Matt Ritchie: ‘Eddie Howe changed the trajectory of my life. I’ll forever be thankful’

We have talked about home and happiness, about a footballer’s mortality, “getting blood from a stone” and what might come next. About glee being channelled through fury, about walloping team-mates (and corner flags), about straddling eras at Newcastle United, about inertia and cup finals and being 100 per cent 100 per cent of the time.

For two hours and more, Matt Ritchie has talked over tea and mineral water in Beefy’s Bar at the Utilita Bowl cricket stadium in Hampshire, back on his own south-coast patch at last and about as far away from Tyneside as you can get and still be in England, when he considers how it feels to be a man of Newcastle. Whatever he does, wherever he goes, he will always be that.

“It gives me goosebumps,” he says. He tails off and laughs. “I remember playing Bristol City at home in the Championship a few months after I’d joined. We’re top of the league but 2-0 down, and we get booed off at half-time. I said to one of the lads, ‘We’re having a bad day, but this lot are mental. They’re f***ing mad!’

“I was in a rage, but they were right. We’re their team and for 45 minutes we didn’t represent what they wanted us to represent and before everything else, it’s, ‘Are you going to work your socks off, what’s your intent and are you going to do it with everything you’ve got?’.”

Newcastle eventually drew 2-2 that day in February 2016, a scoreline and a lesson.

“I recognised I wasn’t the best player there,” Ritchie says. “I knew I could build something in the Championship but if I was going to survive in the Premier League, I needed to find a way. That way was to make sure there wasn’t one minute, not one single moment, that someone could point a finger and say I wasn’t ‘at-it’.”

Or as Eddie Howe, Newcastle’s current head coach, puts it: “Matty was relentless in his energy. He set such high standards, everyone had to follow. We’ve missed him massively.”

Ritchie’s way was moulded from magma. Sometimes, his love hurt.

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After eight years at St James’ Park, Ritchie squared a circle last summer, signing for Portsmouth of the second-tier Championship, his boyhood club, on a free transfer. He has been keen to say a proper farewell to Newcastle, although it reflects his personality that he wanted to wait until he was fully embedded at Fratton Park. Call it sentiment with a purpose.

The 35-year-old winger feels a “real, deep happiness” at being reunited with his young family. It was a choice for them to remain down here while he was 280 miles (over 400km) away up there, meaning “home was home and football was work, and that Newcastle got all of me”, but it also meant sacrifice and “an element of guilt”. No regrets, but it was “the right time” to come home.

“As a player, I give everything and did everything to be the best I could be, but I’m at a stage in life where I’m finding balance,” he says. “I’m lucky enough to be playing for my hometown club and can walk in my front door and do all the things I haven’t been able to do with my family.”

On no account should this be mistaken for him easing off or winding down.

“How am I relentless?,” Ritchie asks when Howe’s observations are relayed to him. “It’s because I love training. Give me a passing drill, a pressing drill, some keep-ball… To be relentless every day, it’s what I love doing. The only credit I give myself is that I’ve recognised I’m in a special environment.”

At Portsmouth, back in English football’s second division for the first time since 2012 and having spent four of the intervening seasons in the fourth tier, the immediate focus is clear. “The aim this season is to keep our (Championship) status,” he says — Portsmouth are 17th in the 24-team table, 10 points clear of the relegation places with 10 games to play and buoyed by Sunday’s 1-0 home win over leaders Leeds United. “The club has been asleep but now the foundations are in place to go again.”

For Ritchie, who made 10 senior appearances for Portsmouth first time round before leaving for Swindon Town in 2011, then moving on to Bournemouth — where he first worked with Howe — two years later and Newcastle in 2016, this return represents “unfinished business”. “There was always a burning desire in me to come back at some stage,” he says. “My dream was to play for Portsmouth and to have a significant impact.”

On a personal level, the challenge is, “How long can I go on? How long can I keep pushing?”.

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Ritchie hits Fabian Schar; once, twice, three times, four.

Schar has just scored and Newcastle are winning away against Fulham, but as that final slap rains down on the back of his head, Schar’s arm is coming up to block his team-mate and for an instant, his face clouds. If looks could kill, the Swiss defender’s eyes would be Exocets.

“Fabi’s been like that a few times,” Ritchie says, and he is laughing again. “For me, that moment is, ‘Fabi, man, look what you’ve done!’. It’s a connection with him. Although it hurt his head, he knows I was so happy about him scoring.”

@nufc The best Matt Ritchie head slap of all time? 🤣 #NUFC #MattRitchie #PL ♬ original sound – Donovin Jones

There were plenty of other episodes like that.

Matty Longstaff was clouted so hard after a goal against Rochdale in the FA Cup that the midfielder wailed: “Why are you hitting my head?”. Against Tottenham Hotspur in 2019, Christian Atsu made an important clearing tackle, the reward for which was a kick up the backside from Ritchie.

“There was one game where Jonjo (Shelvey) either scored or played the pass that led to a goal,” Ritchie says. “I clapped him on the head and, as I ran past him, he absolutely volleyed me with his right foot. How it was not caught on camera, I’ll never know.

“I was thinking it was going to be another Lee Bowyer and Kieron Dyer (the Newcastle players who were dismissed after fighting on the pitch in 2005). Honestly, it was unbelievable. But, yeah… It’s just my way. I’m so excited for my team-mates.”

And then there is what happens when Ritchie scores himself, which is usually all-out assault on corner flags. For a bit of variety, he did it once after Isaac Hayden had nabbed a late winner against Chelsea, kicking the flagpole so violently it flew from its moorings and landed — at some velocity — in the crotch of a hapless (male) supporter.

“Scoring is the best feeling in the world,” Ritchie says. “It’s like having an ice bath, where your metabolism speeds up. I’m not one of those guys who is calm enough to be, ‘Oh, look, I’ve scored’. I’m not cool. I’m not calm. I haven’t got that in my locker. I don’t even remember the first time I did it, but the corner flag was there and I… expressed my feelings.”

He pauses.

“Of happiness, by the way! It’s just pure emotion and joy.”

This melding of anger and thrill was a rare thing of beauty at a club which struggled for identity in the last, unsatisfactory years of Mike Ashley’s ownership. Newcastle overall were drifting but Ritchie refused to drift.

Back then, The Athletic asked fans on social media what they loved about him and the answers were of a theme: “because he’s our little radgie and he really cares”; “because he takes no f***ing prisoners”; “because he screamed, ‘Track back, you bellend’ at Christian Atsu into a pitchside microphone” and, a personal favourite, “because he believes violence is the answer to praise”.

“I felt a sense of responsibility,” he says. “It was a quiet, young team. Selfishly — and I still do this — it put pressure on me to make sure I deliver. So it got the best out of me too. Because if I told Christian or Jonjo to track their runner, then there’s no way on earth I’m not tracking mine. Where would that leave us?”

The cult of Ritchie only mushroomed online when he qualified for his Large Goods Vehicle driving licence last year, although the reality of this was more mundane; his family ride and now he is able is drive a horsebox.

Is he really football’s Mr Angry?

“I’ve got some Scottish in me,” smiles Ritchie, who won 16 Scotland caps from 2015 to 2018. “If my brother and I were fighting as kids, my dad would crack. He’d been in England from the age of eight but he would speak with a Scottish accent if he was telling us off. We’re all products of our parents, right?

“As you get older, you mellow, and you can’t shout at kids, especially nowadays. They don’t listen. So you try to lead by example. I’m passionate about trying to be the best. Being that way was for my own drive but the deal for my clubs is that they got everything.”

Everything, every day. No wonder Howe misses him so much.

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Ritchie’s spell at Newcastle was bookended by hope. In the early moments, it emanated from Rafa Benitez, the Champions League-winning manager who stayed on after relegation to the Championship and by the end, it was the takeover and Howe and competing again.

Between those two spikes, existence was often a struggle.

How to sum it all up, the 215 appearances and 25 goals in all competitions? “With gratitude,” he says. “It’s such a unique place. When you’re in it, it becomes the new normal but I always appreciated playing in a city that eats, sleeps and breathes Newcastle United.

“I always felt the minimum I could do was to make sure I did right by these amazing people — not just today but all week and throughout my life. For my own success, yes, but also the responsibility of wearing the (club) badge. Whether it was getting promoted or trying to survive (in the Premier League), whether it was not quite being in the manager’s plans because of how the team had evolved in the last two or three years…

“I knew towards the latter stages of my career at Newcastle that I had a job to do — to make sure that, Monday to Friday, training standards were high. On a Saturday, if there was a snippet of information or motivation that I could give to a player that may make us one per cent better, then I took it very seriously. I look back with nothing but love.”

Richie “loved Rafa” too, even though Newcastle’s version of Benitez was hemmed in by a limited budget.

“He was so intense. As a coach, he has a clear picture in his head and you have to buy into that picture, but you trusted his experience,” he says. “I learned so much. There was a resilience in the team, organisation, trusting each other.”

When Benitez left in summer 2019, some fans left with him. The following season, Newcastle felt obliged to give away 10,000 half-season tickets. Ashley wanted out, but new ownership felt distant. The club were in limbo.

Ritchie gives “huge thanks” to Ashley, for his personal support during the pandemic, when he was in lockdown away from his family, and also for his lack of artifice. “He was always very honest with us as a group,” he says. “He said, ‘Lads, I’m a wealthy man but I cannot compete’. He was open about his intention to sell the club so that it could go on and thrive.

“I knew what the challenge was: to get back into the Premier League and then to sustain Premier League football. And from then on, yes, there was a spell where it was, ‘What’s the direction of the club now? What are we trying to achieve?’, but it was my day job, so you keep going in and churning out the best you can be, even if success looks like, ‘Let’s stay in the league’.”

Soon though, Newcastle were flatlining. When the takeover was ratified in October 2021, they had not yet won a game that season. “We were dead and buried,” Ritchie says. “It was suppressing the city. I’d been there a long time and it was, ‘Are we stagnating?’. Even if we won at the weekend, it was, ‘What are we winning for?’.”

His “overriding feeling” when the new era began that autumn was “to feel so excited and happy for people,” he says. “It injected the club with life.”

Amanda Staveley, the financier who drove the takeover forward and then effectively ran the club as a minority owner before leaving last July, says this of Ritchie: “Tell him I love him and miss his drive and passion. What a man.”

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On the pitch, it took Howe’s arrival that November to kickstart Newcastle.

“Everyone has a couple of people you can say changed the trajectory of your life,” Ritchie says. “I’m lucky to have a few. Ed is one, and I also have to show my appreciation to all the staff there.

“Ed is just an unbelievable guy. I’ll forever be thankful. Not just for the opportunity he gave me as a player but for so many things; parenting, how to channel my feelings, my thoughts, how to express my emotions. He has an empathy for people, an understanding.

“He’s a massive fan of John Wooden (the late U.S. basketball coach and author) and when I had my first child — he still does this with players — he gave us his book, Pyramid of Success. One of the building blocks is enthusiasm; if you wake up with enthusiasm, you’ve got half a chance. I read it to my kids and it’s still in my head: ‘Be that guy tomorrow’.

“I played for Ed at Bournemouth for three and a half years and I think he only left me out once or twice. But every Thursday, we’d be doing shape in training and I’d be thinking, ‘I hope I’m playing this week’. How did he make me feel like that after all that time? It’s a skill. He would always demand more. When you talk about ‘relentless’, that word he used about me? I got it from him.”

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Given all the above, it is hardly a stretch to imagine Ritchie following Howe into the dugout.

He completed his UEFA B Licence while at Newcastle and, in his spare time now, is helping out with nearby Bournemouth’s under-15s and under-16s. He plans to do the A Licence this summer.

“I’m dipping my toe in to see if it’s something that really gets my juices flowing, and there’s part of me that says, ‘Matt, go and knock on that door’, but I’m keeping all options open,” he says. “It’s something that’s on my mind, because I’m 35 and everyone says, ‘What are you going to do?’, but in my head I’m still a player.

“What I’m aware of is that I need structure in my life. While I was at Newcastle, I craved being able to do the school run. That was the dream. I now know that the school run is the school run! I’m happy to keep doing it but I want more than that. I need more than that. I’ve still got a burning desire to be successful in whatever field I move into.

“I’ve done a bit of media work and I’ve really enjoyed that, and what I do know is that I love the game. I’m passionate about it. In my last year or two at Newcastle, I was really aware that I was in an elite environment. I’d make notes after sessions or meetings. I just tried to suck it all up.”

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“It was like a birthday balloon that has been up for two weeks,” Ritchie says, talking about Newcastle’s 2-0 defeat to Manchester United in the 2022-23 Carabao Cup final at Wembley. “On reflection, the occasion probably stumped us. The excitement, the tickets, the whole infrastructure of the club being pushed to its maximum. The balloon lost a bit of air.”

Ritchie came on as a late substitute that day. “We gave it a shot but we didn’t hit the sweet spot as a club, as a team,” he says. “So there was a sadness, really. But it was an unbelievable experience and my feeling was that, next time, we’ll be better equipped.”

Perhaps this time will be different? “It would be the ultimate,” he says of Newcastle contesting that same final again this season — on Sunday, against holders and Premier League champions-elect Liverpool. “The fact we’re there again isn’t an accident. It’s what we’re striving for.”

You still say “we”, Matt.

“Bournemouth is ‘we’,” he says. “Portsmouth is ‘we’. Newcastle will always be ‘we’… When you live in a city that’s so intense, when you give so much… It has a huge place in my heart.”

Alan Shearer, Newcastle’s record goalscorer, also has a message for him. “God loves a carer and a trier, and you had that in every sense. The Geordies loved you for your never-say-die attitude. Thank you.”

Briefly, Ritchie gropes for words.

“You know what…? honestly…” he says. “When you go to Newcastle, the first thing you think is ‘Alan Shearer’. He’s a legend but even as a man and his principles… I would ask Derek Wright (the former Newcastle physio), ‘What’s he like?’. I’m interested in leadership and Alan is cut from a certain cloth, isn’t he?

“To me, he’s like a rock star, a movie star. Towards the end of my time at Newcastle, when I wasn’t playing so much, I lived quite close to him. Sometimes I’d put my hat and coat on and go for a walk, and I’d see him and he’d wave. I’d think, ‘Has he accepted me as a Newcastle player?’. It meant so much.”

Ritchie talks about the unity and work ethic that have been a feature of Newcastle’s dressing room since the Benitez years, carrying the players through some testing moments.

“The foundations of a building never go away,” he says. “In time, players like Sean (Longstaff) or Murph (Jacob Murphy) might leave, but Tino (Livramento) and Lewis Hall will have part of Sean or Murph inside them. It becomes a breed.”

By precisely the same logic, part of Ritchie will be at Wembley on Sunday, too; part of the team — its culture and history — that confronts Liverpool.

He will be the relentless inner voice: his breed, his creed, his joy, his anger, his constant setting of standards and his yelling in 11 burning ears: “Track back, you bellend!”. He will be screaming it with love.

(Top photo: Owen Humphreys/PA Images via Getty Images)