“There’s a lot of work at the training ground and it’s constant but Gareth will help me across all areas really, from academy, women’s team to first team.”
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