The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Football coach Ugo Ehiogu, aged 44
Ugo Ehiogu tackled life after football with as much passion as he showed on the pitch – from becoming a partner in a new record label to helping develop the next generation of talent at Tottenham.
The former England defender died aged 44 after collapsing at Tottenham’s training centre, where he was coach of the under-23s, after a cardiac arrest.
Born in east London, Ugochuku started out on the long road towards becoming a professional at Senrab Football Club, the local team which can count the likes of Ray Wilkins, Bobby Zamora, Jermain Defoe, Sol Campbell and John Terry among its former players.
It was, however, at West Brom where the young defender would come through the youth ranks, before Ron Atkinson took him to Aston Villa in 1991 when Ehiogu, by his own admission suffered “an absolute nightmare” in his debut at home against Norwich.
“(It was) overconfidence. After gifting Norwich two goals, I was taken off,” he said in a Daily Telegraph interview.
“I just wanted the ground to swallow me up. Reading the papers for the next few days was agony and I didn’t feature in the team again for four months, but it did me a favour because I’d never known adversity before and maybe needed to be brought down a bit.
“Everybody can probably look back to a turning point in their career, that was definitely mine.”
As his career went on to develop, so did a calm exterior as Ehiogu moulded himself into an integral part of the Villa rearguard alongside Paul McGrath, winning his first trophy with the League Cup in 1994, despite having missed a penalty in the semi-final shootout victory over Tranmere.
He would become a cult figure at Villa Park, inheriting the number five shirt vacated by McGrath and going on to make more than 300 appearances.
There were, though, also testing times following a serious eye injury after being caught in the face by Alan Shearer’s boot in a match against Newcastle in January 1999, which left the defender needing two operations to save the vision in his left eye.
Middlesbrough came calling in November 2000, shelling out a then club-record £8 million for the defender who teamed up with former Villa player Gareth Southgate as part of the Riverside revolution and he won the League Cup again in 2004 with victory over Bolton in Cardiff.
However, continued knee problems would hamper his later career, which took in Leeds, Rangers and Sheffield United prior to his retirement in 2009.
Although Ehiogu eventually moved into coaching, the break from football allowed him to follow his other passion, helping to set up record label Dirty Hit, which boasts the likes of The 1975, Ben Khan, Superfood, Benjamin Francis Leftwich and Fossil Collective.
He leaves behind his wife Gemma, whom he married in 2005, and a son, Obi Jackson. Ehiogu also had a daughter, Jodie.