It is not the first time Matt Ritchie has heard the line suggesting he should have been driving Newcastle’s open-top bus when the squad paraded the Carabao Cup before 300,000 supporters between St James’ Park and the Town Moor. “I’m not sure I could because I think it’s a different licence for commercial use,” he says, smiling, alluding to the LGV Category C one he obtained in the last of his eight seasons at the club.
There is no haulage sideline but rather he and his wife, Emma, who enjoys equestrian and showjumping, took the tests so they could drive a horsebox. “It is easy … you just have to take the corners a bit wider. I loved doing it because it was out of my comfort zone. The theory test was the hardest, hazard perception … there are tricks in there. It was like being a kid again: ‘I want to get this right.’”
Ritchie passed first time and this month he begins another qualification on more familiar ground, in the game he has dedicated his life, enrolling on the Uefa A licence coaching course. The 35-year-old, whose contract at boyhood club Portsmouth runs until the end of next season, is weighing up which move he will make when he does call time on a career that has taken him from Privett Park, home to his first club, Gosport Borough, to the Premier League. “My dream now is coming to an end,” he says. “You have to reinvent yourself. I’m starting to take the blinkers off, opening my eyes. What can I learn?”
On a sunny day in the New Forest, Ritchie is reflecting on almost two decades as a professional, from his debut on loan at Dagenham & Redbridge as a teenager and lessons from Paolo Di Canio at Swindon to scaling new heights with Bournemouth under Eddie Howe, Rafael Benítez’s tactical methods and marvelling at Elliot Anderson during seven-a-side at Newcastle training. But he is looking forward, too, his appetite to explore fresh challenges and different worlds clear.
“I listen to Chris Voss, the famous [FBI] negotiator,” he says. “It makes you curious and I think if you act on curiosity, you can grow. We can all talk about doing this and that, but you have to take action.”
Ritchie is thinking about management but, for now, it is small steps, occasionally coaching Bournemouth’s under-15s and under-16s. Ten years ago this month Ritchie enjoyed one of his greatest days with Bournemouth, winning promotion to the top flight as champions. Ritchie jests he needs 10 days to discuss what he learned from playing under Howe at Bournemouth and, more recently, Newcastle, comparing the way he has developed scores of players to pruning roses.
Ritchie has witnessed first-hand the hours Howe and his coaches have invested down the years. “I travelled back and forth from Newcastle to Bournemouth with JT [Jason Tindall] and Purchey [Stephen Purches] for two years. You’d get on the plane: they’d be on the laptop. In the airport, on the laptop, phone. ‘Have you seen this, Purch?’ You can’t switch off. They are constantly thinking about the next game. ‘How can we improve?’ I am thankful for those experiences, I’ve sucked it all up. It has given me a picture of what management might look like.”
Ritchie remembers a team meeting in which Howe stated his desire to win silverware. “We stayed up [in 2021-22] and the next season, prior to the first League Cup game, he said: ‘I don’t know how you’ve treated this competition before, but we’re here to win. There may be rotation, but I believe we can win.’ We got to the final [in 2023], lost on penalties to Chelsea [in 2024], and then this year, they won it. The journey to winning started in 2021, because he changed the mentality of the group to say: it is unacceptable for this club, because we were knocked out in the second round in four of the previous five years. It was pure leadership. What I love about him is that the sky’s the limit.
“I have loved seeing the success he and the club has had, winning the Cup. He is a hero in Newcastle for ever. I know how Sir Bobby Robson is thought of in Newcastle. After a week there, I was like: ‘Wow, they love Sir Bobby here.’ After a year, I understood it was more than love. Eddie Howe will, in my opinion, be up there with Sir Bobby Robson, and deservedly so. Newcastle were in a real pickle when the gaffer came in. He and his staff created this synergy: it’s us against the world and together anything is possible, which is the club motto at Bournemouth.”
Ritchie can vouch for that. He acknowledges Di Canio is a more Marmite character but looks back fondly on his time with the Italian; even 54 straight days of double or triple sessions in pre-season but, particularly, his approach to nutrition. Di Canio banned butter, sauces, sugary drinks – and ice cubes, to minimise the spread of bacteria. “He made me aware that if you want to be a top player, you need to know what you’re eating and why you’re eating it. It made me inquisitive … so rather than eating Skittles on the way to a game, I changed to having a bowl of porridge. He got me as fit as I’ve ever been. I didn’t know my body could push itself so far. Without that experience and the pre-season I had with Paolo Di Canio, I wouldn’t have had the career I’ve had.”
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Ritchie always wanted to return to Portsmouth. He made his Premier League debut as a substitute in 2010, at the end of a season in which they entered administration. “The emotion of playing at Fratton Park was something I never really conquered, because I played with so much fear when I was there,” he says of his first spell, recalling a League Cup home defeat by Leicester.
“I remember the moment like yesterday. I cut inside, right foot, and I should’ve taken another touch and I would’ve been inside the 18-yard box. But I shot from about 22 yards … I thought: ‘What am I doing?’ If that was in a youth-team game or on loan at Dagenham, you would’ve driven at the defender, got in the box.’ But I tensed up. I feel passionate about passing that on to young players. I was living my dream and I didn’t fully grasp it. You don’t lose, you learn – a famous Simon Weatherstone, ‘Tinners’ [Newcastle first-team coach] saying – and it’s so true.”
Ritchie was Portsmouth captain when they secured their Championship status on Easter Monday, his nine-year-old son, Harry, and six-year-old daughter, Olivia, walking out with him as mascots. A longtime friend, a Pompey fan, messaged Ritchie expressing pride in the journey of a boy who always bled blue.
“It made me take a step back and think: ‘You know what? He’s right.’ Imagine if someone had said to me at 16, when I was training with the first team – with Papa Bouba Diop, Kevin-Prince Boateng, David James, Sol Campbell, these players I grew up watching – that one day you’re going to be the captain at Fratton Park and having what is regarded as relative success.”
On his return to the south coast last summer, his career coming full circle, he walked into a loft full of old boots. It is not something Ritchie volunteers but he decided to donate several pairs to Bournemouth’s women’s team, recently promoted to the third tier. “I certainly don’t want any thanks,” he says. “Being given boots for free, I kept them all. A boy from Gosport, you don’t expect to be given anything. If you want something, you go and work for it. If I can give a little back to the game that has given me so much, it’s the least I can do. I’m really thankful for all of the experiences I’ve had – I’ve travelled the world playing the game I love.”
