Archie Gray looked up and saw five red shirts charging towards him. He darted towards his own goal, intercepted Cody Gakpo’s cross and heroically blocked Dominik Szoboszlai’s shot while he was lying in a heap on the floor.
It felt like the 18-year-old was trying to single-handedly hold Tottenham Hotspur’s defence together as they were battered by wave after wave of attacks from Liverpool. However, the rebound from Szoboszlai’s shot dropped to Mohamed Salah, who scored from a few yards out and Liverpool went on to win 6-3.
At the beginning of December, Gray was still patiently waiting to make his first start for Spurs in the Premier League after he joined from Leeds United in July for £40million ($50m). He prefers to play in central midfield but has started their last five games in all competitions at centre-back. The England Under-21 international has found himself grappling with Salah, Luis Diaz and Rasmus Hojlund.
With Micky van de Ven, Ben Davies and Cristian Romero suffering from injuries over the last few weeks, Ange Postecoglou has entrusted Gray to plug the gaps. He has played in every position across the defence and has sometimes swapped roles in the same game.
“He hasn’t missed a beat and it’s been brilliant to watch,” Postecoglou told reporters last week. “Archie’s defending has been solid and he’s got quality on the ball, but he’s handling what we are asking him to do, a really big job not just for a one-off game, brilliantly.”
This is the story of how Gray became a star in the making.
(Marc Atkins/Getty Images)
Gray was destined to become a professional footballer. His grandfather, Frank, and great uncle, Eddie, helped Leeds to win multiple trophies in the 1960s and ’70s under Don Revie. Gray’s father, Andy, was part of the Leeds side that lost the 1996 League Cup final to Aston Villa. His three predecessors won caps for Scotland, too.
Gray has three younger brothers and Harry, 16, is a highly rated striker in Leeds’ academy. It should not be a surprise to learn that he was introduced to a football programme specially designed for young children called Socatots when he was still wearing nappies.
“Andy carried Archie into one of those classes in his arms when he was only one,” Simon Clifford, the founder and former owner of Socatots, tells The Athletic. “My wife was his first coach. When he was four, he joined one of the Brazilian soccer schools I had set up and played futsal. He was there for about nine years.”
Futsal is a version of football that originates in South America and is mainly played indoors on hard courts with smaller balls. Matches are contested between two teams of five players on small pitches and it encourages close control and skill. Clifford helped to pioneer the sport and Brazilian training techniques in England.
“I had devised a training scheme which aimed to promote technical excellence,” says Clifford, who still works with Gray and now runs Integer Football, which offers players individual coaching sessions. “You had to be two-footed and master a range of movements and skills. You would be graded at different levels, so Archie worked through them.
“There’s no way to get out of trouble (in futsal) other than to learn how to move with the ball and manipulate it quickly. What we do in England is different to how Brazilians play as the ball is bigger and bouncier. The version I played with Archie was even more extreme as we used a size-two ball (52-56cm in circumference compared to a 68-70cm standard size-five ball typically used for adult 11-a-side football). It moves like an ice hockey puck.
“The game is very fast and the gyms we played in were tiny. It’s chaotic but from the hours you accrue, you eventually learn to play in a small space, so when Archie plays football, it doesn’t matter what position he is in because he finds time and can come out of a tight situation, and carry the ball.”
Simon Clifford and Archie Gray over the years (Simon Clifford)
The next stage of Gray’s development came when he moved to St John Fisher Catholic High School in Harrogate at 11. He became interested in athletics, competing in a cross-country event at national finals, and, on the pitch, was also given his first exposure to playing in defence.
“I remember Archie’s first training session and he just played at a different level to everybody else,” Aidan Pass, Gray’s former PE teacher, tells The Athletic. “He played like a man. The way he read the game, he knew what to do with his body, how to tackle and he would use two feet to dribble with the ball. You knew he was something special.
“The team he played in was not brilliant. There were a few games that season where we were winning but it was tight and you could see the opposition coming back into it. Archie would look over to me and I would say: ‘Drop to centre-back to make it impossible for the opposition to score.’ Even though he is a midfielder who likes to get forward, the team’s needs would always come first.
“Up until Year 10, he played most of the time and would never use the fact he was at Leeds to not play — he enjoyed playing with his friends. He is a lovely lad and would always stop and talk to you. He was training and performing to a high level, but that arrogance never came across. After he left school, he attended our sports awards evening because he won our footballer of the year award. He was around Leeds’ first team, so that was pretty special.”
Clifford started to focus on improving Gray’s speed, power and agility as he grew older, leaning on his previous experiences working with Wayne Rooney, Michael Owen, Theo Walcott, Micah Richards and Gareth Bale.
“I like to do SWOT analysis, which focuses on strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats,” Clifford says. “What is coming along that can get in the way of what we are trying to do? Archie is very coachable and a good learner. There are a lot of things he had to work on and some of them might have taken a few years to get right.
“When Archie was nine, we started to set goals. We would mark out what he wanted to achieve by 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, etc. That is powerful because even as we tick off boxes, he is still miles away from where he said he can reach.”
Gray joined Leeds when he was eight and rapidly progressed through their academy. At 15, he started training with the first team and head coach Marcelo Bielsa named him on the bench for a Premier League fixture against Arsenal at the Emirates in December 2021. He turned up at school a couple of days later wearing his official Leeds tracksuit. Gray’s parents and his school had to come up with a special arrangement that allowed him to miss classes.
“When he started training with us, people were saying: ‘This kid is really good but his younger brother (Harry) is even better’,” says Adam Forshaw, who played for Leeds between 2018 and 2023. “He trained in a few of the ‘murderball’ sessions and I would often come up against him. He had so much energy and was tenacious. Whenever you said anything in training, you could tell he genuinely wanted to listen. He was like a kid in a sweet shop. Away from the pitch, he was so polite and respectful. You could tell he had come from a good family.
“He was quite tall and looked lanky because he was so slim. He had his curly hair and it looked like he needed to grow into his body. I remember he picked up an injury and Leeds took care of him. They didn’t want to cut any corners. He spent a lot of time in the gym and you could see his physique start to develop.”
Gray celebrates scoring for Leeds against Leicester in February 2023 (George Wood/Getty Images)
Leeds beat Brentford on the final day of the 2021-22 season to avoid relegation from the Premier League. Gray can be seen celebrating Jack Harrison’s stoppage-time winner on the bench and in the dressing room afterwards. He returned home late at night and sat his GCSE geography exam at 9am the following day. “We were all in euphoria on the bus on the way back,” Forshaw says. “We were all having a drink but he was probably just watching me get drunk.”
Gray had to change separately from his team-mates until he was 18 due to safeguarding rules and would often get ready in the officials’ room or the anti-doping room. When Leeds went on a pre-season tour to Australia in 2022, he could not attend any of the team-bonding events and had to stay with physio Henry McStay, who acted as his guardian on the trip. Gray remained a part of the first-team squad under Jesse Marsch the following season but a foot injury interrupted his progress.
“We were injured at the same time and I brought my son, who was five or six, into the gym, and Archie played with him for about an hour,” Forshaw says. “I made a joke to Archie and the physios that he had someone closer to his age than in the first team. Then he said, ‘I’ve got a brother the same age as your son’, and I just thought: ‘Wow, he is really young’. I was 31 and he was half my age, but I couldn’t speak highly enough of him. He is such a well-mannered kid. I can tell nothing will change whatever he goes on to achieve.”
Gray made his senior debut for Leeds at 17 against Cardiff City on the opening weekend of the 2023-24 season. He made 47 league appearances (including play-offs), primarily at right-back, in their unsuccessful quest for promotion, winning the Championship’s young player of the season award. He excelled in their 3-2 defeat against Chelsea in the fifth round of the FA Cup despite coming up against Moises Caicedo and Argentina World Cup-winner Enzo Fernandez, a midfield combination worth more than £200m. A month later, he scored on his England Under-21 debut in a 5-1 victory over Azerbaijan and was namechecked by Gareth Southgate, who was head coach of the senior side.
“He is probably the most grounded player I have come across,” Clifford says. “Last season was a breakthrough year. You would see him in the morning, the day after he played at Elland Road in front of 30,000 people, and you would think he didn’t play. He would only ask questions about you.”
Leeds were reluctant to sell Gray but needed to raise money to ease concerns around profit and sustainability rules (PSR) after losing last season’s Championship play-off final to Southampton. Gray came close to joining Brentford in the summer. He completed a medical and a prospective apartment in Richmond had been picked out, but he decided to become a part of Postecoglou’s project at Spurs.
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The long-term plan is to groom him as a holding midfielder and he regularly works with Yves Bissouma and Rodrigo Bentancur in training. He has forged close relationships with senior players including Davies, Son Heung-min, Fraser Forster and James Maddison. Lucas Bergvall, who is one month older than Gray and joined Spurs in the summer too, described him as an “unbelievable player and an even better person” after the 5-0 victory over Southampton this month.
Gray has started Spurs’ six matches in the Europa League and produced a brilliant pass that led to Will Lankshear scoring against Galatasaray in Istanbul. Gray’s family are Celtic supporters and he survived a 1-1 draw with Rangers at Ibrox.
Gray, pictured in action against Roma in November, has earned Europa League experience with Tottenham this season (Vince Mignott/DeFodi Images via Getty Images)
He completed the full 90 minutes when Spurs beat Manchester City in the Carabao Cup in October and helped them reach the semi-finals of that competition with last week’s 4-3 Carabao Cup victory over Manchester United. He has made 11 appearances in the Premier League for a total of 417 minutes.
“I’ve worked at the school for over 20 years and we have had some talented athletes, but nobody who has reached that level,” Pass says. “You see him on TV and it’s a little bit bizarre. It makes you feel proud. I’ve seen him grow and develop since the age of 11.”
“Sometimes people will watch Archie and probably think he doesn’t pull up trees, but that’s because he plays like a reliable player already,” adds Forshaw. “He is going to be a machine for you constantly. I watched him closely against Manchester United and his distribution was brilliant. He got in a couple of great blocks. The three goals were nothing to do with him.”
It speaks volumes of Gray’s quality that he is performing so well in an unfamiliar position at such a young age. It only increases the excitement about what he might be capable of when he returns to midfield in the future. Spurs are suffering from an injury crisis and inconsistent results this season but Gray’s development has been a shining light.
(Top photos: Justin Setterfield/Getty Images and Simon Clifford)
