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I'd never coached before Jose Mourinho approached me – he got sacked and things nosedived

Ledley King on the Seaman Says podcast
-Credit: (Image: Seaman Says (YouTube))


Jose Mourinho has always been a magnetic figure, so it's little wonder Ledley King jumped at the chance to work for him in 2020. The Special One was gearing up for his first full season in charge of Tottenham at the time, and sought to enlist a man widely regarded as one of the finest defenders in the club's history to his coaching staff.

The trouble was, King had no coaching experience - but Mourinho didn't seem to mind. After bumping into the former skipper, who'd merely served as club ambassador since retiring in 2012, in the corridors of the training ground, the Portuguese manager invited him to attend a few sessions.

King obliged, and a few months a later the phone rang. It was Mourinho, asking if he'd fancy becoming his new assistant. "I couldn't turn him down, could I?" King admitted on the Seaman Says podcast, brought to you by Betway.

Despite being chucked in at the deep end, King found his feet pretty quickly. He was helped by the fact that Spurs had made a flying start to the season, registering wins over the likes of Arsenal, Manchester City and Manchester United.

"It was December when we were top of the league, and I'm thinking: 'We're going to win the league'," King said. "I've been at Tottenham my whole life, but now we were talking about Jose. He wins things... and then it took a nosedive in the second half of the season."

After losing just three of their opening 19 Premier League matches, Tottenham were beaten five times in six outings across January and February. Mourinho paid for it with his job, controversially on the eve of Tottenham's League Cup final clash with City, which they went on to lose.

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King initially stayed on in the job, but with Mourinho gone the atmosphere around the club completely shifted. "Slowly but surely it just felt like the connection wasn't there anymore," the 44-year-old said.

"It happens over a number of weeks, maybe even months. I remember playing a game against Everton, it was 4-4 or something like that. As a defender myself, 4-4 doesn’t give me any joy, but after the game it just felt weird.

"The changing room was dead, and that was the beginning of the end. It's tough when that happens because I've been a player and had loads of managers myself, but actually being on the coaching side of things felt so weird."

Mourinho and King in Tottenham training
King said he "really enjoyed" working under Mourinho -Credit:Getty Images

At the end of the season King returned to his ambassadorial role. His coaching career lasted less than a year, but under Mourinho's wing, he'd learned a heck of a lot.

"Jose was great for me," he said. "I enjoyed working under him... He's very, very intense. He's meticulous in terms of his preparation and planning, but he's also clever because he almost reads the game during the game.

"He can tell you what is going to happen by the 70th minute, what the opposition might try to do. So then he prepares his team for that situation. I would have loved playing under him.

"Jose knew when there was a time to try and put an arm on the shoulder, to try to get the best out of someone. He doesn’t suffer fools. He just wants you to go out there and be strong, be tough, give your all, and that's what he asks. With the way football is now, you probably can't talk to players the same way that you could do 15 to 20 years ago."

Ledley King celebrates after scoring the opening goal against Arsenal at White Hart Lane on October 29, 2005.
Ledley King (R) is widely regarded as one of Tottenham's greatest-ever players -Credit:Shaun Botterill/Getty Images

King spent his entire playing career at Tottenham. He emerged from the club's academy in 1999 and immediately began drawing comparisons to fellow academy graduate Sol Campbell. After Campbell's defection to Arsenal in 2001, King took his place both in Tottenham's first team, and in the hearts of the Spurs faithful.

He was appointed club captain in 2005, and skippered the side as they lifted the 2008 League Cup, their first trophy win in nine years and just their second in the Premier League era. A series of severe knee hampered the remainder of his career, but King still managed to rack up 323 appearances for Tottenham.

He eventually called it a day after the 2011/12 season, having spent the previous half-decade training alone to protect his devastated knee which, according to former Spurs boss Harry Redknapp, contained "no cartilage". In 2016, he was named in Tottenham's Greatest Ever XI by fans alongside the likes of Glenn Hoddle, Paul Gascoigne, Jimmy Greaves and Gareth Bale.