It was a quirk of fate that led to one of the best pieces of transfer business in Everton’s history.
Club scout Mick Doherty was watching his son Sean play for Irish side Sligo Rovers in 2008 when he noticed an energetic teenage full-back called Seamus Coleman marauding up and down the right flank.
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Sixteen years and 422 appearances on, Doherty admits he initially had “no idea about Seamus”. The frequent trips over the Irish Sea from Liverpool were solely to track the progress of Sean, a former midfielder in Everton’s academy.
Tasked with finding players in the 17-21 age bracket who could be developed into potential future players by then-manager David Moyes, he quickly became convinced that Coleman was worth a punt.
The impression was instantaneous. “I thought, ‘Who is this kid?’. He was flying up the wing with pace and desire — everything you look for,” Doherty tells The Athletic.
“Sometimes you get players who are quick or have stamina. He had both. He’d do it again and again, played with a real desire. He was 19 but played Gaelic football until he was 16.
“The standard was crap but I thought we wouldn’t have a problem getting our money back even if it didn’t quite work out. You know the story: (a fee of) £60,000 ($78,000). After watching him four or five times, I told him David and the staff: ‘Take this kid’.”
Everyone knows now how this story ends. In January, Coleman overtook former U.S. national team goalkeeper Tim Howard as Everton’s record appearance holder in the Premier League. This summer, he penned a one-year contract to extend his time at Goodison into a 16th season.
On Friday, the 35-year-old right-back will return to The Showgrounds in Sligo for a friendly between the two clubs. In Ireland, on Merseyside and further afield, he has cemented his legendary status.
But Coleman’s arrival at Everton in the winter of 2009 was initially not a foregone conclusion. Celtic had taken him on trial, were impressed by what they had seen, but weren’t in a position to offer a deal. Birmingham City and Burnley had an interest alongside other English clubs.
By the time Everton stepped in, Doherty had worked hard to convince Moyes — the key decision-maker at Goodison back then — of the merits of signing this raw kid with a Gaelic football background from the small town of Killybegs in County Donegal. The testimony of Celtic scout Willie McStay, a former team-mate of Moyes in Glasgow, only added weight to Doherty’s view.
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“Scouting was different then,” says Doherty, who now works in a recruitment role for Europa League winners Atalanta. “Now everyone at a club takes a look. But then you had to act quickly, particularly when it was a cheap deal like this, or you’d risk losing the player. He (Coleman) had Celtic, Burnley, Birmingham on him.
“David would always speak to people about a player and do his due diligence. He wanted to take him on trial but I put my neck on the line and said we either bought him or not. David backed me and said, ‘Let’s do it’. I don’t believe trials work because clubs just spot all the things a player can’t do. Matej Vydra was one we turned down that we could have had for nothing.
“If we’d brought Seamus in on trial, we wouldn’t have signed him”.
Months later, after Coleman’s man-of-the-match performance off the bench in a 2-2 draw against Tottenham Hotspur, Moyes called McStay back.
“Thanks for that; he’s gone from £60,000 to £6million,” he said with a chuckle.
Coleman’s journey started on the Cummins Hill housing estate near St Catherine’s, his first football team.
Friends who played with him and his brothers Francis and Stevie on the estate recall a small but tenacious boy with a mop of blonde hair who would whizz around, determined to win the ball.
St Catherine’s are a proud old club. Formed in the late 19th century, they play an integral role in the community with a track record of producing strong teams through the age groups. Like Coleman, an under-16 Buncrana Cup winner with Donegal, many of the Cummins Hill boys play Gaelic football at local clubs such as Killybegs during summer and then soccer at St Catherine’s in winter.
It was there, in a pre-season friendly game for St Catherine’s against Sligo, that Seamus took his first step on the road to the Premier League, marking the experienced centre-forward Sean Flannery out of the game and impressing Sligo manager Sean Connors. Finn Harps, another League of Ireland side, showed an interest but Sligo offered travel expenses. Although Finn Harps was closer to Killbegs, it suited Coleman, a home bird, that Sligo was just over an hour’s drive away.
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Coleman initially struggled to make an impression under Sligo coach Rob McDonald. Called into the manager’s office, he was told he had no future at the club and should look to move to Finn Harps. When McDonald lost his job soon after, Coleman was given a reprieve by his successor, Paul Cook, the former Ipswich Town and Wigan Athletic manager, who is now in charge at Chesterfield.
Despite an own goal on debut, Coleman quickly made his mark under Cook.
“He made me feel like I was the best player in the League,” Coleman told the Irish Times in 2013. “It just makes such a difference when you have a manager who believes in you.”
Gavin Peers was a former team-mate and room-mate at Sligo.
“Like most of the lads who’ve played a lot of Gaelic, Seamus was really fit,” Peers said. “There’s an attitude and work ethic where he’s from and he encapsulated that. Seamie is teetotal. We had a good craic in the house but in the week, he’d play Pro Evolution Soccer in the evening and keep his head down. On the pitch, we linked up really well. He loved to get forward even then and I’d fill in for him when he bombed on.
“He was pretty shy, so you couldn’t say he’d have definitely been a captain, but on the field, he had the intensity from playing Gaelic. We’d joke that lads who weren’t good enough to play football played Gaelic, but it served him well.
“He just had this knack of making things happen. He didn’t score many, but I remember this one goal; he set off running and went past about four fellas. The ball’s bouncing off their shins like in a GAA game, but Seamie was still keeping it, then suddenly he was through on goal.”
“Very raw” was the early assessment of Coleman at Everton.
The jump from the League of Ireland to England’s top flight is almost insurmountable but Coleman had the perfect mentor in Moyes.
“David, in his wisdom, saw Seamus was very raw — diving in and his positional play wasn’t great,” Doherty says. “So he played him initially on the wing, then it went from there.”
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Most of Coleman’s early football was played further up the pitch, making use of his industry and ability to surge into dangerous areas, and he set up two goals to earn Everton a 2-2 draw against Tottenham on his Goodison debut the next season. A productive loan in the Championship with Blackpool the following year, where he helped them achieve promotion via the play-offs, helped him continue his development and earn a new deal at Everton.
There were times when it looked like his future would be elsewhere, and others where he had to battle back from major setbacks (serious leg and knee injuries). When he joined Everton in 2009, few would have predicted him to have had the career he has had.
Yet speak to those who have followed his progress since his Sligo days, and one word keeps coming back: “determination”.
“Seamus never gives up,” Doherty. “When he first came, he was limited. He wasn’t a great crosser or slick on the ball. Everything was done at breakneck speed. But he’s so determined and focused. Once he calmed down a bit, he became one of the best in the league.
“He’s a great guy and great ambassador for Everton. He’s got me tickets for games and signed shirts for me. I was at a restaurant with my family shortly after he first signed. He came over and said hello to everyone and when I went to pay, he’d already sorted my bill.
“A couple of weeks ago, my grandson signed for the academy and went round to Seamus’ house to get a shirt signed. He took him out to the back garden to kick a ball about. He’s just a great guy. I hope he’s with Everton for a lot longer.
“To come to Everton from Ireland and do what he did is just phenomenal. Pound for pound, he’s got to be one of the best signings we’ve seen in the Premier League.”
(Top photo: Michael Regan/Getty Images)
