The Big Interview: Kyle Quigley
Kyle Quigley from the lower reaches of non-league football in Yorkshire to the opposite dugout to Sarina Wiegman. In a sit down interview, he discusses how, as well as his reflections on the World Cup
Have you heard the story about the Northern Irishman living in Barnsley who ended up as assistant coach for Nigeria at the World Cup?
No? Well, you’re about to.
On the face of it, it’s one of the unlikeliest link ups in the game. Randy Waldrum, an American college coach and the Nigeria head coach, joined by the non-league coach living South Yorkshire, just three weeks before the tournament began.
His name is Kyle Quigley, formerly of the likes of Ossett United in the lower reaches of the men’s game, and as we sit in his ‘man cave’ detached from his Barnsley home at the bottom of the garden (which he builds and sells for a living), he begins to tell the tale of how in the space of a few weeks he went from nothing to coaching in the opposite technical area to Sarina Wiegman.
Across 90 minutes (no extra-time on this occasion), Quigley recalls how his link with Nigeria goes back well before he was introduced to Waldrum, his reflections on the Super Falcons’ World Cup, the enthralling England clash he’s still adamant “we should have won”, as well as why both he and Waldrum are yet to link back up with the team despite Olympic qualifiers being well under way.
To know more about how Quigley wound up working with Nigeria, you need to know more about his background.
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After representing Northern Ireland youth teams as an international and signing for Bradford City, he quickly turned his attention to coaching and obtained his UEFA A Licence in Belfast and it was on this course his first links to the African nation began.
“There was a lad sat there on his own, so I went and spoke to him,” he says. “He was from America, but Nigeria originally, and he was in charge of Pittsburgh’s youth academy. He was president of a federation called FCAAN [Football Coaches Association of Africa Nations], who coach African coaches.
“I got to know him a bit and he asked if I’d like to go over to do some coaching at one of their course days. I was a bit sceptical, ‘to do what?’ I went across and there was 110 people on this course, the standard wasn’t great…”
The first course was during the 2019 World Cup and Nigeria were playing France, where Quigley recalls the Super Falcons tried to “adopt a low block” and he advised the coaches he was working with to go off and analyse their set up and come back to implement it in the next session.
“I did a phase of play, 11 v 11 in a low block. Imagine you’re against Jamie Vardy, you wouldn’t be up on the halfway line. So I set it up, then turned my back to the pitch and said to someone in the stand ‘I bet my defence is on the halfway line’, - it took some understanding!”
Impressed with the level he brought from England, along with US Soccer coach Colin Barnes who also came as part of the coaching course alongside Quigley, someone from the Nigeria Football Federation pulled him to one side and offered him a position within the federation there and then, but it wasn’t the right time.
But Quigley kept in touch with the man from Pittsburgh, and that’s how he came across Waldrum, who coaches the university’s women’s soccer team alongside his commitments with Nigeria since becoming their head coach in 2021.
Quigley was set to go and coach in the USA before the pandemic hit, admitting that’s still his “big plan”, and he’s being assisted in that process by Waldrum, but nothing has stuck yet.
He will though be attending the annual Coaches Convention alongside Waldrum next year to replicate the tactics they implemented which nearly knocked the nation he calls home out of the World Cup in the summer.
Three weeks before the tournament, Waldrum needed a coach with a fitness background, as they had a grant for a fitness coach from FIFA which hadn’t yet been utilised. Quigley, who is ex-military and as he admits himself a bit of a fitness freak - “I met my missus in the gym you won’t be surprised to hear” - fitted the bill.
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