Fuller joins Stoke City academy
Published:Wednesday | October 26, 2022 | 12:08 AMDaniel Wheeler/Staff Reporter
FORMER NATIONAL striker Ricardo Fuller will be returning to English Football Championship side Stoke City to begin his coaching career.
Fuller, 42, has joined the club as an academy coach as part of the Professional Player to Coach initiative jointly run by the English Premier League, the English Football League and the Professional Football’s Association. The scheme seeks to increase the diversity of coaches currently in the English Football pyramid.
Fuller will be working with the under-nine to the under-21s as part of his new role with the added benefit of experience in sports science and recruitment. Stoke academy’s director, Gareth Owen, said the organisation is delighted to have Fuller back and noted that the big forward had been an integral part of the club’s history during his playing days.
“Ricardo was one of a list of applications for the role and he proved to be the strongest candidate after a thorough interview process,” Owen said in a report in yesterday’s Stoke Sentinel.
“As a player, he wrote his name in the folklore of the club but he is now entering the next stage of his career in the game as a coach and we are delighted to have him on board with us.”
It is the culmination of a process that was in its final stages in 2018 when Fuller obtained his UEFA B licence in England.
Fuller spent six years at Stoke City from 2006-2012, making 208 appearances for the club, scoring 50 goals and registering 23 assists.
Fuller will have familiar faces to work with at the academy with ex-teammate Rory Delap currently a first-team coach, Danny Pugh, who coaches the under-18s, Liam Lawrence, who is with the under-16s, and Carl Dickinson, who is with the under-12s. The trio, along with Fuller, were the core players who helped Stoke City gain promotion to the Premier League in 2008.
The move is in keeping with Fuller’s long-term goal of being a part of the national team system.
“That is the part of the aim because I want to be part of the set-up,” Fuller said in a 2018 interview.
“I want to come back home and give my best and to help my country to qualify for every World Cup.”