What would Thomas Tuchel or Pep Guardiola do in a hostage situation? Among the 2020 graduates from the FA’s Pro Licence, one candidate stood out.
The cohort included Frank Lampard, Michael Carrick, Kolo Touré and the rising MK Dons manager Liam Manning but they agreed that the star was the youngest participant, Anthony Barry.
Barry, now 35, achieved top marks for written work, showcased outstanding coaching and excelled one memorable day when the guest lecturer was a professional hostage negotiator. He spoke about communicating under pressure before posing a scenario where the coaches had to keep an imaginary hostage alive by talking to the captor.
Barry, calm and empathetic, was a revelation in the role play. In the evening Steve McClaren, a course observer, said to the group: “Anthony Barry . . . wow.” McClaren predicted the 35-year-old from Childwall in Liverpool would go on to make an impact at the highest level of the game. And Barry is doing that, albeit, for now, a slightly unheralded one.
Barry is the brains behind Chelsea’s transformation from set-piece strugglers to the side who have scored the most and conceded the fewest goals at set plays since August 2020, when Lampard gave him the role as assistant head coach. For the past nine months he has held a similar role with Ireland, whose upturn is startling: defeated once in their past nine games, the Irish (previously goalless in 11 hours of football) have scored 20 times since Barry’s arrival, five from set pieces.
None of this will surprise his Pro Licence colleagues. Barry’s dissertation was the only one from the course to be published as an academic paper. The Undervalued Set-Piece focuses on throw-ins. The research involved Barry watching 60 hours of footage to scrutinise every one of the 16,380 throw-ins taken in the 2018-19 Premier League season.
His conclusion? That conventional coaching, where from a young age players are taught to throw the ball forward and “work the line” is wrong. Rather, teams should think of throws as the start of a possession and go backwards or laterally with emphasis on keeping the ball. Barry demonstrated a correlation between league position and ability to retain possession after throw-ins, which he pointed out were the most under-coached of all set-pieces, despite being the most common.
His growing reputation has led to approaches for managerial jobs from Cardiff City, Aberdeen and Tranmere Rovers, and the offer of a promotion to join one of Chelsea’s Premier League rivals. But Barry is going nowhere, rebuffing all offers because his chief at Chelsea, on a daily basis, blows him away. In his view, his best way of developing as a coach is to continue working with Thomas Tuchel, who is “different level” when it comes to game model and tactical detail, and rare in terms of his human qualities, creating an environment where even players who have been out of the starting XI are kept focused and ready to perform.
Defensive organisation is another area where Barry has input at Chelsea and Tuchel has said of him, “We didn’t know him before, he was already here under Frank but from the first moment he was a big part of our coaching team.
“He has quality in analysing games and giving his opinion. He is comfortable on the pitch when in charge of exercises and comfortable in front of the group. He is in charge for all set-pieces and the assistant in any other exercises.”
There are similarities in Tuchel’s and Barry’s paths. Both retired early as players because of knee problems and began their coaching journeys with youth teams. Barry was 30 when he played his last game, for Wrexham in the National League. Half of his career was outside the EFL and the height of his playing career was reaching the League One play-off final with Yeovil.
He began at Everton, in the same youth teams as Wayne Rooney, where he was a small, squat midfielder with a nice pass but lack of speed. He was always a bit different, attending the renowned Bluecoats School in south Liverpool (where his father is a property developer) and achieving A-levels in history and law. Even at 16, peers were startled by his work ethic. “I’ll do my own pre-season,” he told fellow youth players. He was always out running in Calderstones Park or on a treadmill at home in an effort to be the fittest player at the academy.
Barry is comfortable in front of the players, such as Cesar Azpilicueta, both on and off the pitch
DARREN WALSH
After being released by Everton at 18, he was briefly at Coventry’s academy before joining Accrington Stanley, where he earned £150 a week but the manager, John Coleman provided invaluable inspiration.
At Fleetwood, Barry was in the same side as Jamie Vardy. At Accrington, a team-mate was Paul Cook, the present Ipswich Town manager, and after Barry began coaching while still a player at Forest Green (where he took the Under-16s), Cook took him to Wigan Athletic as his No 3. The pair travelled to training together and Cook, renowned for his man-management and tactical detail, became Barry’s mentor. During three seasons at the club, those he worked with included Reece James, Joe Gelhardt and Antonee Robinson .
In Cook’s first campaign, in 2017-18, Wigan reached the FA Cup quarter-finals, shocking West Ham United and Manchester City. Noel Hunt, a member of the squad, told
The42: “I think the gaffer was planning to break [Barry] in slowly, but he dived right in and people gravitated to him because he’s a good guy. He makes the game simple to understand.”
While at Wigan, Barry had to fight for a place on the LMA Diploma in Football Management course. Initially, he was declined for lacking the requisite coaching stature and he changed the LMA’s mind with a persuasive letter. He began the Pro Licence feeling a little overawed by the star power of Lampard & co and took a typically methodical approach to address it, hiring a presentation coach who sent him to various places, including schools, to give talks and work on his confidence in addressing a group.
Now, presenting is seen as one of Barry’s strengths and in Chelsea’s tactical meetings he is the next up after Tuchel – a hard and charismatic act to follow – to talk to the squad. In the Premier League, Chelsea have scored 30 set-piece goals in 52 games since his arrival, particularly improving their effectiveness from corner kicks while going from being the worst of the “big six”’ at defending set plays to the best.
After Andreas Christensen scored his first goal in 137 Chelsea appearances, against Malmo, Tuchel wrote in his programme notes: “It is a good sign when Andreas starts to score — and I think our set piece coach, Anthony Barry, can be very, very proud!”
The extra commitments with Ireland mean Barry has little down time and he remains a fitness fanatic, who does a daily 5km run before heading to the training ground, where he will often go for another jog with fellow coaches Zsolt Low and Arno Michels.
Barry has two young children and moved his family from the North West to Surrey.
He should really take the odd day off but any day he misses, he tells friends, could be the day he might have learned another revelatory something from his role model, German boss.
