A strong, bleachy smell hangs in the air inside the Cardinals Bar at the Laithwaite Community Stadium, the home of National League side Woking.
It has been an all-hands-on-deck morning for the fifth-tier club who last night hosted a league fixture against Altrincham. Less than 12 hours later and the beer-swilled vinyl flooring has been mopped clean, the best chairs have been laid out in neat rows, the shutter is down on the bar and the dart boards are strictly off-limits.
Catering staff who served fish and chips under the floodlights on Tuesday are, by Wednesday morning, ticking off names of journalists who have made the trip to the Surrey town, which has a population of just over 100,000 and sits 25 miles south east of London. When you work for a non-League club, you just have to roll up your sleeves and get on with it, whatever the role.
Woking’s new manager, Jermain Defoe, is about to find that out. He steps into the room wearing a sharp grey suit and, with that, steps into the first managerial role of his coaching career.
Woking have not featured in the top four tiers of English football (Marc Atkins/Getty Images)
When the news broke on Sunday that Defoe, a former England striker who scored 20 goals for his country in 57 appearances, was to begin his managerial career with Woking, a team who have not once in their 139-year history featured in any of English men’s football’s top four divisions, many thought it was an early April Fools’ Day joke.
“I’d rather he was playing up front,” one fan was overheard saying during the 1-1 draw against Altrincham, who by the end of the game were down to nine players after two red cards. Defoe’s first game in charge will arrive this afternoon (Friday) against Eastleigh, a few metres from the Cardinals Bar.
At half-time against Altrincham, Peter Dixon, 79, was making his way from what is colloquially, and comically, known as “Moaners’ Corner” to the opposite side of the ground to watch the second half from there. Just being able to move through the ground so freely is indicative of the club’s non-League status. Dixon has been watching Woking play on Kingfield Road since he moved here from Essex in 1982, the same year new manager, Defoe, now 43, was born.
“We just have to wait and see. He’s had a good career in football. I just hope he can bring some of that experience down to Woking,” Dixon said. “Hopefully, he’s got some good contacts within the Football League, so we might be all right.”
Jermain Defoe is congratulated by Raheem Sterling after scoring for England in 2018 (Mike Hewitt/Getty Images)
That “good career” lasted 22 years. Defoe is still 10th on the Premier League’s list of top goalscorers with 162 goals. It began with his West Ham United debut in the League Cup in September 2000 before an eye-catching loan at Bournemouth the following month. It ended with a second spell at Sunderland in 2022. Defoe, a small and skilful forward, earned himself hero status at every club he played for, none more so than Tottenham Hotspur where he scored 143 goals in 363 games.
Tottenham this week announced a new head coach, Roberto De Zerbi, their third of the season, as they look to avoid relegation from the Premier League. With seven games to go, Tottenham are just one point clear of another of Defoe’s former clubs, West Ham, in 18th.
“I did actually,” Defoe said, joking about turning Spurs down for Woking.
The reality is, opportunities have been hard to come by for Defoe, who was a player-coach at Rangers in the 2021-22 season during ex-England team-mate Steven Gerrard’s tenure. He later spent two years at Spurs’ academy from 2022 until 2024. For the past two years, he has been searching for a vacant manager’s position to no avail. He has been interviewed by a few clubs and spoken to even more.
“I didn’t ever think, ‘It’s not going to come’, and I was just going to give up. I’ve never really been like that. I think you always have to remain positive,” Defoe said.
Jermain Defoe was unveiled in the Cardinals Bar at Woking’s Kingfield Stadium (Adam Davy/PA Images via Getty Images)
“It’s part of the journey. It helps you prepare in terms of thinking about your philosophy and how you’re going to play, preparing for the real thing. I’ve had these conversations for the last two years and this is the one that really stood out for me in terms of the project and for the love that I’m getting from the people that are involved in the football club already, even without managing one game.”
Defoe, who has received good luck messages from former coaches Harry Redknapp and Sam Allardyce, is happy to make his way up the ladder. It is a route he compares to what it felt like being a teenager at West Ham.
“You have to earn your stripes,” he said. “You’ve got to do your apprenticeship, you can’t expect just because I’ve had a good career, I can’t expect to just jump in at the top or get that big job.”
Defoe is one of only five Black managers coaching in England’s top five divisions.
“I’d like to think other Black managers now will get opportunities and obviously players that are still playing, hopefully they’ll get the opportunities because I’ve had these long conversations with ex-players and (they have) that ambition to go on and coach and manage,” he said.
Kingfield Stadium in 2021 (Marc Atkins/Getty Images)
Defoe thanked Woking’s managing director Jody Brown, who was sat to his right during the press conference, for the opportunity, along with United States businessman Todd Johnson, who became the club’s majority owner last season. Seeing out this season should be relatively drama-free, with Woking having already missed out on a place in the play-offs.
It is clear what fans want from their big name signing. “Promotion would be nice,” Charlie Hobbs, a 21-year-old Woking fan, said. His mother, Kate, has been watching Woking on and off since the 1990s — a dreamy decade when they won the FA Trophy at Wembley on three occasions.
“It’s been real highs and lows, so, to bring us back into the play-offs would be a really good thing,” she said.
Woking lost to Bromley, who are now top of League Two, in the quarter-finals of the play-offs back in the 2022-23 season. That was the year Wrexham, now in the Championship on a push towards the Premier League, were promoted as National League champions.
If Defoe, one of the Premier League’s greatest goalscorers, can guide Woking into League Two it will go down as perhaps the greatest achievement in the club’s history. But right now, he is just excited to have the opportunity to get started.