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Carlo Ancelotti once said Seamus Coleman should be invited to stay at Everton for life, which was rich coming from a bloke who disappeared to Spain after 18 months at Goodison Park.
Nevertheless, Ancelotti had a point.
Coleman was there in the thick of it at Everton on Saturday, sticking his head in to score a goal he would probably agree sums up the latter stages of his career. Dogged, determined, a bit ugly but important nevertheless.
Seamus Coleman is a hugely important figure for Everton and an antidote to modern football
The Irishman is 33 now. Five years ago he broke his leg terribly. Everton have since spent a lot of money on players, some of them defenders. Coleman should not really still be in the team. Last year, under Ancelotti, he started only half of Everton’s Premier League games.
But players like Coleman are often the kind to hang around because they know that experience, consistency and professionalism is still needed at the heart of every dressing room.
That may sound like faint praise but isn’t. Liverpool have those qualities in James Milner while Manchester City have them in Fernandinho.
Take these players out of a group and it weakens. Premier League squads can be disparate in terms of age and especially nationality. So they need holding together by what the great Liverpool servant Roy Evans used to call ‘glue players’. Coleman is Everton’s glue player at a time they really need one.
Coleman is the glue that holds Everton together and is very professional in his approach
I was fortunate to sit with Coleman for an hour five and a half years ago and the things he said probably resonate even louder today than they did then. They do so because they pointed to an unhealthy culture among some of our young players that has still not been addressed.
‘It’s easy for a young footballer to be sucked into a certain life,’ he told me.
‘If you are the only lad in the changing room without a Louis Vuitton wash bag then you feel…
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Source : dailymail
