Stanley Matthews - Coaching and Management Career

Coaching and Management Career

Matthews was appointed general manager at Stoke's rivals Port Vale in July 1965, alongside good friend Jackie Mudie; Matthews was unpaid, though was given expenses. The pair had a plan of bringing through talented schoolboys and selling one or two off every so often to improve the club's bleak financial picture, whilst at the same time advancing through the leagues; in his autobiography he said that what Dario Gradi later achieved at Crewe Alexandra is what he had in mind for the Vale. Matthews concentrated his search in North East England and Central Scotland, where he discovered talented striker Mick Cullerton, though overlooked a teenage Ray Kennedy.

Handed complete managerial control following Mudie's resignation in May 1967, Matthews couldn't guide the club to success - instead, Port Vale were fined £4,000 in February/March 1968 and expelled from the Football League for financial irregularities. He was forced to use his name to plead with the other Football League clubs to re-elect the Vale, which they duly did. He stood down as manager in May 1968, and despite being owed £9,000 in salary and expenses, agreed to stay at Vale Park to continue his work with the youth team. A 'final settlement' was reached in December 1970, Matthews was given £3,300, with the other £7,000 he was owed to be written off. Player Roy Sproson later said that "he trusted people who should never have been trusted and people took advantage of him. I am convinced a lot of people sponged off him and, all the while, the club were sliding." The experience 'left a sour taste' in his mouth, and was enough to convince him never to try his hand as management in English football again.

Matthews gave up his summers every year between 1953 and 1978 to coach poor children from South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, Uganda, and Tanzania. While in Soweto in 1975, he ignored apartheid to form a team of black schoolboys called "Stan's Men". The members of his team told him that it was their dream to play in Brazil, and so it was that Matthews organised a trip there; they were the first black team ever to tour outside of South Africa. He did not have the money to fund the trip himself, though used his connections (for the only time other than when he used them to save Port Vale in 1968) to arrange sponsorship from Coca-Cola and the Johannesburg Sunday Times. The South African authorities did not want to cause an international incident, so did not prevent Stan's Men from getting on the plane to Rio de Janeiro, where they would meet legendary player Zico. It was on this trip that he also met Ronnie Biggs. On the way back from the trip, Stan's Men captain Gilbert Moiloa called Matthews 'black man with the white face'.

He played his final game of football for an England Veterans XI against a Brazil Veterans XI in Brazil in 1985 at the age of 70; the English lost 6–1 to the likes of Garrincha, Amarildo, Tostão, and Jairzinho. He damaged his cartilage during the match: "a promising career cut tragically short", he wrote in his autobiography.