“There were times where I feared for my life as a kid, being harassed and chased by different groups of people,” Shola Ameobi says. “There were situations where I had to sprint to get away from groups of lads who didn’t like me because of what I looked like.”
Ameobi is recalling growing up in Newcastle during the late 1980s and 1990s, having moved from Nigeria aged six. There were, he says, “lots of moments” like that. “It was almost as if I had to hide myself to be able to do what I love to do. It wasn’t a very nice feeling, having to worry about getting from A to B. It was just part of my world. I had to be more aware of my surroundings and what I was doing.”
Ameobi’s “A” was often the family home, situated within a few pitch lengths of Newcastle’s St James’ Park, and “B” was frequently the club’s then Benwell base, where he would head for academy training.
“It built incredible resilience in me,” Ameobi says. “That really helped me in a sporting context in my career but also as a person, understanding that, irrespective of what people thought of me, what really mattered was the value I put on myself.”
That young boy running in fear became the scorer of 79 goals in 397 appearances for Newcastle including seven against their local rivals, Sunderland. The likelihood is that some of those he fled from while wearing a club tracksuit subsequently cheered him.
Since July, Ameobi has been Newcastle’s head of corporate affairs, after seven years as the loans coordinator. His role is to lead on “strategic external engagement” to ensure “we’re doing things that are valuable not only to us as a football club but to the region. We want to make this club the heartbeat of this city. But by being the heartbeat of the city, I think it’s making sure that we integrate well into everything the city is about, whether that’s civically, whether that’s through our sport or through our community engagement.”
Ameobi’s job switch followed the 100-day review conducted by the CEO, David Hopkinson. At the end of a preliminary discussion, Hopkinson told Ameobi to take the weekend to consider things. But Ameobi, while grateful for the “level of trust and commitment”, pushed back, wanting to consider what the role would look like in practice. Six months and plentiful discussions later, he accepted.
For Ameobi the leap to an executive position was not as huge as it might appear. He started his previous role in the Mike Ashley days and built that department “from nothing”, he says. “That’s really helped me understand how to business-plan and build a team.”
Ameobi has been part of the Premier League’s Black participants advisory group since it formed in 2019. Its successes include implementing the No Room for Racism action plan in 2021 – this weekend marks the second of two match rounds this month dedicated to the initiative – and the pilot launch of the player to executive pathways scheme in 2022. The scheme is designed to help those from underrepresented groups into executive roles and Ameobi was part of the initial seven-strong cohort.
“It gave me a really good framework,” he says. “It took us through, at a very high level, what the different streams of executive work look like, whether that’s finance, brand, the future of working, how organisations work. That gave me a little bit of confidence, if I’m honest, more than anything, to go: ‘Actually, a lot of the things I’m already doing actually translate into that world.’
“One of the biggest things was working in a pressurised environment, which is what I’ve done for 20 years, and learning how that can really help you in those moments when things get a little squirrelly, when they aren’t going as planned.”
Completing the programme fuelled a fire in Ameobi that had flickered for two decades. In November 2006, having struggled with a hip injury for several years, he had career-saving surgery. The resulting time out was “the start of my thought process beyond the football pitch”. Whether he would return to playing at his previous level, or at all, was uncertain. So, Ameobi’s thoughts turned to: “How can I best be useful to my teammates and this football club? That’s when the cog started turning.
“Football wasn’t always going to be there so who am I outside of the footballer? There were some really hard questions I had to answer during a very, very difficult time. There were some dark moments.”
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Ameobi navigated those moments with the help of a psychologist and by leaning on his family. “I’ve always been fascinated with leadership, right from an early age,” he says. “My father was a leader of a church, and he’s been the biggest influence of my life when it comes to leadership and how to lead well.”
He cites the late Sir Bobby Robson, who gave him a professional debut aged 18, and Alan Pardew, who managed him at Newcastle and Crystal Palace, as footballing influences. The former “still to this day has such an impact on the way I think about the game, the way I think about the person more than what you’re doing”, while the latter “used me to channel my leadership within the dressing room and wider squad to help him deal with some of the issues we were going through”.
Ameobi also holds a master’s in strategic leadership, and it is obvious from observing him at an event to celebrate the supporters’ group The Black Geordie Club that he is a natural with people. There is a presence to him, a warmth, that puts others at ease.
Ameobi is unrelenting in wanting to use his position to improve society. He grew up watching Andy Cole at Newcastle, and memories of Tino Asprilla’s 1997 Champions League hat-trick against Barcelona bring the broadest of smiles. “That was the moment where time stood still. It was almost like I said to myself: ‘What’s wrong with you, Shola? You should be giving everything to be there.’
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“You need to feel like you belong, you need to see yourself there, and I think that is so important when it comes to inspiration, and people who aspire to be great in whatever sphere.
“I think it’s so important that those who are in those positions give back and share their experience, and share what helped them get to where they’re at. Being a young Black kid who has walked the walk throughout the club, from youth team to first team and now into this executive role, I want to show that anything’s possible for anybody.
“Part of the reason that I want to continue to push myself is because, yes, I want to be successful, but I want to show that anything’s possible if you’ve got the hunger, irrespective of what you look like and where you come from. I want to be an inspiration to the next generation.”
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