Brighton First Team Coach Nevin called up by England
Brighton and Hove Albion First Team Coach Paul Nevin has been selected to join Gareth Southgate’s coaching staff for England’s November international fixtures.
Nevin will link up with the Three Lions for their friendly against the United States on Thursday 15th and their UEFA Nations League fixture with Croatia on Sunday 18th November. Both games take place at Wembley Stadium.
The call up is part of an FA initiative to increase the number of black and Asian coaches in English football by making them more visible in the top jobs.
As a result, the governing body wants to have at least one BAME (Black, Asian, and minority ethnic) coach with every England squad.
Nevin has received the highest profile role, being parachuted in to work for with the senior side four months on from their run to the World Cup Semi Final.
Former Albion striker and ex-Queens Park Rangers manager Terry Connor will join Aidy Bothroyd’s England Under 21 coaching team for their games this month with Andorra and Scotland, while Sol Campbell will assist Bothroyd in the Young Lions November fixtures.
Campbell of course has, according to himself anyway, one of the greatest minds in football and as result wouldn’t want to enter management too low, so one can only hope that assisting the national team’s bright young talents is a job he considers worthy of his massive brain.
Brighton had been without a first team coach for six months before Nevin’s appointment in the summer of 2016 to the role previously held by Nathan Jones. He arrived from a role as Head of Academy Coach Development with the Premier League and had previously worked with Chris Hughton at Norwich City.
A well travelled individual, he spent eight years working in various roles at Fulham before a two year spell with A-League side New Zealand Knights, one season of which was as head coach.
Following his tenure in New Zealand, Nevin then moved to the Aspire Academy in Qatar where he was responsible for developing players for Qatar’s junior and senior national teams. He also became a regular guest presenter on the Al Jazeera Sports Channel.
Nevin’s first season with the Albion saw the club promoted to the Premier League and he played a crucial role in helping secure survival last time out.
As a player, Nevin represented Shrewsbury Town, Carlisle United and Yeovil Town and also had a four-year spell playing in America.
His call up to work alongside Southgate and Steve Holland is quite the coup for the Albion and shows how far the club have come in such a short space of time – it’s only 10 years ago after all that our first team coach was a man who used to sell televisions in a shop in Hastings.
Hopefully, Nevin can use his new role to get in Southgate’s ear about this bloke he knows by the name of Glenn who keeps scoring goals.
Nevin’s appointment to the Three Lions coaching staff and the prospect of an insider in the England set up may also be the kick up the arse that Lewis Dunk needs to stop playing like an idiot and rediscover the formidable form of last season that saw him linked with a call up.
