Total Recall
Ireland career let St Ledger rise from humble start to living high life under Trapattoni
Former Ireland defender Sean St Ledger talks to Aidan Fitzmaurice about his time under Trapattoni
IT DOESN’T take long for a footballer to find that the obstacles placed in their path by life, once they have retired, are more troubling and imposing than the ones they faced on the field of play. In his 37-cap career with Ireland (2009-’14), Sean St Ledger battled with some of the best in the business, names like Lewandowski, Henry, Berbatov, Pirlo, Balotelli, Torres and Modric, and he did so with success: aside from the disaster of the Euro 2012 finals, St Ledger lost just five times in 34 games in the green shirt.
But once his playing career was over, ending prematurely due to injury, there were other hurdles to cross. He recalls the panic of the first time he was asked to address the Ireland U-15 squad, where he works as assistant to team manager Jason Donoghue, one of his current jobs alongside the main gig, as scout and analyst for his former club, Leicester City.
“Jason handed me a whistle and stopwatch and said, ‘Here, you take over.’ My mouth went dry on the spot, I had a group of 14-year-olds looking at me and I was never more scared in my life,” St Ledger says.
“One day I was writing something on the board but my hands were shaking. I just got stuck, so one of the players just came up and did it, he was so confident, you can see the education these boys are getting.”
Bedded
The nerves disappeared as St Ledger bedded into the role with the U-15s, though Covid-19 has made the last 12 months a write-off in terms of working with that group, where St Ledger sees real potential in talents like Kevin Zefi.
But the adjustment from player to ex-player was also tough. “I don’t know if I handled it that well, there were difficult times and I questioned what I was going to do. I was unsure for a long time after I stopped playing,” says the defender, whose professional career was effectively over when he left US side Orlando City in 2015 at just 31, as attempted comebacks after that were all short-lived due to injury.
“I remember times when I’d lie in bed for a couple of hours in the morning, looking at the ceiling, as I had nothing to do, I’d be awake but just looking at my phone thinking, what will I do today? I can go to the gym but that’s only an hour, that doesn’t fill your day.
“And if I look back, I wish I’d been prepared for life after football, I regretted that I’d not done more in education. Because I’d let the education side of it lapse, when it came to writing reports in my scouting role, my English was poor, my vocabulary wasn’t as good as it should have been.
“I’d spent 15 years of my life just playing football, someone telling me where to go and what to do and it took me time to learn new skills again. I wish I’d done a course during my career to prepare as it’s not easy, that rush you get from playing is very difficult to replace.”
A footballer’s life is managed, on and off the field. “When I was playing, someone would call me and say your house insurance is up, do you want it done and I’d just say yeah. I didn’t think about it.
“One time my car broke down and I didn’t know what to do, I didn’t have a number to call, you have people at the football club to do that for you, you are in a bubble.
“So when I finished playing I had to figure it out for myself, find out how much car insurance was as there was no one there to sort it for me. And it’s getting worse now, players have so many people doing things for them, everyone at the club wants the players to just focus on playing and training.”
It took him a while but St Ledger found a path in life, helped by a short spell as manager of English non-league club Guisley in 2018, having already been at the club as a player.
“Being manager at Guisley replaced the buzz of playing and that gave me the direction I needed to go into a coaching path, and the people in the FAI have been very helpful in that, in
getting my qualifications. And fortunately I had a good relationship with people at Leicester from when I’d played there, so I got to join Leicester on a fulltime capacity after a year.”
After spells with Peterborough and Preston, St Ledger had a three-year stint with Leicester (2011-’14) where playing time was limited, but the club is his home now in that scouting post, playing a role in a recruitment department which is the envy of many clubs in the Premier League.
“It’s a team effort, the whole team could work on the same player, watching different games and reports go to the director of football and on to the manager. We know the history of the club and how it’s been successful so we have a model and a strategy and try to follow that. Player identification is a big part of it, as we know what the manager wants from his players,” says St Ledger, impressed by the attention to detail shown by Brendan Rodgers in Zoom calls with the scouting staff.
“He’s a fantastic communicator, he’s very clear on what he wants in a player and that makes my job easier. You can narrow it down to a specific requirement for each position,” he says.
“It’s a different club to the Leicester I joined 10 years ago. They have been really smart in how they have worked, I think they recognised the mistakes they made at the start. Sven-Goran Eriksson signed me, and I really appreciated that opportunity but I don’t think he realised what the league was about, he signed players who didn’t really work.
“Nigel Pearson came in and had more experience of the league, and the approach changed. I didn’t play that much at Leicester, but I could see the
team spirit that was starting to develop. They have built gradually to where they are now, this was no overnight thing, and a lot of it has been about smart recruitment.”
St Ledger didn’t get to play much under Eriksson but he was a favourite of another high-profile continental coach, Giovanni Trapattoni, who handed St Ledger his debut in 2009 and came to rely heavily on him as he formed a strong alliance with Richard Dunne.
“I never played in the Premier League, so international football was the highlight for me. I played in an Ireland team that was really successful, I have always stressed a team mentality over an individual one, and to get to the Euros was a huge achievement,” he says.
Quick
“Trap saw something in me and maybe he saw that me and Richard was a good combination. I was quite quick so we worked well as a unit. I never asked him why he liked me, I was just happy to see my name on the team-sheet, and when a manager keeps picking you, especially a manager like Trap who had worked with so many world-class players, that boosts you.
“He had his ways: doing a setpiece
in training he’d grab you physically and tell you where he wanted you to be, we weren’t used to that.
“He never really went that crazy, and we were successful for a lot of that time, but one game I recall was Andorra away. At half-time he was going nuts, I’d heard about that famous rant he had at Bayern. In Andorra, he was close to that Bayern rant; we were winning at halftime but he was so angry. But he was great, Trap just had an aura.”
After one game under Martin O’Neill (away to Poland) St Ledger, by now based in the US, was finished with international football. “After an injury I went to America and got back playing, I messaged Martin to say I was back fit and playing and was eager to get back into the squad. I didn’t get a reply and that’s when I knew it was the end of my international career but I had a good run while I was playing. He didn’t owe me anything, we didn’t really know each other that well.
“International football was great for me and then I loved the chance to work with the U-15s, lads like Kevin Zefi have a great future.
“I am sure we can get back to being successful in a few years, especially under the guidance of Stephen Kenny, as there has been a switch in the style of play. We’ve not had that success lately but I can see it changing.”
‘I messaged Martin to say I was fit again and wanted to get back in but I didn’t get a reply’