Wealth Of Knowledge

Everton’s first Director of Football, Steve Walsh, tells​Everton magazine about his new role with the Club, and his influence on the Premier League champions.

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Steve Walsh, Everton’s new Director of Football, can remember vividly the first time he encountered David Unsworth: “He’s from my neck of the woods, so I knew David as a schoolboy. He’s always been the way he is now – big, strong, powerful and a really good lad.”

Steve has trodden a remarkable path to his latest role at Goodison Park. It began decades ago in the heartland of Lancashire. A Physical Education teacher at Bishop Rawstorne High School, he would combine his full-time day job with that of coaching the county Under-15s and North-West Under-16s sides.

“The school was in Croston, which is a village between Chorley and Southport,” he recalls. “It’s a beautiful village, Bishop Rawstorne is a lovely school and I enjoyed my time there. If you are in teaching, you have got to be organised and be a good manager. You can certainly take those skills and adapt them to football.

“If you think a lot about the game, you start to do some coaching. I’ve always been somebody who picks and puts together teams. I was finding the best players to represent the county at that level.

“David played in that county team. I have known him since he was 14 or 15. He was always destined to have a career as a footballer. Ipswich were keen on him at one point. They had taken a player called Mark Brennan from the Blackburn area a few years earlier and he was a very similar type of player to David. Obviously, David chose Everton and the rest is history really. I saw him play against Japan [in 1995]. It was his only England cap – but I was there! I saw him make his debut for his country and I bet I was as proud as he was.”