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Tom Heaton wears a scowl. Sodden and frozen, he trudges off a pitch at Manchester United’s Carrington training base, gesticulating and muttering a goalkeeper-eyed analysis of the game his team have just lost. “We got pumped,” he says loudly, his annoyance clear.
Sometimes the obvious question must be asked: even on days such as this, does Heaton still enjoy it? “I love it,” is his response, his near-permanent grin reappearing.
That short assessment makes sense of everything: why a goalkeeper would grind despite minimal chance of game time; why a man with three England caps, who turns 40 in April, still does what he does, day in, day out; and why the trope of the third-choice keeper being a lazy freeloader is so wrong.
Heaton’s last league appearance came for Aston Villa on 1 January 2020. He injured knee ligaments that day, rejoined United in July 2021 and has since played 202 minutes. His last competitive first-team outing came 1,028 days ago. Yet starting games is still at the forefront of his mind.
“The feeling doesn’t leave you,” he says. “I’m still trying to get that shirt, so in that sense game days can be difficult sat up in the stands, doing the warm-ups with the lads and then getting changed again to play that supporting role.”
Heaton surely knew what he signed up for in returning to the club he joined as an 11-year-old. He had left United in 2010 without making an appearance and came back when David de Gea was first choice and Dean Henderson a regular in England squads.
“My outlook can sometimes be bordering on deluded,” he says with a smile. “I understand the optics of it, but I thought: ‘I’m going to take that on.’ The logical side of my brain knew that coming back here at 35 was probably more to fill this role. But I have zero regrets. I’ve loved being here.”
Heaton no longer has expectations of his name appearing when the team is announced. Is there disappointment? “There has been at times but it wouldn’t be right to say that at the moment.”
There have also been times when moves have been mooted. Luton were a possibility, and he spent the day with Rob Edwards before the club’s Premier League season in 2023-24. United turned down the bid. Last summer, before he re-signed at United, Wrexham, where Heaton started his youth career, were another possibility.
Discussions with a sports psychologist bring some “closure” and he quotes the Chinese proverb “chop wood and carry water”. But his real comfort comes from “closer to home”. Every day of his career, Heaton has spoken to his dad before and after training. “It sounds a bit heavy but it has always been my everyday protocol. He was a PE teacher, like my mum, and also did a bit of psychometric testing so he’s relatively good with psychology … I don’t think he’ll mind me saying that!”
Returning to United was also an opportunity to close the circle. “There is so much of my personal history tied up in it,” he says, adding that his two young sons are part of United’s emerging talent squad. Heaton is often back at Carrington with them in the evening, using the opportunity to do extra recovery sessions. “The chance to come back, be part of it, and try to get the club back to being a success was too good to turn down.”
Heaton’s United debut finally came as a substitute in December 2021 in the Champions League against Young Boys at the age of 35. In his first spell he shadowed goalkeepers such as Edwin van der Sar and was in the travelling party for the 2008 Champions League final victory against Chelsea. Having to watch that from the stands after warming up was the moment he knew he needed to leave, albeit it was two further seasons before he departed for Cardiff when his contract expired.
“It was the right decision for me,” he says, before breaking off to wave at a passerby. Almost everyone at Carrington gets a similar greeting. “Sir Alex [Ferguson] was forceful with me when I first said it to him but I’ll never forget that a few weeks later he had me back in the office to say that he understood the decision, respected it and would always be there for me.”
Heaton is one of few remaining in Carrington’s shiny new buildings who experienced the Ferguson era. He is, in a sense, a touchstone of the club’s not-too-distant glory years, someone who understands United’s culture and values.
Take the day’s training, for example. It is an international break so a gaggle of youngsters are brought in to work with the first team. Heaton knows each by name. In part, it is because he is details-oriented, but it is more because “if you’re training with the Manchester United first team, it’s right that everyone knows your name … we’re going to have expectations of you but at the same time we should be valuing everyone.” He says “the behaviours, the mentalities, the attitudes” he learned from Ferguson and others at United “stick with you through life”.
Heaton’s day begins at home with a 20-minute stint in the garden with his younger son. By 9am he and Harry Maguire are regularly setting the world to rights over breakfast. As swiftly as one can gobble up an egg white omelette with peppers, they solved, at least in their own heads, several global pharmaceutical issues.
Once strapped up, Heaton heads to the gym. Ruben Amorim’s goalkeeping coach, Jorge Vital, is an innovator, and Heaton completes several unusual exercises. One involves catching while wearing glasses designed to impair vision, another standing facing a white wall, one hand over an eye, with Craig Mawson, also a goalkeeper coach, feeding tennis balls over his shoulder.
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To his left is the Batak reaction wall, with the club believing Heaton to be an unofficial world record-holder. “He set it about a decade ago and no one saw it,” Dermot Mee, the fourth goalkeeper in United’s setup, chips in. There is, apparently, video evidence.
Outside, as the warm-up continues, there are light moments punctuating intense drills. Suddenly a whistle shrieks. The goalkeepers are needed with the outfield players and from that point Heaton is on. Properly on.
“The desire to win in training was something to behold,” he says of his first spell at United, namechecking Roy Keane, Gary Neville and Paul Scholes. “I really have tried to take that with me wherever I’ve gone.”
The consensus is that Heaton represents technical perfection, but he has his quirks. He tries to keep his finger weights regime under wraps and “could see the gaffer looking at me very strangely yesterday during a break in training when I was diving towards the top corner to save an imaginary ball. I’m a believer in doing anything that I think has some benefit to it. It comes from being secure in yourself and I’m OK with it.”
Heaton, who has made 301 appearances in the top two flights of English football, helps coach the 18-year-old academy keeper Cameron Byrne-Hughes through the day’s session and is enjoying working with Senne Lammens. “He’s assured in what he is and who he is,” he says.
Heaton, naturally, has half an eye on what comes next. He has his A and B licence outfield coaching badges and the Uefa certificate in football management. This year he obtained a distinction in a sporting director course and he has studied executive leadership at Oxford University.
Amorim has made him part of United’s leadership group and he had a similar role under Erik ten Hag. Amorim held a “pivotal” pre-season meeting where he explained the concept to the players and gave the group licence to assert themselves. “That was important as you can set these things up but they need to have that influence,” Heaton says.
The group meets regularly to discuss individuals, situations unfolding, any required interventions and praiseworthy actions. “When you’re in a competitive, alpha-male environment, it doesn’t matter if you’re 15 or 40, you’re fighting for respect,” Heaton says. “That’s easier when you are performing and delivering. I’ve only made a few appearances so those opportunities have been limited. But it was a nice challenge for me – how am I going to put myself in a position where I’ve got enough credit and respect to exert some influence?
“That was about building good relationships, but also doing things properly … if you do things properly, people respect it.”
Gareth Southgate, who took Heaton to Euro 2016, had enough respect for Heaton to want him as a 27th man at Euro 2024. Heaton was a quasi-training player and a coach, bridging the gap between staff and squad.
“The only downside is that I made the error of coming back after five weeks away from my wife and boys, and called it the best five weeks of my life. That went down like a lead balloon as you might imagine. Playing has always been the biggest driver for me, but that was probably a real eye-opener – I thoroughly enjoyed that trip.”
