For Ryan Mason, calling time on a 20-plus year association with Tottenham Hotspur, a journey that included the transition from an academy product to a first team player and the start of a coaching career, required a gut feeling.
“It’s hard to explain why the timing felt right, because it’s more of a feeling so the feeling was there and I’ve felt it for a while, and also to end the season in the manner in which we did at Tottenham, it was almost like a nice closure to an amazing chapter in my sort of personal career there.”
Mason was part of the group that ended Spurs’ 17-year trophy drought by winning the UEFA Europa League last spring, but even outside of that triumph, it is not hard to envision why he had felt the itch to forge his own path “for a while.” The 34-year-old joined Spurs’ coaching staff seven years earlier, months after ending his playing career because of the risks of returning to the pitch following a severe head injury a year earlier. At Tottenham, Mason got not only closure, but exposure to an acclaimed selection of managers along the way – his former boss Mauricio Pochettino was still there when he returned to the club as a coach, while Jose Mourinho, Antonio Conte and Ange Postecoglou had spells on the touchline along the way. Mason himself got to lead Spurs a few times in two different stints as the interim manager, those experiences serving more as crisis management for the team than anything else.
By the time Cristian Romero was stealing Mason’s beer atop a bus last May during Spurs’ parade celebrating their Europa League victory, the club had provided the ex-England international more than enough in terms of coaching experience. A few short weeks after the final, Mason had officially booked his first managerial gig at West Bromwich Albion, who offered him a brand-new coaching experience in short order – time to prepare for his first match in charge.
“It’s nice because the previous times, I’ve had to prepare for games in two days so completely different,” he said. “We’ve had a good preseason in terms of getting information across and trying to lay the foundations of what we want the team to look like and feel like. Obviously, there’s still a hell of a lot of work to do and we understand that, but we’re happy with the preseason.”
Mason’s experiences at Spurs have afforded him a front row seat to different managerial styles, from the free-flowing games that define Pochettino and Postecoglou to the more structured approaches that Mourinho and Conte are known for. Ahead of his managerial debut on Saturday against Blackburn Rovers (10 a.m. ET, Paramount+), it should come as no surprise that Mason’s West Brom may not be the finished product just yet. The variety of strategies he has been exposed to, though, have possibly paved the way for a flexible approach from one of England‘s newest managers.
“I have my beliefs of how I want the team to look, but then also, I understand different oppositions will pose different threats and also have different weaknesses,” Mason said. “My feeling is the team is going to look different from game to game with a clear game plan and understanding of how we want to win the game.”
That adaptability, he believes, will be crucial to surviving the Championship. England’s second division is a particularly grueling experience. A spot in the Premier League, the sport’s most lucrative reward, awaits three lucky teams, but they have to survive a 46 game season first. The games come thick and fast and there is no rest for the wicked or weary, especially with cup competitions mixed in — all 24 Championship teams have an EFL Cup first round match in between their first and second league games of the season.
“Hopefully [we are] a compact team that are together,” Mason said. “I’m not going to be one of these coaches that’s going to sit here and say we’re going to dominate the ball, we’re going to do this, we want to do that because football is such a unique game that you just have to be able to react to certain situations and different moments in games. Sometimes you’re going to need to suffer and we’re going to need to suffer together with 11 players on the pitch doing that together. Sometimes we’re going to have the momentum and we need to take advantage of that so the most important thing for me is, every element, every moment in the game, to try and see a team that are doing it together and understanding what is required in that moment in time.”
Mason wants to chart an upward trajectory with the Baggies, who won 15 matches last season and finished ninth. He did not come out and say it, but improving a team that finished just four points behind sixth means his ambitions would land them, at the very least, in the conversation for the promotion playoffs.
“This league is so demanding and we’re six weeks into trying to build something and create something together,” he said. “I want to see a progression, I want to feel a progression as well. As a club, we won 15 games in the league last year, we need to win more than that. I’m not looking at the end of the season. I’m not thinking in nine or 10 months’ time. I’m just looking at this week and understanding we’ve got three games this week, so we go straight into an intense period. Like I say, the feeling around the place needs to be like we’re building towards something and continuously growing so that’s the challenge.”
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As Mason describes it, the real task at hand is fostering something intangible — a sense of belonging for the players and staff. He recognizes that he says the word “feel” a lot and describes himself as “a feelings person,” likening himself in that regard to Pochettino, the current U.S. men’s national team head coach who handed him his Premier League debut at Spurs in 2014 and someone he still speaks to “from time to time.”
“He was such a person – not a spiritual person but he believed in connection,” Mason said about Pochettino. “When you meet him, it’s hard to tell. I think he’s someone who has this presence, this aura about him that you can gravitate to and I gravitated towards him. We have similar beliefs, similar morals in life and I think when you can connect with someone like that, it’s really powerful and I thought he was great at being able to connect with so many different people from so many different backgrounds and when you’re in this role and you have this responsibility, you’ve got to be able to do that and I think he was someone who was incredible at it.”
The push-and-pull of feeling is, by Mason’s own admission, the most notable takeaway from his unique managerial upbringing at Tottenham, and perhaps where he looks to establish his own identity as a coach.
“I think football is such an emotional game,” he said. “Naturally, it’s so emotional and I believe in this side of it and my position, when you’re too emotional, sometimes you can make mistakes and it’s just trying to understand when I show the emotion and when I keep it under, [keep it] cool because the reality is that everyone’s looking at me. Everyone’s always looking at me to guide them and to help them, so that’s the challenge – when to act on emotion, act on a feeling or when to suppress it so that’s something I feel like, over time, you learn, yes, but every day there are so many different challenges. Different things pop up and I could say, the more confident and comfortable you are in your own skin, you have a belief in something and how it should look, how it should feel, then I think you can organically deal with it in a way that comes natural.”
Striking the emotional balance will be key to a successful transition from assistant to head coach.
“Naturally, the easiest thing is on the grass,” he said. “It’s a natural habitat, it’s where I feel most comfortable. I’ve been there my whole life and the rest of it is just transitioning and understanding different people need different messages at different times. … Now I’m in a position where naturally, I’m having to make decisions, I’m having to inspire a group of people to work, that can fight for each other so that’s my big challenge and that’s something that excites me. Every single day, I get up, that’s something that fuels me and gives me the energy to be the best I can be.”
