Jermain Defoe is a long way from the Premier League but ready for Woking ‘gamble’

Towards the back of the Laithwaite Community Stadium’s tin-roofed Directors’ Stand sits a long-disused telephone block terminal, once required to connect the football ground to the outside world. It is a relic almost as old as the stand itself, which has changed little in more than a century. During a playing career primarily spent in the Premier League , trips to such non-league curiosities as Woking ’s home ground were a rarity for Jermain Defoe ; the type of banana-skin venue a world away from the glamour of football’s top flight.

While Defoe name-checked Wayne Rooney, Harry Redknapp, Gareth Southgate and Sam Allardyce during his unveiling as the Surrey team’s unlikely new manager , a smattering of volunteers who often form the core of fifth-tier clubs busied themselves around the ground, forking the pitch and tidying the terraces following a disappointing 1-1 National League draw at home to fellow mid-table outfit Altrincham the previous evening. Jermain Defoe is the new manager of National League side Woking (Adam Davy/PA Wire) Defoe had watched from the stands as his new side toiled against their nine-man opposition, before he formally takes the reins for the visit of relegation-threatened Eastleigh on Good Friday in what will be the first match of his solo managerial career. It is an improbable turn of events for a figure who made 496 Premier League appearances and scored 20 international goals , but will now concern himself with the lower reaches of the English football pyramid usually only of interest to those in the immediate locality.

It has, suggested Defoe, “always been the plan”, with the former West Ham United, Tottenham Hotspur and Sunderland striker explaining how “towards the back end of my career I knew I wanted to go into coaching”. He fulfilled a player-coach role during his final season at Rangers – where he also formed part of an interim coaching unit that took charge for a brief period in 2021 – and then returned to Spurs as an academy coach upon his playing retirement in 2022. Nonetheless, turning up at a club beneath the English Football League was a move few had anticipated.

Defoe gave an introductory press conference to lay out his vision for the Cards (Adam Davy/PA Wire) The Laithwaite Community Stadium is very different to the grounds Defoe played at in the Premier League (Getty Images) “My mum has always said to me in life you’ve got to be grateful for every opportunity you get,” said Defoe, who explained that he was smartly dressed in a buttoned-up white shirt and slick grey suit because his mum would be watching. “It’s no different to when you’re a player. When I was a 16-year-old in the West Ham youth team, you had to earn your stripes and do your apprenticeship.