I Can Learn From Sam Allardyce- Mark Sampson

Lionesses manager Mark Sampson believes he and Sam Allardyce can drive the England national teams to success by joining together to share expertise. Both managers have offices at the Football Association's secluded St George's Park nerve centre in rural Staffordshire, with Allardyce selecting the training headquarters as his main base ahead of Wembley.


Sampson insists his England women and Allardyce's England men can benefit from the close coaching community, which includes assistant Sammy Lee and goalkeeping coach Martyn Margetson at the £105m facility.


Sampson said “Me and the guys have spent a lot of time with the two Sams - Big Sam and Little Sam as we call them, they're two really good football people. It's been great to meet Margs as well, the goalkeeping coach. And I think the FA now within these four walls of St George's Park are really developing a good team spirit where we're all in together. I think the men's and women's game are probably as close as they've ever been in terms of connecting and the work we do and learning from each other, so we're going to keep doing that.”


Despite Allardyce only recently taking over from Roy Hodgson, Sampson has already seen plenty of the former Bolton, West Ham and Sunderland boss and enough to appreciate what leading England means to the 61years old.


He said “I've been delighted to welcome Sam, it's been refreshing actually to see how excited someone of Sam's experience has been to be given the opportunity to be England manager, I was gutted for Roy, because Roy was really good with us. He was a great guy and unfortunately it didn't work in the summer, but we're wishing Sam all the best. We just hope they go and win some football matches.”