Interim coach Cooke shaped by his working-class background in England

COMMERCE CITY» As interim head coach of the Rapids in the wake of Pablo Mastroeni’s firing last week, Steve Cooke faces a daunting challenge trying to stop the slide of a team that is winless in its last six games and plays its next four on the road.

But Cooke learned about hard work and overcoming adversity growing up among the working class of Sheffield, England. His grandfather was a coal miner for 48 years. His father was a steelworker.

“When you’re from a place like I’m from, it’s a nonnegotiable when you’re growing up that you have to put your time in and fight for everything,” said Cooke, 48. “It does breed people who are prepared to roll up their sleeves, get on with the job. And in the face of adversity, people who persevere, who don’t make excuses, take responsibility and put in the best they possibly can.”

As a player, Cooke never got past the youth level. He had heart but not talent.

“In my coaching career, I had to walk up the staircase. I didn’t take the elevator,” Cooke said. “As a player I was average. My brain worked a lot faster than my feet would. I wasn’t good enough as a player to make a living at it.”

So at age 16 he decided to pursue advancement in the sport he loved through coaching. He got his coaching license and went to Carnegie College in England to study teaching. Through coaching he wanted to help others achieve dreams that eluded him.

When he was 22 he got a job coaching youth teams associated with the club he loved, Sheffield Wednesday FC. The senior team was in the English Premier League at the time — in recent years it has been in the second tier of English soccer — and its youth teams were successful so it was a great place to learn. After six years, he got an offer to coach a youth club in Phoenix. The decision whether to move 5,000 miles from home was hard, so he sought advice.

“The first person I asked was my granddad,” Cooke said. “He had lived in the same square mile of Sheffield all of his life. He said, ‘You should go.’ I was shocked. He said, ‘It’d be a great experience.’ I went and asked my dad, and he said the same thing.”

So Cooke came to the U.S. in 1996. In 2007 he took a youth coaching job in Las Vegas, and in 2010 he was hired to coach at the Rapids development academy. Since 2012 he served as senior team assistant coach under Gary Smith, Oscar Pareja and Mastroeni.

Cooke is evasive when asked if he wants the interim tag removed from his title.

“My part is focusing on this next game,” Cooke said. “My career is going to be a lot longer than where I find myself today. I’m a young coach still. I want to work at the highest levels possible in the game. I want the players I work with to be hardworking, talented and exciting. I want

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them to be steely and determined as well. That’s what I’m trying to put in place here. Whether that is for one more game or much longer is not really my concern right now.”