Jason McCarthy retired from playing at 29 and has moved into coaching, currently as Brighton’s under-21s assistant. He began his playing career at Southampton and finished with 301 career appearances. His first coaching sessions came while he was a defender at Wycombe, when he took the club foundation’s under-16s. “You blow your whistle and then, all of a sudden, voom, you have 20, 30 people standing to attention,” he says. “I was so flustered. I learned very quickly: if I’m going to do this in front of men – hopefully, eventually – then I need to practise.”
He accepted the Brighton under-21s assistant role at the start of last year and recently returned to it after two months in interim charge this summer, while the head coach, Shannon Ruth, supported Fabian Hürzeler’s first-team staff. McCarthy has huge admiration for Hürzeler, Brighton’s 33-year-old head coach who at 31 became the youngest permanent manager in Premier League history. Hürzeler was also part of McCarthy’s interview process. “It was the first interview I ever went for,” McCarthy recalls. Hürzeler asked him how he sees the game, what sort of teams he watches and when he realised he wanted to be a coach. McCarthy noted that Hürzeler retired at 23, so he was empathetic: “It’s scary, it’s daunting, people will tell you to keep on playing, but trust the feeling you have.”
Brighton are third in the top flight before visiting Sunderland on Saturday after a flying start, and are frequently referenced as a model club. McCarthy chuckles at a moment that speaks to Hürzeler’s “incredible growth mindset”: he saw him running around the training ground, holding a piece of paper and reading. Hürzeler had read somewhere that taking on information while exercising can help you remember it. “He’s constantly trying to improve himself. How can you not be inspired by that?” McCarthy says.
Before joining Brighton, their approach fascinated McCarthy from afar. “I thought: ‘These guys think differently. They don’t just go tried and tested. They might listen to a 29-year-old who’s potentially retiring.’ Brighton, in my opinion, are the most forward-thinking club in the world.” He cites Mauricio Pochettino, who he saw work first hand at Southampton, as another source of inspiration. McCarthy made 301 career appearances across the top four divisions. One of those came in the Premier League when Ronald Koeman handed him his Southampton debut as an 87th-minute substitute at Crystal Palace on Boxing Day in 2014. “The quickest bib-to-shirt change you’ve ever seen. I was on the right with [Sadio] Mané … crazy,” he says. Koeman was colder than Pochettino but a very good coach, McCarthy recalls, and liked joining in drills. Even at that age McCarthy was curious about coaching and management styles.
McCarthy tells a story about Pochettino at Southampton. He was 17 and cleaning José Fonte’s boots when he felt an arm on his shoulder. “It was the gaffer,” McCarthy says. Pochettino told him he had watched his game for the under-21s, thought he did some things well and could have done others better, and said that next week he would train with the first team to work on those things. McCarthy went out for training on the Monday, played right-back in an 11 v 11, and the manager stood right behind him. Although Southampton would have just had a big Premier League game, Pochettino talked him through what he wanted. “I felt like he knew me inside out, and I was just a scholar; he made me feel 10ft tall.”
It was McCarthy’s friend Tobi Sho-Silva, a former Charlton trainee now of Hampton & Richmond Borough, who encouraged him to get the ball rolling on his coaching badges. McCarthy was 26 and, until that conversation, had other ideas. “I’m a man of faith, so I thought maybe I’ll end up being a pastor or working within the church. But then I did my Uefa B licence and I knew after about a week that I was way more suited to coaching than I was playing. It snowballed from there.” He began putting his thoughts on paper and studying peers, completed a diploma in psychology and a course in data analytics, and observed games live and remotely, regularly pausing matches to record interesting nuggets.
He explains his intrigue in watching Barcelona under Hansi Flick, Michael Carrick’s work at Middlesbrough and Jim McNulty’s in non-league with Rochdale. “There’s a link between them – possession – but they do it in different ways,” McCarthy says. “I always wanted to play in a team that played good football but I wasn’t ever good enough, to be honest. I worked under some coaches who would say: ‘This is how we want to play.’ And then in the week we would do nothing geared towards it and just expect it to show up on a Saturday.”
Coincidentally, one of McCarthy’s final appearances came against Brighton’s under-21s in the EFL Trophy, against players he now coaches. His last game was in the same competition in December 2024. By then, he had long felt he was making a bigger impact coaching than playing. The realisation dawned around the age of 27, when he had a serious chat with his wife and parents. “I feel bad because I know a lot of people would love to be in my position. Do I need to park coaching and come back to it?” he recalls saying. Teammates and coaches told him to relax and finish his playing career, but he considers the decision to move into coaching one of the best he has made.
McCarthy reflects on his playing days with pride: they took him to Wembley three times, and he walked out as captain there with his children. He is determined to take further strides on the sidelines and plans to apply for his pro licence next year. “I want to challenge myself at the elite level – I’d love to do that one day,” he says. “I’m very fortunate I’m at an elite club, so I get to see elite behaviour, standards, traits, players and staff, daily. What I did as a player … can I be even better as a coach?”
Brighton’s under-21s overcame Paris Saint-Germain last month and were Premier League 2 champions for the first time last season. “I was incredibly proud to be part of a side that created history for the academy,” McCarthy says. “I believe winning and development come hand in hand so to help create that winning mentality within the group is something all of the staff can be really proud of. Hopefully it is just the start.” Stepping up to lead the team, he says, “has lit the fire for me to keep pushing and progressing within my coaching career”.
His faith keeps him grounded. “It’s part of my identity,” McCarthy says. “I pray before games, I read the Bible daily. I wouldn’t be where I am today without God. A big reason I’m so excited about the future is my faith, because when I started on my coaching journey, did I think that in my first interview, I’d be standing across from Fabian Hürzeler? No … how is that even possible?”