Meteoric rise of a real shooting star
A BOYHOOD Newcastle United fan parachuted into a dogfight in the middle of the park. Sound familiar? Well, Sean Longstaff ’s remarkable rise will have brought back a lot of memories for Lee Clark, who came through the club’s academy all those years ago.
A friend of Sean’s father, ice hockey great David, and his uncle, former team-mate Alan Thompson, Clark has followed Longstaff ’s progress every step of the way.
Indeed, it was Clark who gave the youngster his first taste of men’s football while managing Kilmarnock a couple of years ago. So how did Longstaff find life in the Scottish Premier League during that loan spell?
“Sean took the first game in his stride and like he’s done since he got into the first team at Newcastle, he just got stronger and stronger with each game,” Clark said. “His discipline and mentality was like a player who had a lot more experience than he had and was older than he was. That has come to the fore since he got into the team at Newcastle as well. “He’s a midfield player who can also break lines, can break beyond your striker. He’s a very good finisher for a midfield player and can get you between five and 10 goals a season.”
The 21-year-old has been disciplined in a two-man midfield alongside Isaac Hayden, breaking up attacks, preventing counters and playing sensible forward passes. Qualities that Pep Guardiola admitted Man City ‘could not cope with’ at St James’ Park last month.
But when you speak to Longstaff’s former coaches, they all mention the ‘striker’s mentality’ he had, never being afraid to miss from far out.
To date, Longstaff has averaged just one shot per 90 minutes for the Magpies but it was a very different story on loan at Blackpool last season when he scored four goals in his first five games.
Former manager Gary Bowyer remembers Neal Ardley, his opposite number at AFC Wimbledon, telling him after a 1-0 defeat how he had been warning his squad all week to keep Longstaff off his favoured right foot from distance. His players listened but Longstaff still made them pay when he wriggled away on one occasion. “What was particularly impressive about Sean was his confidence to shoot” Bowyer said.
“He was always looking at ways in which he could get better and that was something that stuck with me about his desire to learn. He was a young lad moving away from home so he had to cope with being away from his family but he grew up very quickly.
“After the game, when you used to go into the opposition manager’s office, they all talked about Longstaff.”
Longstaff quickly made his Blackpool team-mates sit up with his effort and how he hated losing smallsided games in training. That is still the case at Newcastle today and explains why he has become a firm favourite of Benitez’s. The 21-year-old is no longer the quiet boy who used to sit in the corner of the first-team dressing room on his phone, as Jacob Murphy used to joke, and feels he belongs there.
Yet Longstaff, like his brother Matty, has never forgotten where he came from: North Shields Juniors all those years ago.
“Sean was very passionate about his football even then and used to get upset if his team were losing,” said the club’s chairman, John Farrage. “In one game, his Dad had to ask the coaches to take him off to help calm him down before he went back on to win the game! “He’s got time for everybody. He just hasn’t changed at all. Even after a game, I’ll still text him and say, ‘Well done Sean. Absolutely brilliant.’ And he always replies, ‘Thanks John.’”