There’s few figures in English football more well-known than Sam Allardyce, as a permanent fixture of the golden era of the Premier League, known primarily for his successful stint at Bolton Wanderers, and notoriously so for his brief time at the helm of the England national team. Now semi-retired from management, he returns to the dug-out, but this time in the fictional CBBC series Jamie Johnson FC, with a cameo role at the end of season three. To mark his first deviation into the world of acting, we had the pleasure in speaking to Allardyce to discuss his role, and the unique challenges that came with it – while he exclusively confirms his role in season four of the popular show.
Naturally, we also speak about football, and the way the modern game has evolved, as Big Sam reflects on his time at Bolton and the unfair brush his side were tarnished with. He also talks about the importance in protecting academy prospects, while reliving his own experiences as a youth player. He tells us whether he’d consider a return to real-life management, and of course given we’re a movie site, we couldn’t help but ask what Big Sam’s favourite film is of all time. Oh, and of course we speak about Jay Jay Okocha – the man so good they named him twice.
So how did you come to be involved in this project – and what attracted you to getting involved?
I found it quite a difficult decision to be honest with you. I’ve never acted before, though people said I used to act on the touchline. But it was learning the words and portraying it properly. You’ve seen in the end it’s a short part to start with, but it was quite a nerve-wracking experience. I’m going in amongst a lot of youngsters who were very adapted, remembering their lines and have done a lot of Jamie Johnson series before and are used to it. But they made me feel very welcome and we got through it okay, and they were very satisfied with it. It was a challenging experience, but I’ve always been one of those people that says, take yourself out your comfort zone, and learn a new experience – and that’s exactly what that did.
Have you watched it back yet? What’s it like watching yourself act on screen?
I’m not great at that. I do my own podcast every week and I struggle watching that. But obviously the rest of the family have seen it and we’ve enjoyed the experience.
When a footballer reaches the end of his career, there’s that crossroads, do I get into media, or do I get into management? Did you ever consider when your playing days were over, moving into a media role? Or was it always an ambition to manage?
I’ve always been in the media, not as a full professional, but I’ve been in the media for 20-30 years. Unfortunately not the case now, due to the fact that there’s a new regime that possibly plums for a younger person. They’ve moved it into a new a type of media circus where they are picking out younger people who are just finishing playing, or younger managers that are not working. So all that media stuff has been over for many years. I’m well-versed with sitting in front of the camera doing either interviews or commenting live on the games, which was a great pleasure for me over the years. But that’s not me at the moment, so that’s why I chose to start my own podcast, to get me on the social media platforms that you can get on now. It’s a good platform for me to talk about football in particular. The past as well as the present.
Jamie Johnson FC is in its third season now, with hopefully a lot more to come. What do you think makes this show so popular amongst younger audiences?
The way they portray it, and the way the actors go about it. And, not least, the script. I’m not there for that long, but I see some pretty happy faces and some real professionalism in terms of how they film it. I’ll never be able to get anything done in one take, it’s always more than one take, but they get it. The casting of the people that are on camera are great. Good choices, and lovely human beings, I found. Obviously an old man like me going into a young group like that is something I found invigorating, which is what the last end of my career has been all about. I’ve been dealing with young footballers for many years, and that’s always been a refreshing part of my life, listening to what the changes are, not just the changes in football, but the changes are for the youngsters in the world today.
As someone who’s had the platform and stature in the game – have you always felt there’s been a responsibility to connect with the next generation of young people that are coming into the sport?
Yeah, because having started as a youth team coach, and been the academy director, as well as moving up to reserve team manager, assistant manager, then manager, it’s been a great journey. I took great pleasure winning the league at Preston for the under-18s, and that was against Liverpool, Everton, Man United, Man City, all the big boys. So it gave me a little bit of an indication that I was okay at managing the team and giving them the right guidance to not only win, but become professionals and know what it means to win. The winning is the reason that you take up a professional career in football. Not just to participate. If you’re participating, it’s fine, but it’s no good unless you’re winning.
The show’s all about the academy prospects, who are promised the world, but obviously it doesn’t work out for everyone. Do you think that football does enough to help youngsters who don’t make it in the professional game?
Well we tried, we built an app three years ago. The Roots app was to try and get football clubs to take it into the academy, to give them an opportunity to log in what was a digital CV. But sadly we didn’t get very far. The digital CV was going to give each individual the opportunity to put their own thoughts into the app, but also into that of their coaches, their mentors, their sports scientists, their college lecturers, their exam results, and everything that they need possibly needed to go into the future, either as a professional footballer, or if moving on into another area of employment, so they wouldn’t have to scrap and scrape around, trying to put a CV together. It would’ve all been done in one button. Unfortunately that never got taken up. We got a few in the leagues, but not many, not enough. So I feel very disappointed in the football world. So many young footballers fail between 16 and 21. They all get released, then lots of those kids pack it in. They finish football altogether, and it’s caused quite a few problems for the players themselves and the parents. It is an area of delicacy when the youngster is let go. It’s the worst thing I’ve faced, in many things in management, telling a young 17-year-old he’s not going to make it. And most of the time that’s with his parents. So that’s a very difficult job Indeed.
Do you remember how you first felt when you got your first professional contract? What do you remember of that day?
Yeah, I remember I rang my girlfriend straight away and started screaming down the phone, “they’ve given me a pro contact”. This was at Bolton Wanderers. She’s now my wife, Lynn, we’ve been together since we first met, so 17. I was brave enough to say, am I good enough to be a professional? And the manager at the time said yes, and they gave me my first professional contract. You cannot imagine what that feels like. I haven’t got the right words to describe it. I wish I had some of these big, long words that people can use to express how it really felt. It’s just unbelievable because I’d seen many players leave in tears.
In Jamie Johnson FC you’re playing yourself, obviously as a manager. But when playing the role, were you playing it as yourself or were you treating it like a character on a page?
I was just trying to treat it like a character, to be honest with you. I felt that I would express myself better and come across better. There’s two yous. There’s you at home and then there’s you when you’re out in the public eye, and the two things are completely different. Profiling yourself and profiling players was a part of our agenda when we were at Bolton, and that’s why I know so much about it. You can be completely different how you are at home and then completely changed when you get out in amongst the public. So I think trying to portray yourself the right way is something that everybody pretends a little bit to do, rather than actually be their natural self.
What managers inspired you? Were there any specific managers who left a mark?
There’s Jim Smith, Alex Ferguson, obviously. Dave Bassett, Howard Wilkinson. They were the ones that I was trying to get to talk to and get to meet when I was doing my coaching badges. They were full of valuable experience. David Pleat is another one. They’re the sort of people you talk to when you’re at the bar, having a drink with when you’re doing your coaching badges and your management courses, hoping to possibly get more information, just by casually talking on what the game’s about. And we are very good at talking football. That’s why we’ve been in it so long. So those people were the ones that in the younger days, I would ring up and talk to if I needed any help.
You used to be the person calling people for advice, but now I think it’d be the other way around. What advice would you give if a young manager called you?
It depends what the problem is. I mean, there’s lots of problems. Generally, the problems are not the players and the football. Generally, the problems lie off the pitch. That’s normally their bigger concern, with what’s happening in today’s mad world of football. We call it the madhouse, and it certainly is. You’ve gotta be very well adjusted mentally, particularly to cope with that pressure and deal with all the negativity that comes your way, which has risen by probably 60-70% because of social media, because of headlines, because of cameras, because of recording. You have to be very careful these days.
So… do you reckon you’ll be exploring this role in Jamie Johnson FC any further? Is there more to come?
We are able to confirm that I’ll be in the next series of Jamie Johnson. Series four. So there you go. You’ve got it straight from the horse’s mouth.
That’s fantastic. In terms of exploring this role further, you said you were quite nervous about being doing this first bit in season three. Now you’ve done it – do you feel a bit more relaxed going back to do it again?
They’re gonna increase the part, so the nerves will not be any less than there was this time. The part’s going to get bigger. I don’t know how big it can get or how big they want it to get. There might be a time I’ll have to say ‘this is a bit too much from memory’. I’ll just say that’s probably as far as I can go. If that’s not enough for you, then I’ll have to resign as the manager and they’ll find somebody else. But it has been enjoyable. I have enjoyed the second time more than the first. When I went to the first one, it’s like making your debut. Are you good enough? Will you get your first pass right? But now it was, will you get your first lines right? Will you mess it up?
Would you like to explore acting beyond Jamie Johnson? I read somewhere you might fancy a role on Corrie one day…
Who knows what the future may hold? I had a fantastic time with the Uber Eats advert. That’s given me many phone calls with people laughing down the phone at me because of how funny it was. Me, Alan Pardew, and Tony Pulis had a fantastic time doing that. So there might be more to come, but I don’t think George Clooney’s got anything to worry about.
You mentioned Tony Pulis – I’ve been thinking recently in regards to current football, we’ve seen a move over to more percentages-style football and set pieces and long throws have become a major aspect of the game. I mean, Arsenal might win the league this year with set pieces at the forefront of their play. Do you feel if yourself & Tony were managing in the Premier League today, your styles would work quite well with how football has developed?
We wouldn’t have got a job over the last four years. Our football was portrayed wrongly. These words: “do you play the right way?” if you did not play the “right way”, you have no chance of getting a job. When asked if I play the right way, or what type of football do I play, I say winning football, and that is the only football I can play. If I’m being interviewed, my answer would be based on the assessment of the players. So if you are asking me to go and play the “right way”, if I’ve got two centre backs that are clumsy with their feet, then it was gonna take us a long time to win a game of football. Football is simple. You get the ball, you pass it to your mate. You either pass it to his feet, or you pass it in space that he can run onto, if there’s a space to run into. If you’re in a space, stay there. You can talk about the defensive unit, obviously, we all talk about that. Defending corners properly and defending throw-ins properly. You talk about attacking corners, attacking free kicks and attacking throws. You do that properly and if you get all those right, you become a side that wins more games, but only as long as you have the right talent.
But I think it’s become more exciting again, because all the teams are now finding a different way of being played against, and all the teams are finding different ways to be played. I do think there’s a bit too much copying, you know, if you’re copying somebody else, why did you not think it first? Or had you, but were you scared to do it because of the amount of criticism you would get by the press? I had a massive team here in Bolton, a team that was full of World Cup winners, European Champion winners, which played outstanding, quality football, but we were still “long ball Bolton” in every media group across the board, so there’s no flexibility when it comes to you. We spent those years changing from what we were in the beginning when we got promoted. Pragmatic, difficult to beat, making sure that we picked up the points, making sure we got as many clean sheets as we could because we weren’t great at scoring enough goals to keep us in the Premier League unless we kept the clean sheets. But as we advanced, and became more and more entertaining and winning more and more games, we got both the defending and the attacking side right. Particularly when Nicolas Anelka arrived, he became the ultimate last jigsaw in the puzzle. But to call that team negative was an embarrassment by the people who did it, because it was World Cup players playing at Bolton.
Because of that, I felt they didn’t get the credit they deserved. They didn’t get the praise that they deserved. Mainly because we were told that we were this or that in the beginning, which, which we were, because there was a certain way we had to play if were going to stay up in the Premier League.
You mentioned Anelka. I mean, you also had like Hierro, Djorkaeff, Jay Jay Okocha…
Ivan Campo.
Incredible players. But who would you say is the most talented player you’ve ever worked with?
It had to be Jay Jay, he was an inspiration. Not just as a footballer, but as a captain. He was a good leader. Quiet, but positive, didn’t mess about. He could make and change a game when he felt like it, but we had lots of those. But Youri was the kingpin of making Bolton Wanderers famous. Almost more famous than it’s ever been across the world. He was a World Cup winner and a European Championship winner, and that’s followed by Ivan Campo, Jay Jay Okocha, Nicolas Anelka, Gary Speed. You know, all these top quality players, we even had Vincent Candela that nobody seems to mention, another World Cup winner. That was a great team. They played great football.
So, obviously we’re a big movie site, so I want to know; what’s Big Sam’s favourite film of all time?
Whoa, man. Big Sam’s favourite film of all time. I’d probably say One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest. Oh, that’s a great film.
It had its 60th anniversary recently, so they put it back on in a cinema. Great to see it again.
It’s hard to find a film as good as that now. Even though there’s more technology and more stuff computer wise that they can do. It might be just because I’m an old fart now, but they don’t make him like they used to. You know what I mean?
So finally, you’re not working in football at the moment – so how are you enjoying your time not being a manager? Do you still miss it? Would you consider a return to management?
I still miss it. I’m not so sure that that will ever materialise. I’m not rushing around applying for jobs, but I can’t say I’d never be tempted again because I said that four or five times and made a fool of myself and got back in as soon as something came along. So you never know, but it’s not a great playing field. British managers find it very difficult to get a job in the Premier League now. We are dominated by foreign owners, so it’s not a place that we can find a career to progress into. Most of the time we progress through the Championship. I see more and more foreign coaches coming in all the time, which I think is a bit of a shame, based on the great managers I know down the leagues, who have started to go abroad rather than try and stay here. There’s lots of pro-licensed coaches who’ve spent thousands and thousands of pounds to become a professional coach that can’t get a position in coaching in this country, because we’ve got the best league in the world. So you have to be very patient and, and try and be very good at what you do. And hopefully somebody notices you at the time they need a manager. Or should I say “head coach”.
Well at least you’ve got a job in management in Jamie Johnson FC.
Yeah, but if they try to change the title to “head coach”, I’d insist it stays as manager!
Jamie Johnson FC is available to watch on iPlayer now.
