All eyes on European draw for Ryan Mason

One man sure to be glued to Thursday’s Champions League draw is Ryan Mason.

The former midfielder helped us qualify for Europe’s elite competition for the first time in six years back in 2016 but left for Hull City that summer, just missing out on the start of our epic continental adventure that’s about to enter its fourth consecutive season.

Ryan’s story from there is well-known. Forced to retire from playing after suffering a severe head injury while playing for the Tigers, he swiftly returned home to his boyhood club and began shadowing our Academy staff at Hotspur Way as he worked through his coaching badges.

Ahead of the start of the current season, he was officially appointed as Academy Coach with responsibility for our Under-19 side in the UEFA Youth League, the youth version of the Champions League where group stage fixtures mirror those of the first team.

Needless to say, he’s eagerly awaiting the outcome of Thursday’s UEFA draw ceremony (5pm), which will not only determine the opponents for Mauricio Pochettino’s first team but will also reveal who Ryan’s young charges will be facing in Europe in the first half of 2019/20.

“Last season in the Champions League it was a fantastic group for everyone at the football club and I’ll be looking at this year’s draw very keenly,” said the former England international. “I’m a Tottenham fan so it’ll be great for the first team to hopefully draw another exciting group. You have to beat the best to be the best and that’s what the Champions League is all about.

“As for our team in the UEFA Youth League, it’s huge. I remember when I was a youth team player when we travelled abroad and played against elite foreign football teams. The learning experience and exposure you got was fantastic and it’s going to be great for these lads again now. Last year, we played the likes of Barcelona and Inter Under-19s – to compete against the best of your age group in the Spanish and Italian leagues, it’s fantastic for our lads and hopefully they understand the importance of that. It will definitely help them improve as players.”

Our 2018/19 UEFA Youth League campaign was full of ups and downs. After three consecutive draws at the start of the group stage, we progressed to the play-off round with a superb 2-0 win away to Barcelona on matchday six in December before securing a hard-fought 1-0 victory over PAOK in front of a huge crowd in Greece to qualify for the last 16. Sadly, our journey came to an end in Portugal in March as we suffered a 2-0 defeat at Porto, missing out on a place in the quarter-finals.

“Of course, I back the lads, I back the team and it’s going to be exciting this year,” said Ryan as he assessed how far he believes we can go this time around. “Obviously it’s a different group of lads but probably the core of the squad will be similar to what it was last year. There’s a challenge from the first-years coming in to try and break their way into the squad but we’ve got some talented footballers at this club, we proved that last season and hopefully we’ll have a good run, play some exciting games and the lads will have experiences that they’ll remember forever.”

Ryan himself has garnered plenty of experience of the coaching side of the game since returning to us towards the end of the 2017/18 season.

“I’ve picked up loads!” he smiled. “I’ve been observing a lot, I’ve been taking sessions and I still join in with little bits as well. I’ve been looking at the game from so many different angles and I definitely feel like I’ve developed a lot already in a short space of time. It’s a case of carrying on developing, carrying on learning and being open to new things. There’s no better club for me to be doing that at than Tottenham Hotspur. I’ve always said I love the game, everyone knows that and I think the fact that I went straight into coaching after retiring as a player probably shows that. It would have been easy to stay away from it. I did have some difficult times, I’m not going to lie, it’s been tough but I love the game and my obsession is different to what it was as a player – it’s as a coach now and how I can help these boys improve. When I see them improving it definitely gives me a good feeling.

“Obviously I’ve been given the responsibility of taking one of the teams in the European competition now which is great, but really it’s about helping these kids to improve and develop and hopefully become first team players at this club, or if not here then elsewhere.

“We want our team to play the Tottenham way. I think the club has a very clear identity of how we want to play and how we want to approach things in the first team and we try to transfer that down to the younger lads. At the same time, you want individuals to be tested, you want them to be in situations where they’re exposed and they’ve got to make decisions under pressure and that’s something I look at. Obviously I look at the tactical side of the game and try to help the boys improve from that sense but at the same time I want our individuals to be exposed on the football pitch because that’s where they learn and become better players.

“Obviously we want to go far in the UEFA Youth League, we want to experience big games and experience big moments in games. Many of these players haven’t played first team football yet so for them, it’s a massive opportunity to showcase their ability and compete against the best people around in their age group, so it’s something that everyone is looking forward to. There’s an emphasis on winning but at the same time, ‘winning’ for us in the Academy is to get players into first team football. We can’t lose sight of the bigger picture.”