So, Ryan, exactly why did you swap Stoke for south Florida?
A warrior of the English game, Shawcross is relishing his fresh opportunity with Beckham and Neville in Miami
Ever since deciding to move from Stoke-on-trent to Miami, where he will spend the next two years with David Beckham and Phil Neville, Ryan Shawcross has been unable to avoid the inevitable question. Can he do it on a balmy evening in south Florida?
We will find out next month when Shawcross flies out to begin the final chapter of his playing career with Inter Miami, the ambitious Major League Soccer franchise co-owned by Beckham and now managed by Neville.
It is an unexpected, yet exciting opportunity, and Shawcross is itching to get started after waving farewell to Stoke City, the club where he played for 14 years in a wonderful carpet ride of indelible memories.
“It came completely out of the blue and now I just want to get over there and get going,” he says, on a Zoom call. “It was a strange one because my Stoke contract was coming to an end this summer and they weren’t going to extend it, which was absolutely fair enough.
“I’ve been fit for a while and not getting in the team for whatever reason, so I was leaning towards retiring and moving into coaching. Then my agent [Chris Lomas] called and said he had a brilliant offer.
“I spoke to Phil, just to make sure it was what I wanted to do. I didn’t want to go out there for a jolly-up, but straight away I was fully on board with what he said.”
Shawcross has signed a two-year deal and his capture is seen as a huge coup for Inter Miami, who are preparing for their second season in MLS. Neville was appointed as head coach in January, in a clear sign of the club’s determination to make an impact. Beckham has been virtually ever-present at the club’s training base in Fort Lauderdale this year, with the squad reporting for preseason training last Monday.
“David has sent me a few text messages and I played with him in a few England squads when I was younger,” Shawcross says. “He does everything right and over the next decade or so it’s going to be a huge success. They are taking it very seriously and they’re going places. The set-up at Miami is first-class.
“It comes from the Manchester United academy. All the players they produce have this DNA where the standards have to be high. It all comes from the great man, Sir Alex [Ferguson]. You rarely come across a bad egg who was in the academy. They are all solid characters and usually go on to have good careers.”
Not even Shawcross could have envisaged the career he would have at Stoke, after joining as a raw teenager from United. He was persuaded to sign by Tony Pulis in 2007 with Stoke in the Championship, making the move permanent in January for a fee of only £1 million. Promotion to the Premier League soon followed and those early years at the Britannia Stadium were remarkable, a throwback to a golden era when the team, city and supporters united.
Shawcross was the emblem of Stoke’s rise, a warrior centre-half who epitomised their unbreakable spirit, making more than 450 appearances before his life-changing decision earlier this year.
“Over the past few weeks, I’ve looked back at pictures and videos of what we achieved and you can’t help but be grateful to have been involved with it,” he says. “We were written off as one of the favourites to get relegated, and that was in the Championship! After we got promoted the bookies paid out on us going down after one game, but what a ride it was. We found a way of playing that teams found really difficult.”
After guiding Stoke to an FA Cup final and the last 32 of the Europa League, Pulis was replaced by Mark Hughes in 2013 and the club went in a different direction, signing players from Barcelona and reshaping their style of play. Yet they still relished their reputation as big-game hunters, regularly infuriating the likes of Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger.
“For us to go again under Hughes, and play some of the best football in the country, was unbelievable. We finished ninth three years running but we should have done better,” Shawcross says.
“He’s the best manager I’ve ever played under. His tactics were unbelievable. We went from being a socalled long-ball team under Tony Pulis to playing with Bojan as a ‘false nine’ with no striker.”
Shawcross points to the ironstrong spirit of the dressing room as crucial in those days when Stoke turned putting noses out of joint into an art form.
“We had a squad full of tough men for five to six years,” he says. “We brought in players who had bad reputations but they came in and the core of the dressing room was so good they couldn’t penetrate it. We had a spine of Asmir [Begovic], [Robert] Huthy, Rory [Delap], Walts [Jon Walters] and Glenn Whelan. If training or the tactics weren’t very good, they’d say something.”
The camaraderie among those players never wavered. There was no doubting Stoke’s professionalism, though, and Shawcross’s consistency earned him a call-up to the England squad in November 2012. But he endured a difficult evening against a Sweden team inspired by the brilliance of Zlatan Ibrahimovic. Sweden won 4-2, with Ibrahimovic scoring all the goals, and Shawcross’s international career ended before it began after just 16 minutes as a substitute.
“It’s not something I look back on too fondly!” Shawcross says. “It was my decision to stay at Stoke, who
were probably an unfashionable team, but managers aren’t idiots and if I’d have been playing that well I would have been picked more regularly. You can’t look back with regrets or hold any grudges. You have to perform in those small moments and I didn’t.”
Shawcross, 33, is now fully focused on his future and is scheduled for a meeting with the US Embassy next week for his visa. His wife, Kath, and children, Freddie, Lexie and Luca, will also join him in Miami and the season opener is against LA Galaxy on April 18.
“If I’d got the offer and my family had said no, I wouldn’t have gone,” he says. “It’s massive for us. I can’t wait to get out there and enjoy it.”