Archie Gray became the fourth most expensive 18-year-old in world football when Tottenham gazumped Brentford to sign him from Leeds United in a deal worth £40m over the summer.
Such a price tag is enough to put the weight of the world on most young players’ shoulders. Gray is different, though. He comes from a footballing dynasty. It is in the genes.
The Gray name is woven into the fabric of Leeds United and Archie, despite spending just one full season in the first team, has written his own chapter into the history books at Elland Road.
Now the midfielder embarks on a new journey to make it in the Premier League.
Archie Gray is Next Up.
Meet the Grays
The Gray family’s footballing legacy spans three generations, with Archie just the latest to play for Leeds. His grandfather Frank and his great uncle Eddie, both Scotland internationals, won the First Division together under Don Revie in the 1974.
Eddie, widely considered to be one of Leeds’ greatest ever players, stayed at Elland Road his whole playing career, returning in a coaching capacity on multiple occasions, while Frank went on to win the European Cup with Nottingham Forest under Brian Clough in 1980 before returning.
Archie grew up watching the latter stages of his father Andy’s career, which included two spells at Leeds. Last season, he broke into the team himself, starting 42 Championship games as Leeds narrowly missed out on promotion to the Premier League.
“It makes you proud,” his great uncle Eddie tells Sky Sports. “Archie's a young lad and he comes from a background that there's always going to be a focus on him, especially at Leeds, and he stood up to that challenge.”
"It was great to see him play for Leeds," adds his father Andy. " I was very nervous at first, obviously being a Leeds supporter as well. It's hard to detach yourself from being a supporter and a parent at the same time. Obviously it ended in tears at Wembley, but those are memories I'll cherish for the rest of my life."
The Gray footballing lineage does not stop with Archie. He has a brother, Harry, who is at Leeds too and played in a first-team friendly over pre-season aged 15.
“Harry will follow in the same footsteps as Archie barring any accidents,” says Eddie. “He's very talented. He'll come through the young teams at Leeds and hopefully play for our club."
He adds: "I think they’re close enough in age to play together one day. When Frank and I played together, he was seven years younger than me.”
Archie and Harry, just over two years apart, are no strangers to competing. “They played football in the garden from a very young age and there's been a few tears shed, a few fights,” their father Andy recalls.
"I remember we've had boxing gloves out in the garden to let them get on with it a few times,” he adds. “If they were playing out in the garden, I guarantee up to the age of about 15 that they'll be fighting. One of them will come in crying at some point.”
The romantic prospect of a second generation of Gray brothers playing together for Leeds was put on ice after the Championship play-off defeat to Southampton last season.
Archie's time at his family's club perhaps would have been prolonged with a different outcome, but the money on offer from the Premier League proved too enticing to turn down for Leeds.
The transition is daunting, but one Archie has been prepared for.
"I don't think it will faze him," says Eddie, a winner of two top-flight English titles. "He grew up in that environment. His grandad, my brother, his dad [being footballers at that level]."
Archie was born to play in the Premier League.
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The futsal coach that moulded Archie
Archie's family members are more than qualified to offer him their footballing advice, but largely keep their opinions to themselves when it comes to his career, allowing him to forge his own path.
When it comes to Archie's influences, few can claim to have had more of an impact than Simon Clifford. They first met when Archie was a one-year-old cradled in the arms of his dad at Socatots, a footballing pre-school for kids that Clifford created.
Clifford is a pioneer in elite development coaching and was one of the first to introduce Brazilian techniques to the UK. It was at his soccer schools, Futebol de Salao, where Archie played futsal from age four.
"Archie was there two or three times a week, playing with that small, heavier ball in a very tight gym," Clifford tells Sky Sports. "A lot of the things I see him do, how he is able to evade trouble, I can go back to remember him in the hall. That's been absolutely invaluable for him."
Honing his skills through futsal set Archie in good stead when he joined Leeds."I remember games where I came away thinking, 'God, he reminds me of Zidane'," Andy Wright, one of his academy coaches, tells Sky Sports. "He would do things that you don't expect."
When Archie was eight, around the time he joined Leeds' academy, he started working with Clifford in private sessions.
"He was getting excellent work at Leeds on the coaching and the tactical side, but he was working with me outside on technique and any weaknesses that he had. I was trying to help him to get stronger and more robust in his body, more powerful and quicker."
Clifford's mentoring went much deeper too. Archie was encouraged from an early age to read books about mindset and to practice visualisation, a psychological technique that Gareth Southgate introduced to the England squad as manager.
"We work towards a mindset where our head, our emotions are unbreakable, impeachable, impregnable," says Clifford. "I've instilled that in him all the way through."
Archie has kept a level-head throughout his rapid rise and, although Clifford acknowledges his own influence, he credits the Gray family for ensuring the teenager has remained grounded.
"He's come from a fantastic family, and I say that not in the sense of the way that the family's done well football-wise. They've got tremendous down-to-earth character and there is no way that he's going to get carried away with anything.
"I've watched him at 15 make it onto the bench for Leeds. I've been with him the next morning after fantastic things have happened with Leeds. You wouldn't have even thought he played football. He's that unaffected."
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How lockdown changed everything
Archie's first taste of first-team football was a call-up to the bench by Marcelo Bielsa aged 15 for a game against Arsenal at Elland Road in 2021 amid an injury crisis.
He would have become Leeds' and the Premier League's youngest-ever player had he been introduced.
Bielsa was forced to name Archie among the substitutes to make up the numbers because he had 10 first-team players out, but his inclusion was a reflection of his standing within the academy.
Archie was expected to be next off the conveyor belt after taking big strides in his development during lockdown.
"He was 14 or 15, I think he had a bit of a growth spurt during that time," says Archie's father Andy. "Then when he came back in, he'd grown a lot physically. That's when Bielsa put him into training with the first team. Things kicked on really quickly from then."
Archie was forced to train alone during the coronavirus pandemic as football academies were closed down. His hard work during the time away allowed him to move ahead of his peers and into contention.
"After lockdown he really started to come through and set himself apart," says Clifford. "It gave him a chance to do even more individual work. Coming out of that, I thought, 'okay, this is looking quite good now'.
"I think Bielsa and the staff noticed and it's been a whirlwind for him since. He's hardly been able to draw breath since the end of year 10.
Mark Jackson was in charge of Leeds' U23s when Archie was catching the attention of Bielsa and worked closely with the first-team to ensure his integration went smoothly.
Bielsa's sessions are renowned for being relentless and perhaps not the easiest first experience for an academy player making the step-up. There were no issues for Archie, though.
"One of the first sessions up with Marcelo was a murder ball session and Archie took part in it," Jackson tells Sky Sports News. "He put someone on their backside with a tackle. I thought, 'oh, hello, that's good.'"
"His attitude from minute one was really, really driven," adds Jackson. "He has no fear."
Although Gray's debut didn't come under Bielsa, his time working with the legendary Leeds boss has stuck with him.
"Experiencing that as your first manager when you're 15 years old, the intensity of his training and how he worked was an unbelievable thing for the rest of his career," says his father Andy.
"He looks back on that now fondly, because it was tough, but it was all that he ever knew at the time. Those murder ball sessions, that was his first experience of professional football. Anything else after that is probably a little bit easier."
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Schoolboy by day, footballer by night
Archie was right in among the Leeds celebrations when they escaped relegation on the final day of the Premier League season at Brentford in 2022.
Just 16 years old at the time, he was enjoying one of the best moments of his fledgling career and also about to sit his GCSEs.
"It was a great day," says his father Andy. "Archie was on the bench, but the following day was the start of his exams.
"He was on the bus back and then we might have had a bit of a party afterwards, and he was back home really late. He was then in for his exams the next morning, which was obviously a bit of a shock for him."
Archie ended up passing his GCSEs, to the relief of his parents, after a year of juggling his studies with football.
"It was hard for him that year," adds Andy. "He was doing about three days full-time training and then managed to cram his school work in between as well."
"We had hundreds of people down the side of the Astro cheering his name," Aidan Pass, Archie's PE teacher, tells Sky Sports. "There was a quite touching moment at the end where he went over to sign some autographs for some of the younger students in the school."
Archie did not let his new-found celebrity affect his focus on breaking into the first-team, even in the face of adversity. Injury and illness delayed his wait for senior football by a whole season after his GCSEs.
Stuart Dallas was in the process of doing his own rehabilitation at the time and they spent a lot of hours in the gym together. Dallas was taken aback by the teenager's dedication.
"Archie would do one part of his gym programme and then went to do his education," the Leeds defender tells Sky Sports. "By the time his education finished, every other player was gone.
"I returned in the evening with my kids who were at the pre-academy and Archie was back in the gym finishing off his programme. Anybody else would have been gone, there were no staff in, but he was in.
"That showed me that he's different, he's special and he's going to go on to bigger and better things."
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Finding his position
Archie is undoubtedly a central midfielder, but his adaptability has seen him spend most of his senior career at right-back. Leeds needed him to step in there last season when Luke Ayling got injured and he ended up making the position his own.
Leeds boss Daniel Farke felt it was a risk at the time, unsure how this 17-year-old would cope with a change in position in his first season in the Championship, but he need not have worried.
"Archie is a versatile player and this is one of his strengths," Farke tells Sky Sports. "I got the feeling from his skills - and because he is a smart player - that he could adapt." Farke's gamble paid off.
Archie sees experimenting with positions as another part of his development. "I'm always willing to learn different positions because ultimately I think it just helps [my understanding of the game]," he told Sky Sports last season.
Spurs boss Ange Postecoglou experimented with Gray at centre-back in a pre-season game, but is expected to use him predominantly in central midfield for the long-term.
However, right-back is a relatively light area of Spurs' squad, so it is a possibility that Gray could also return to the position in the short-term, especially with the way Postecoglou encourages his full-backs to almost play as midfielders.
Archie's great uncle Eddie was careful throughout his interview with Sky Sports not to bring too much of his own judgement when speaking about the teenager's career, until the subject of his position arose, that is.
"I don't see him playing all his career at right-back. He'll be a midfield player. He'll get box to box. That's where I see him. But that will be up to the people that manage him. That's just my opinion."
Asked if Archie's time at right-back might help him become a more rounded player, Eddie showed no sign of backing down from his position.
"I think if you can play, you can play in most positions. When I was coming into the end of my career, I played at left-back. I found that ridiculously easy."
Case closed, it would seem.
Archie Gray (midfielder) is Next Up.
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