Paul Heckingbottom — Public People

Карьера и клубы

Career

Early career

Heckingbottom was born in Barnsley and grew up in nearby Royston. As a child, he was a season-ticket holder at the town's football club, along with his grandfather. He started his football career at Manchester United as a trainee, but joined Sunderland in 1995 after failing to gain a professional contract. He had loan spells at Scarborough, Hartlepool United and Darlington, without featuring for Sunderland, before joining Darlington permanently in 1999. He made 126 appearances, scoring 6 goals, before catching the attention of First Division side Norwich City, who signed him in 2002 on a three-year contract. Heckingbottom made just 16 appearances for Norwich, including only 7 starts, resulting in him cancelling his contract with the club by mutual consent after just one year. He subsequently signed for Bradford City in July 2003, and was named their Player of the Year at the end of his first season. Bradford, however, were relegated to League One at the end of the 2003–04 season, and Heckingbottom left to join League One club Sheffield Wednesday during the close season.

Sheffield Wednesday

Heckingbottom was well favoured under both Wednesday managers Chris Turner and Paul Sturrock, making a total of 41 appearances at left back in his first season – more than any other player that year. He also scored four goals, helping the Owls to promotion to the Championship via the play-off final at the end of the 2004–05 season. Due to an injury sustained…

▸ Источник: Wikipedia

Managerial career

Barnsley

Heckingbottom took the opportunity to gain an academic understanding of football coaching, to set his CV apart from other managers competing for jobs. He completed his BSc (Hons) Sports Coaching at Leeds Metropolitan University in 2013, followed by an MSc in Sport Coaching in 2016, by which point the university had been renamed Leeds Beckett University. He went on to work as a coach with professional club Barnsley's development squad, and was appointed caretaker manager of the first team after Danny Wilson was sacked in 2015. He was not appointed on a permanent basis in favour of Lee Johnson, though was appointed in the caretaker manager role once again the following year after Johnson left to manage Bristol City. During the latter spell, he guided Barnsley to a 3–2 win against Oxford United in the Football League Trophy final and promotion to the Championship by beating Millwall 3–1 in the League One play-off final. His success as caretaker, leading Barnsley to their first cup final victory since 1912 and promotion to the Championship, led to his being appointed head coach on a permanent basis. The good form and results continued for the first half of the 2016–17 Championship season, as the club ended 2016 in ninth position. Heckingbottom was awarded Sports Hero of the Year by The Yorkshire Post. Heckingbottom signed a new rolling contract at Barnsley on 2 February 2018, but he left the club days later to take a similar position with Leeds United.