Oh Tony. You have shown the world again why you are on the speakers’ circuit rather than working in football.
[](https://shewore.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/image-7.png)
Tony Adams (alongside David Seaman) was one of my childhood idols.
For me, he is our greatest ever player. Above Dennis Bergkamp and Thierry Henry. A boy from Romford that came through our ranks, beat his demons, and become not only our greatest ever captains, but one of the greatest ever seen in football.
He led us to league titles in 3 difference decades, an achievement unlikely to be every matched in English football. He is a legend. No debate.
But his recent quotes about Martin Odegaard and captaincy shows that he is still living in a by-gone era. One where a single man was the captain. Where squad had just 15 men and the coaching staff was 5 or 6.
In Adams’ day, captaincy was very different.
Leadership can very much be split into two roles – on the pitch and off the pitch.
30 years ago, the captain would lead his merry men and be the managers voice on the pitch Off the pitch they would be front and centre for everything – from being the man who is the link between manager and players, the man who is in front of the camera for interviews, and, most importantly, the man who organises the weekly alcohol related social events.
These days, leadership is different.
On the pitch, you do not want one leader. You want a team of leaders. And it should not take an armband to show leadership.
You go back to 2012 when Chelsea won the Champions League final. Senior players stepped up and led the team to the clubs greatest success. Leadership was not just shown from the captain, John Terry, but also from Frank Lampard, Petr Cech and Didier Drogba.
Eddie Jones also bought the concept of multiple on-pitch “captains” to the England rugby union team. And it is a concept that every rugby nation, and most football teams, now use.
Players these days are coached nth. A manager has very little impact during the game beyond making substitutions and tactical changes, and therefore, a captain has even less. These days, on the pitch, the man wearing the armband pretty much just does the toin coss.
The comments from Adams about “you’re not going to win the league with Odegaard as captain” misses the fact that on-pitch captaincy has changed.
Gabriel, William Saliba, Declan Rice, Bukayo Saka and Kai Havertz do not need an armband to show leadership on the pitch. They do so naturally. As does Odegaard.
Training ground captaincy has also changed since Adams’ day.
These days, teams do a lot of specialist training. It is no longer just goalkeepers training on their own. And this is why you here managers talking about having a “keeper captain”, a “defender captain”, a “midfield captain” and a “captain of the attack”. These individuals are the leaders when the various different components of the team split apart for training sessions.
And with 25-30 players at each training session, you need leaders across different groups, and different ages. Gone are the days of a 15 man squad, all training together and just doing lots and lots of running.
The club captain’s role off the pitch is probably their most important these days.
It is the role of the club captain to ensure an arm is put around youth team players when they join the senior pros for a training session or two. Likewise, it is the club captain’s job to help new players integrate into the squad. They do the informal welfare checks on players. Make sure everyone feels OK and part of the squad. Captaincy has changed in the same way normal employers, employees and management have changed when it comes to mental health, welfare, etc.
No longer does a captain just organise a piss up for him and his mates outside of training time and think that is all he has to do.
Finally, with the amount of pre-and-post-match interviews players now have to do, it would be impossible for one man to do everything. Arsenal, and every other club, therefore, have a group of leaders whom they select from to do interviews. This ensures the onus is not on one player and they take into account the mode of player, opponent and more.
Odegaard is reportedly a very popular captain amongst teammates. Just like Adams was. And surely with the off-pitch complexity of the job, this is what is important.
The days of a leader (in all organisations) leading just by shouting and screaming are over. It is now about putting your arm around a colleague, making sure they are OK and encouraging them. Some will say the world has gone soft. But the data is there that employees perform better when being encouraged, not when being shouted at.
It is not just Arsenal who run a multi-leader model. Every club does from Manchester City to Liverpool, Real Madrid and Barcelona and beyond. They all operate using a “team of leaders” rather than putting the onus on a single man.
Pep Guardiola took this a step further by having players vote on who should make up the leadership group, and then who from that leadership group should wear the captain’s armband. The most successful manager this century having a very similar philosophy to Mikel Arteta.
Adams is an Arsenal legend. But that does not mean everything that he says is gospel. It is the same for Ian Wright, for Thierry Henry, for Arsene Wenger and more.
I am not going to get into the reasons why Adams often speaks about Arsenal in a negative tone. There is more to it than him just wanting to see us win things. But what Adams has shown is why he no longer works in football.
His views are still stuck in the 80s and 90s. He has not progressed to the modern-day thinking on football. And it is his reluctance to modernise (or inability to?) that has seen him go from great leader, to very poor manager and coach, and even worse pundit.
Adams managerial record is horrendous. He has shown that a great leader on the pitch does not make a great manager further down the line. He probably wishes that he had the managerial brain of Mikel Arteta. But he does not. And I think that frustrates him.
I will always have a place in my heart for Tony Adams. But every time he has opened his mouth in the last decade, all he has shown is that his views are from a bygone era and why he no longer works in football.
Tony – love you, but you are wrong. As you often are.
**Keenos**