Former Bristol City favourite Jon Stead has stepped out of his comfort zone and escaped the monotony of the English football schedule to kick-start his coaching career in the US.
The 39-year-old, who spent three years with the Robins until the summer of 2013, called time on his playing career following two seasons with Harrogate Town in 2021. Following a 19-year playing career in the UK and over 700 professional appearances, Stead packed his bags last year and headed to America to embark on a new chapter in his career.
He was an assistant coach at Connecticut side Hartford Athletic for six months being offered a reunion with his ex-Sunderland team-mate Neill Collins to become his number two at the Tampa Bay Rowdies in January where he has remained.
For Stead, the decision to move to Tampa was to go against the norm by forging his own path into coaching, dealing with new experiences and learning from mistakes before plotting a return to England when the time feels right.
Speaking to Bristol Live, he said: "I needed something fresh, I needed something where I was completely out of my comfort zone. A new league, new standards and a new football environment.
"It's been a breath of fresh air and completely different from what I've been used to. The daily routine is completely different. It's been really eye-opening for me and perfect to kickstart my coaching career instead of going into an academy.
"That's a great route for some people but I just needed something different. I didn't want the same routine that I've been used to for the last 20 years."
Stead's career began at Huddersfield and it took him across 12 different clubs across the top four divisions in the English football pyramid. He moved to City in 2010, weeks after Steve Coppell's resignation and played under three managers in Keith Millen, Derek McInnes and Sean O'Driscoll before re-joining the Terriers following the club's relegation in the summer of 2013.
‘It would have certainly been easier to begin my coaching career in the UK, but I wanted to be really thrown in at the deep end and learn a whole new footballing culture," Stead added. "I think it’s the best way to accelerate your learning and it helps that’s in a slightly more forgiving environment that is not under the microscope as much.
“Our environment is very challenging out here, for example, the heat and humidity is very high so training sessions are tapered to adapt to that. Our season runs at a different time of year and also we play the majority of our games on Saturday nights. This country is enormous, and an away game is a 3 day trip not just an hour or two down the M1!
"When we're flying it could be to the west coast which means a six-hour flight or multiple flights and then a three-hour time zone difference. Then you've got the altitude in New Mexico and Colorado so you've got all these things that we need to work around which makes it so challenging but exciting as well. We've been stuck in airports for 16 hours.
"So I think that's a good environment to go and test yourself and if things go wrong, then I think that's the best way you learn anyway. I've had to learn it from scratch here.
"So it's been really interesting, really difficult at times and I'm not seeing my wife and kids as much as I thought I might because it's been busy but it's definitely brought me on as a coach anyway. And that's what I wanted it to do."
Stead has been no stranger to the mental battles that come with being a professional footballer and having his performances constantly under the microscope. Relegation at the Robins is just one example having also experienced the drop at Huddersfield, Sunderland and Sheffield United.
But as he found out at a very young age, it's the difficult times that shape who you are as a person and Stead is using that to his advantage to challenge himself in a new era of his career.
He said: "The tough times as a player make you better and make you stronger and I'm sure that I reacted well to difficult times in my playing career and that's possibly the reason why I managed to go on play 700 games and play for 20 years because I was able to re-evaluate and self evaluate a lot of the things that went wrong at times and try and be better for them.
"I think as a coach as well, I think the more you are on the grass and feel uncomfortable, the better you're going to be and the quicker you're going to get better. I think that that was it for me. I think two years experience out here for me is like five years back home because there's so much going on and you've got to be on it all the time.
"You're constantly learning and adapting so for now I feel like it's given me exactly what I needed it to give me."
Stead has a contract with the Tampa Bay Rowdies until the end of the next USL Championship season, ending in October. After that, he will evaluate his options while keeping an open mind but stated his desire to return to England to continue building his career path.
He added: "I'm still really early into it, it's just my full second season of full-time coaching so I'm still early on in my journey and have loads more to learn and loads more in terms of what I'm doing.
"In terms of my qualifications I've done my UEFA A licence now, I'm not sure I'll be jumping onto the pro licence just yet because I think I've got a lot more to do as an assistant before I start thinking of possibilities of becoming a head coach.
"I think eventually of course Europe is where you want to be to keep progressing your career so being back in England in the Football League, I think that is definitely the aim in the long term but how long it will take before I get there, I don't know."
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