the times | Monday April 4 2022 1GG 5
thegame
come through was Frank,” he says.
“Typical, he puts things in place, does
it properly so he doesn’t forget.”
Carr watched the 1966 World Cup
final from his council flat in Bow and
weeks later joined the club as an
apprentice, making a daily bid to
clean the boots of Moore. “I wouldn’t
have the cheek to go up and say,
‘Bobby, how are you doing?’ Whereas
a lot of players would do that today.”
When his career ended he joined
West Ham’s staff and later developed
seven of the 23-man England squad
at the 2010 World Cup finals, and was
appointed MBE in the same year. He
persuaded Ferdinand to drop from an
attacking midfielder to defence. He
also briefly worked with John Terry,
then a midfielder, until he headed to
Chelsea aged 14. “In those days
youngsters had to sign a registration
each year and our mistake was letting
them go for the summer, assuming
they would return, and Chelsea took
advantage of our naivety,” he says.
Terry was invited to play in Carr’s
testimonial in 2010. “He was up for it.
He asked, ‘What sort of reception do
you think I will get from the crowd?’
I replied, ‘They’ll be all right.’ ”
Carr has plenty of stories, like the
time Brian Clough asked him to sit in
the front seat of Nottingham Forest’s
coach to show the driver the route
from their hotel to Upton Park before
a League Cup tie. Clough replaced the
Forest sign on the bus with Notts
County to avoid being heckled and
when they pulled into the car park, a
steward asked whether they were the
players or directors. “Cloughy took
offence, pushed the driver to one side
and said, ‘We are the players. When
the directors come, don’t let the
bastards in!’ ”
Carr plans to be present for the
Europa League quarter-final against
Lyons, the first leg of which is on
Thursday. He was unhappy to leave in
2016, when told the academy had not
been producing players. “It surprised
me a little bit, because shortly after
they sold James Tomkins, who we
produced, for £11 million,” he says.
“You won’t discover another
England international every year.
That was their reason for wanting to
tell me to move on. I felt there were
players on the conveyor belt, like
Declan, Ben and Grady Diangana
[who joined West Bromwich Albion
for up to £18million]. Each year we
felt Ben had done enough, kept him
for another year to see how he did.
The next year he improved, got
bigger. Ben pleasantly surprised me.”
Carr is working as a mentor for
coaches for the Premier League but is
open to other opportunities. “I do
miss it, you can’t go backwards, it has
been my life,” he says.Carr was academy
director at West Ham
from 1973 to 2016Tony Carr is flicking through photos
of Frank Lampard, Rio Ferdinand
and Declan Rice as teenagers,
snapshots of the decades he spent
developing players for West Ham
United and England.
As a West Ham apprentice, Carr
cleaned the boots of Bobby Moore,
Geoff Hurst and Martin Peters
months after England lifted the 1966
World Cup, before his playing career
ended at the age of 21 and he became
the club’s academy director between
1973 until 2016.
In that time he worked with Alvin
Martin, Paul Ince, Tony Cottee,
Lampard, Ferdinand, Michael
Carrick, Joe Cole, Jermain Defoe,
Glen Johnson and James Tomkins.
Of West Ham’s present squad,
he has nurtured Mark Noble, Ben
Johnson and Rice.
Carr’s judgment of talent not only
set players on the road to becoming
stars, but earned West Ham more
than £70 million in sales, which will
be dwarfed by the £150 million, at
least, that the club want to allow Rice
to leave for one of his admirers —
Manchester United, Chelsea or
Manchester City — this summer.
Carr says that Rice has lots to
consider. “With my heart talking, not
my head, I hope he stays,” Carr says.
“If he moves to say, Manchester City,
will he play every week? Will that
harm his form? The World Cup is in
November. He is 23, he can have a
great tournament and maybe one
more year at West Ham won’t do him
any harm. The big key is, will West
Ham get into Europe? Could they win
the Europa League and get in the
Champions League?
“If it’s purely money, he’ll go
somewhere else. Nobody can tell me
they would stay at a club because
they love the club if they could earn
twice as much somewhere else.
“His dad is his agent and that’s a
good thing, because he’s not doing it
for self-gain.”
Rice was released by Chelsea aged
14 in 2014 and Carr, 71, was alerted to
him by Dave Hunt, a scout-turned-
agent who said that they needed to
move fast to beat Fulham, who were
close to Rice’s home.
“What struck me was he was very
comfortable and confident on the ball
and had a good attitude to effort
and work,” Carr says. “They were
the same traits I saw in the likes
of Lampard, who had a mental
strength and desire to get
better. Frank has said he was
nowhere near the best
aged 15. But he set
about to improve,
and was the best
by 22.”
At his home
near Brentwood,
Essex, Carr hunts
through the plastic
folders for a photo
of the youth
team, including
Lampard and
Ferdinand, taken
at their Chadwell
Heath trainingground in Essex in about 1995. He
runs through the names of the players
and points to Lee Hodges, a
midfielder who mainly played in the
lower leagues. “Frank used to say Lee
was better than him,” he says. “[But
for] his knees... terrible knees.”
Carr would begin the week by
marking an approximate mile-long
course at the training ground, which
the academy players had to run
within ten seconds of their best time.
“Even Frank said he hated going in
on Monday and asked why I made
them do it,” he says. “It was a good
challenge to make sure they had not
overdone things on the weekend.”
Carr has strong beliefs. One time
when Lampard, Ferdinand and Cole
lost a youth game he made the team
run five miles in the streets of east
London, putting a member of staff at
traffic lights so no one cheated.
“My main cracking the whip would
be over jobs young players had to do,”
he says. “In those days apprentices
did menial jobs, such as cleaning
boots and dressing rooms. The
players sat in the canteen while I
made sure the jobs were done so they
could go home. Rio might have been
tasked with cleaning the dressing
room and I would say, ‘Rio, it’s not
done properly.’ He would always like
to argue, ‘What do you mean?’ I said,
‘No one’s going until it’s done.’ The
others moaned, ‘Rio, go and get that
job done, we have to get the bus.’ ”
Carr interviewed Ferdinand,
Lampard and other former players for
his book A Lifetime in Football at West
Ham United, which is published on
Thursday. “They all made the point
that menial jobs didn’t do them harm
and kept them grounded,” he says.
“There was an unwritten hierarchy
that until they were in the first team,
they were trying to achieve it and had
to do the jobs. People say it was
demeaning and the Professional
Footballers’ Association stepped
in and stopped all the menial
jobs, because they said they
were there to play football.
“But there’s something to
be said for what it was: an
apprenticeship. Sometimes just
doing things you don’t
really want to do teaches
you discipline and gains
you respect for the
people you’re serving.”
Ferdinand,
Lampard and Noble
were asked to
write words for
the book cover.
“The first one to‘I told Rio, “No one’s going
until the cleaning is done” ’
Tony Carr reveals to
Gary Jacob how he
kept the youngsters at
West Ham in check
Ferdinand, Carr, back row, and Lampard in a youth team photo during 1994-95Frank Lampard has complained of
“circumstances” going against
Everton in their defeat by West Ham
United but insists that the Merseyside
club will escape relegation if they
replicate yesterday’s performance.
Everton are 17th in the Premier
League table and four points above
second-bottom Burnley, their
opponents at Turf Moor on
Wednesday, who also have ten
games remaining this season.
Mason Holgate had equalised after
Aaron Cresswell’s free-kick opener,
but Everton suffered their 17th league
defeat of the season after Alex Iwobi’s
error allowed Jarrod Bowen to score
before Michael Keane was sent off for
a second booking.
“We deserved a point at least from
the game in terms of general play,”
Lampard said. “[It was] an afternoon
where quite a few circumstances
went against us. That can happen,
but generally we deserved more from
the game.
“The next one is [against] a
competitor down in the same area of
the table. Nobody gets an easy game
at Burnley. That’s a fact. So [the
message is] to continue with the
application and character of our
performance today and keep working.
“These things that are happening
around us, the only way to do it is to
keep doing the right things and
working, and then they turn. Next
JULIAN FINNEY/GETTY IMAGESLampard
week, or hopefully Wednesday or
Saturday, when Richarlison goes
through it goes in, when the other
team gets a free kick it doesn’t go in
the top corner, maybe our free kick
goes in the top corner.”
David Moyes, the West Ham
manager who was in charge at
Everton for 11 years, believes that his
former club will escape relegation.
“That’s easy for him to say,”
Lampard said when told of Moyes’s
comments. “As much as we don’t like
losing here — of course we don’t —
the feeling of the game and how we
performed was a plus. If we can
replicate that then I agree with him.”
Moyes, meanwhile, criticised Uefa’s
reported proposals that would allow
the FA Cup winners to qualify for
the Champions League if they had
a recent record of success in
European competitions.
“I have worked for Uefa and do a
lot stuff for them, but I did not agree
at all with the format,” Moyes said.
“We talk about being inclusive in
football and that means that all the
teams get an opportunity to get there.
“If a smaller side won it, we would
expect to be treated in the same way.
So I don’t agree with that.
“I think generally most people don’t
see that as the correct format to go.
Most people would see it as the wrong
way, and that it should be on merit,
on your performances that season,”
he added, with West Ham to host
Lyons in their Europa League
quarter-final first leg on Thursday.‘Circumstances against
us – we deserved more’
Cresswell
watches as
his free kick
curves around
the wall to
beat PickfordTOM RODDY