https://www.a-love-supreme.com/single-post/scott-on-sunderland-influence Former Sunderland midfielder Jill Scott has revealed her coaching ambitions, and spoke about the work ethic that was drilled into her as a young girl in the North East. Jill was speaking with Gary Neville on The Overlap, in partnership with Sky Bet. ALWAYS BEEN A PASSION “Coaching is a big passion of mine – I love coaching. I even did a grassroots session the other day and I had little six-year-olds checking their shoulder before receiving the ball, and I just get a real buzz out of helping people. I’m going to be doing a bit of coaching at Manchester City, it got blew up a bit as if I’m going to be Pep Guardiola’s assistant. That’s the media world that we’re living in. It’s going to be coaching girls and boy's academy." PEP GUARDIOLA “I’ve watched some of Pep Guardiola’s sessions, I took my nephews along to watch a session. I’ll be observing the academy training in the first few weeks and seeing how they work but it’s hard to learn from Pep because he’s always a genius in his own head." SUNDERLAND / NEWCASTLE “You have to like football from a young age in Sunderland. Our household was split when it came to Sunderland v Newcastle. My brother’s Newcastle, I’m Sunderland because my dad’s side of the family was Newcastle, and my mum’s was Sunderland. My dad tried to force us to support Newcastle and then when I went to school, I just got bullied so much I was like ‘I’m supporting Sunderland’. He really stuck with it. Football was just in us from the age of seven, eight, nine. I had a season ticket for Sunderland – I watched Sunderland on the Saturday and then I had my game on a Sunday." NORTH EAST STARS “There’s a lot of players from the north-east. You have Jordan Nobbs, Lucy Bronze, Carly Telford, Demi Stokes, Beth Mead, who all went on to play for England and if you look at all of those players, there’s a really big work ethic." WORK ETHIC "That’s not by chance – you always had to train, and you couldn’t have the hats and the gloves on – they would be like ‘you’re from Sunderland, toughen up!’ and it was just instilled in me from a young age.” GIRLS FOOTBALL “It was tough being a girl and wanting to play football. I got bullied quite a lot. I remember my first day at senior school – this lad was shouting at me, ‘you must be a boy because you play football’ and I went to chase after him and his friend tripped me up and I smashed my elbow into three pieces. There were never points where I felt like it was easy for me to give in. I don’t think that ever crossed my mind because I just loved it so much. When I got back from them games, I was just back in the batley-ins with my friends kicking a ball about and I probably just forgot about it." EURO 2021 “I remember going into that tournament [2021 Euros] and I was nervous. People think when you get older you feel less nervous, but I felt more pressure as people would expect me to perform. The girls are so humble and grounded – the talent is out of this world but they don’t realise it themselves. From game to game, they were enjoying it – I felt like I didn’t even have to say anything. The final was just another game – on the bus, going down Wembley Way – and then they went on the pitch and just performed, it was crazy.” SUNDERLAND TEAMMATES “I go back to when I was 14, 15, I got picked for England under-16s for the first time. I was on that camp feeling good about myself. Karen Carney and Eni Aluko were there too. There were around 30 players, and I was the worst player. I was nowhere near as good as all those players. I never got selected again for four years, and in that time I remember Steph Houghton and Carly Telford, who I played at Sunderland with, always asking if I was picked for the camp – which was like a punch in the face." DIDN'T GIVE UP “I had a few tears behind closed doors – it was an important part of my career, I could either give up on that England dream or keep going – I got picked when I was 18 for the under-19s and then made my senior debut about a year later. There’s a lesson in there that players can develop at different times – I wasn’t ready at that point, but I knew I had work to do, put that in and then got my England debut. That left a bruise, but without that I wouldn’t have had the career that I had.” SUNDERLAND COACH “I had a coach called Alan Snowden who looked after the reserves at Sunderland, who always encouraged us to keep going. He never fed us a fake story; he told us that sport is going to be tough and we would need to work hard. That also taught me to surround myself with people that would be honest with me. I have some good friends, such as Jennifer Beattie, who isn’t someone that will just agree with me – she will disagree and challenge. Sometimes those people are the best people for you, who will just be truthful.”
