Quy discusses his diverse coaching career, from coaching some of the Premier League's best to working from day one in the USA.
Andy Quy’s coaching career has shifted him across the Football League in England and offered him the opportunity to flourish in America. But, wherever he has worked, there has been an unwavering common denominator in his mentality. “I love developing players and winning games,” he says, speaking to Goalkeeper.com. “It’s all about the project of the job and the club.”
Quy’s playing days started as a schoolboy on a Youth Training Scheme at Tottenham Hotspur. He then secured a pro contract at Derby County and got promoted to the Premier League. Spells at Grimsby Town and Hereford United followed, before the allure of coaching came calling. “I’d always wanted to coach,” Quy revealed. “I helped with the school of excellence and academies at the clubs I played for.”
In 2002, the Englishman’s first full-time role arrived at Derby’s academy, where he worked for two years before undertaking the same duties at Aston Villa on a part-time basis. Short-term appointments at Lincoln City and Mansfield Town rounded off a diverse platform for Quy to land a first-team goalkeeping coach position at Championship side Stoke in 2007.
In Quy’s first season, the Potters clinched automatic promotion, which he described as an “unbelievable experience.” The coach spent over 12 years in Staffordshire and enjoyed a decade-long stay in the top flight. Quy relished the chance to work with many talented goalkeepers, including Thomas Sørensen, Asmir Begovic, and Jack Butland.
“The first goalkeeper we had was Sørensen, an experienced Danish international who had previously featured for Sunderland and Aston Villa in the Premier League. He was fantastic for us and was one of the players of the season in the opening year. In 2010, we bought Begovic from Portsmouth and he was unbelievable. Butland also arrived and we had this conveyor belt of top goalkeepers.”
Between 2013 and 2015, all three goalkeepers competed in the same squad. Quy helped build a cohesive unit that challenged each other and allowed for simultaneous and shared development. They were all at different career stages and occupied different profiles but formed the perfect concoction of experience, quality and youth.
Quy cherished these memories and gleefully reflected on his time with this group: “They were different characters but they were so focused on what they wanted to achieve. They all had the mentality that they wanted to be the best. They worked together in a training session and were all capable of being the number one. Still, they all performed fiercely, had a real desire to win, respected each other and got on really well on and off the pitch.”
Quy left the bet365 Stadium in 2019 and joined Brentford later that year on a short-term contract. In the 2019/20 season, Thomas Frank’s side finished third in the Championship, the club’s best league finish since 1947 and reached the play-off final. However, the Bees were beaten by Fulham. Despite this disappointment, Quy still labelled it a “fantastic period” and a different experience and culture to Stoke that furthered his coaching evolution.
Notably, Quy coached David Raya and gushed over the Spaniard's quality. “He was always destined to be a top goalkeeper,” he reflected. “Did I think he would be Arsenal’s first-choice goalkeeper? Probably not at the time, playing in the Championship. But he works fantastically hard and is very focused. He's got some great attributes in terms of his distribution and is also a top shot-stopper. I think that's one of the areas that he's improved in most. He makes a lot of reaction saves on the line that he didn't make on such regular occasions four or five years ago.”
Quy’s fruitful career allowed him to work in the US for two years, when he joined Major League Soccer expansion team Charlotte FC in 2021. The North Carolina-based outfit was awarded the expansion franchise in 2019. This was a transformative experience, as the 48-year-old got to see football from a completely new international perspective.
“When I left Brentford, I'd had a conversation with the club and because of COVID-19, they put the project back a year in terms of when they officially joined the league. I was then at Burton Albion and the opportunity eventually came around again.
“I was able to be part of a football club from day one before a game had been played and a ball had been kicked. In England, this is something that nobody has ever experienced because all football clubs are steeped in so much history. Everyone in the club was getting to know each other to make sure everything was running smoothly, so it was a fantastic project.
“I headed over in December 2021 to start and helped build the roster. The club had already signed four or five players. We went through the expansion and college draft, and tried to sign others from elsewhere through the Designated Player Rule. Pre-season started in January and the first games were at the end of February. We didn’t really know the players ourselves and we had 75,000 fans attend the first match. It was incredible. Over the time I was there, we averaged around 34,000 for every game, so it was pretty special.”
Quy’s coaching career has spanned nearly 25 years and he closely monitored the changing dynamics of the goalkeeper coach. When asked about this he replied: “It has evolved massively. 25 years ago, coaches came in and started working with goalkeepers on the technical aspects, such as catching, handling and diving, with a little bit of distribution.
“Now, it has evolved to where the goalkeeping department is a more solid part of a collaborative coaching setup. For example, if a club doesn’t have a set play specialist, a goalkeeper coach may do the defensive ones.
“They have also started to look after the build-up from goal kicks in low areas within the games. These tasks will come into play for the goalkeeping coach and means more collaboration with the outfield figures. So it's been a massive change and they’re such a bigger part of a coaching team now.”
Quy believes this increased responsibility and importance has significantly contributed to a wider respect for goalkeepers. “I think that the biggest accolade that you could pay to goalkeepers is that every team looks to start an attack with them,” he enthused.
“They have to be part of the build-up, no matter how you do it. It can be a pass to the centre-back or a direct kick to the striker, but the quality of the ball has to be spot-on. You need to put that responsibility on the goalkeeper, as well as not conceding goals. Now, there’s a lot of respect given to the position and what is required.”
The job is not yet done and Quy still has a wealth of energy and hunger for coaching. He is currently the first-team goalkeeping coach at Huddersfield Town and is passionately committed to his latest project. Last season, the Terriers were relegated from the Championship and are pushing for an immediate return to the division.
“The goal is to get promoted,” Quy reiterated. “I came in at the end of March last season on a short-term basis and unfortunately, we didn't stay up. The club made another managerial change and I met Michael Duff and wanted to work with him. It's a group of players that were relegated so we needed to change the mindset and culture. We’ve brought in some new players and it's been a really good project to get our teeth into. At the moment we're sitting in the playoff positions and we want promotion.”
