Stuart Pearce, English footballer, coach, and manager
Stuart Pearce (born 24 April 1962) is an English professional football manager and former player, who is a first-team coach for Premier League club West Ham United. He was nicknamed "Psycho" for his unforgiving style of play.
As a player, Pearce played as a defender and appeared for Wealdstone, Coventry City, Nottingham Forest, Newcastle United, West Ham United and Manchester City in a career that spanned twenty-two years. He is best known for his twelve-year spell at Forest, where he regularly captained the team and became the club's most capped international, making 76 of his 78 appearances for England while with the club and captaining the national side on nine occasions. In 2016, he briefly came out of retirement, signing a one-match deal with Longford, from a town in Gloucestershire, a team dubbed "the worst in Great Britain", in order to support the grassroots game.Pearce's managerial career began at Nottingham Forest in a caretaker role, from December 1996 to May 1997. In November 2000, he was assistant coach to Peter Taylor in Taylor's only match in charge of England. Following his retirement in 2002, he remained with Manchester City as a coach under Kevin Keegan. In 2005, he was named caretaker manager and was given the job permanently that summer. In 2007, he was named caretaker manager of the England national under-21 team, guiding them to the semi-finals of the 2007 UEFA Under-21 Championship. After being sacked by City in May 2007, he was given the England U21 job permanently a month later. Under Pearce, the team finished as runners-up in the 2009 UEFA Under-21 Championship, but failed to make it out of the group stage in the 2013 UEFA Under-21 Championship. In addition, Pearce was an assistant coach under Fabio Capello, managed the Great Britain Olympic football team at the 2012 Summer Olympics, and was caretaker manager of England for one game in February 2012. In 2013, he left the U21s, as his contract was not extended by the Football Association. He returned to Nottingham Forest as manager in July 2014, and initially began the season well, but after a run of poor form, he was sacked in February 2015. He has since coached at Portsmouth and at West Ham United.