Max Rogers Settles in as Wigan Athletic FC's First Team Coach
- The UEFA Pro Licence holder joins Shaun Maloney at the club, bringing with him coaching experience earned in Scotland and the States
Shaun Maloney found a coaching kindred spirit in Max Rogers: and that’s why the two Scots are side by side in the midst of an impressive start in the Wigan Athletic rescue mission.
UEFA Pro Licence holder and Football Careers client Max is former Hibernian boss Maloney’s First Team Coach with the Latics and they have gotten off to a flyer together.
An opening 0-0 draw at promotion-seeking Blackburn Rovers was followed up with Saturday’s priceless 1-0 win over fellow strugglers Huddersfield Town thanks to Jack Whatmough’s goal nine minutes from time.
Former Celtic and Scotland midfielder Shaun reflected on the Rogers appointment and said:
“Max is a young coach from Scotland, who has very similar ideas and philosophies on coaching as myself.”
It’s been a decade since Max graduated from Edinburgh’s Napier University with a BSc (Hons) in Sports Science (Sports Coaching).
Currently on the Football Careers site, we are studying the well-trodden route to coaching in North America in our Over The Pond blog series.
That’s a path that Max, who had cut his teeth in the Academy at Scottish Premiership club St Mirren, took seven years ago when he moved to the States to work with Anthony Pulis at St Louis FC. Rogers has further USL experiences at Indy Eleven and again with Pulis, son of former Stoke City boss Tony, at top franchise Miami FC.
Now Max is a key part of the Maloney regime at a club Shaun treasures from his time as a player.
It would have been easy for Maloney to look back on an all too brief stint in charge of Hibernian with bitterness. Instead, the former Belgium no2 — who forged his reputation as a coach working alongside Roberto Martinez with the country’s golden generation — chooses to draw on the positives of the experience.
As he looked ahead to a frantic week for Wigan in the cut-throat world of the English Championship, Shaun stressed:
“You can look at these things one of two ways – either as a difficult period where you focus only on the negativity, or you can look at the positives, which I do. You have to take the best from what happens and learn from them, and that was a massive learning curve for me as a manager.
“From where I was then to where I am now, I feel I’m a much more rounded manager, even hungrier to succeed.”
