Defoe ready to 'earn his stripes' with Woking
Jermain Defoe hopes he can be a trailblazer for black managers as he targets promotion with National League side Woking. The former England striker was announced as the permanent successor to Neal Ardley on Sunday, his first managerial role. He has previously been part of an interim coaching staff with Scottish giants Rangers in 2021 as well as working in the Tottenham Hotspur academy.
"It's been a long time coming," 43-year-old Defoe told BBC Radio Surrey. "It was always the plan at the back end of my career when I knew I wanted to go into coaching and luckily enough that transition was quite smooth. "I left Rangers, I went straight into Tottenham and did two years in the academy.
I was exposed at Rangers a little bit with a player-coach role in my last year. "When you look at the infrastructure, it's somewhere where I hope players will want to come and play. The talks have gone on for a while and I just want to get going.
" Woking drew 1-1 with Altrincham on Tuesday under interim boss Craig Ross, leaving them 10th in the table, 11 points off the play-offs with six matches of the regular season remaining. "I don't want to sit here and say, right, we need to achieve this, we need to achieve that," Defoe added. "The main objective is, of course, to get promoted with the players we've got, some top players.
The games that I've watched, I've been really impressed. "You have to be confident. I think you always have to back yourself, whether you're a player or a manager or a coach.