Kevin Phillips had to wait until he was 48 to be offered his first job as a manager – which is madness.
How can a serial achiever with 282 goals in 660 senior games, eight England caps and winner of Europe's Golden Boot 22 years ago be left to wither on the vine while so many clubs chased 'fashionable' boutique appointments?
Phillips, previously on the tracksuit staff at Leicester, Derby and Stoke, knows the game at every level from Baldock Town, where he was scouted by the late Watford manager Glenn Roeder for £10,000 in 1994, upwards.
When the call finally came to run the show, it was from Geoff Thompson, chairman of upwardly-mobile South Shields in the Northern Premier League.
As a player, Phillips was a hero eight miles down the coast at Sunderland, and he has been aching for a chance to show what he can do. If he takes to management like a duck to orange sauce, watch him fly.
The Mariners are about to find out if his tool kit includes a Fergie hairdryer or a hot temper which makes the crockery fly at half-time.
“You would have to ask my kids if I've got a ruthless streak,” laughed Phillips. “And I think the teacups are probably more plastic than bone china these days.
“If teacups need to be thrown, I won't be asking who takes milk and sugar – but that's not the way I want to operate and it's not the type of manager I want to be.
“There may be times where I have to put my foot down and show who's boss, but in today's game you often get more out of players if you're easy-going and give them a bit of leeway.
“If put your arm round them and show you care, that might be the best way to get an extra 10 per cent from them on the pitch.
“The pastoral side of being a manager is one of the biggest aspects of the job. You inherit a group of players, but it's important to get to know them as people and encourage them to open up.
“You have to be there to lean on and give advice. I'll be there for my players – I've told the chairman I'll move back to the north-east because I've waited a long time for this opportunity and I want to do it right.”
Of the 19 England players on the field or bench when he made his England debut against Hungary in 1999, Phillips is only the fifth – after Phil Neville, Tim Sherwood, Alan Shearer and Frank Lampard – to take his chances on the managers' hamster wheel.
KP is too smart to make outlandish predictions about where he might take South Shields, but he is stepping into a club with obvious potential for growth.
And if he makes a decent fist of it, red-and-white factions in the town are already convinced his next stop will be the Sunderland job.
Phillips, whose baptism was a hard-fought 2-1 win at Warrington Town on Saturday, said: “We are currently three tiers below the Football League, so I'm not daft enough to make any big statements about taking South Shields into Europe in 10 years or anything like that.
“But it's great to have ambition, something to aim for, and there are clubs who have climbed into the League from down the pyramid – look at Salford, Forest Green, Harrogate. There's a pathway and we want to follow it.
“We're second in the table with games in hand, we're a full-time operation and that gives us good fitness levels.
“A new £2.5 million stand will be open soon, I'm back in a real football hotbed where I had a fantastic time as a player. I always wanted to come back to this part of the world and this club has a lot going for it.”
So how on earth were lowly South Shields the first club to offer Phillips a manager's job?
“I would have liked to be given an opportunity a bit sooner,” he admitted. “But I understand how it works. Clubs higher up the ladder are reluctant to take a gamble on untried young managers when there are plenty who have been on the merry-go-round before.
“To be honest, I was beginning to wonder if I would feel the grass beneath my feet again because it's so hard trying to get even an interview.
“I’m not going to deny I did throw my hat in the ring the Sunderland job when Phil Parkinson left and put my name forward for a couple of other jobs, so I can't thank Geoff enough for taking a punt on me.”
