Graeme Lee and Patrick Vieira will stand side-by-side on the touchline on Saturday as the FA Cup fourth round brings together two men who enjoyed very different paths into management.
Hartlepool boss Lee emerged from the ranks at the League Two club as a teenage defender and made more than 500 appearances for Pool, Sheffield Wednesday, Doncaster, Shrewsbury, Bradford, Doncaster and Darlington.
Crystal Palace counterpart Vieira was elevated to the senior ranks at Cannes as a 17-year-old and went on to enjoy a glittering career, principally at Arsenal, where he captained Arsene Wenger’s Invincibles, and with France, with whom he achieved World Cup and European Championship glory.
The two men will go head-to-head at Crystal Palace this weekend when the Premier League Eagles host the League Two challengers, and Lee is relishing the showdown.
He said: “Look, that’s football. We all say it, it’s what the FA Cup is all about.
“I fought for my career through the bottom leagues and Patrick, as we know, had an unbelievable career. He was an unbelievable player and is doing fantastically as a manager.
“To put yourself on the same pitch in a stadium and be challenging yourself against people like that, it’s fantastic. That’s what you’re in the job for, that’s what you want to achieve yourself.”
Hartlepool’s presence in the fourth round – they have never reached the fifth – is testament to a recovery on and off the pitch which brought the club back from the brink.
They returned to the Football League at the end of last season following a four-year exile during which they very nearly went out of existence – in 2018, the football community rallied to help supporter Rachel Cartwright pay a £48,000 tax bill after she set up a Just Giving page in a bid to stave off a winding-up order.
Pool’s run to the fourth round has brought around £100,000 into the coffers, a total which would be almost doubled if they were to progress, although cash remains tight for the Papa John’s Trophy semi-finalists.
Asked if his players would be allowed to swap shirts at Palace, Lee said with a smile: “I’ll have to let them know that if you swap your shirt, there isn’t a spare one, so the lads can take one of theirs, but you can’t give your own away.”
Experienced defender Gary Liddle, captain in the absence of the suspended Nicky Featherstone, is one of the few members of the squad to have seen it all before – he played for Notts County at Liverpool in the Capital One Cup in 2013 and was part of the Bradford side which famously beat Chelsea 4-2 in the fourth round in 2015.
Liddle said: “If selected, I’ll be walking out at the front of the queue and I’d be immensely proud of that. I’ve been lucky enough to walk out at Anfield alongside Steven Gerrard, so it’s right up there with that and one that will be very proud for myself and my family.”
