From the Man city youth team to the goalkeeping coach at Oldham Athletic. Greg Hartley’s career in football has been an interesting one. In his youthful days, Hartley turned professional at Man City at the same time as Joe Hart and Kasper Schmeichel. He was connected with the club for 10 years until he moved to America for a different challenge.

Hartley now works as a goalkeeping coach and he talks about different moments in his career. He discusses what it was like working alongside Joe Hart and Kasper Schmeichel:

“When at Man City, people thought, ‘Aw you would never get a chance here’ but learning from that and experiencing that, you cannot buy that sort of stuff and learning from England’s no1 and Denmark’s no1, you can’t think ‘these guys are way better than me’ you have to learn and take what you can from the likes of these two GK’s.”

After Man City, Hartley left for America. When he was in the US, he studied at Georgia Gwinett College as well as playing semi-pro football at Chattanooga FC. Now that Hartley is back in England, he discusses the progression of American football:

“I feel that American football has progressed over the last 10 years in terms of grassroot football. I think American football has a long way to go due to the structure and how it’s ran. They have issues like salary caps where they sign marquee players but progression through youth is not great. I think they need to adopt the European and the International way in terms of how it is run.