Edward Paul Sheringham MBE (born 2 April 1966) is an English football manager and former player. He played as a forward, mostly as a second striker, in a 24-year professional career. Sheringham was part of the Manchester United team that won the treble of the Premier League, FA Cup and UEFA Champions League in 1999. He scored the equalising goal and provided the assist for the club's winning goal in the 1999 UEFA Champions League final against Bayern Munich that sealed it, with both goals coming in injury time of the second half.
Sheringham began his career at Millwall, where he scored 111 goals between 1983 and 1991, and is the club's second all-time leading scorer. He left to join First Division Nottingham Forest. A year later, Sheringham scored Forest's first ever Premier League goal, and was signed by Tottenham Hotspur. After five seasons at Spurs, Sheringham joined Manchester United where he won three Premier League titles, the FA Cup, the UEFA Champions League, the Intercontinental Cup and the FA Charity Shield. In 2001, he was named both the PFA Players' Player of the Year and FWA Footballer of the Year.
After leaving Manchester United at the end of the 2000–01 season, Sheringham re-joined Tottenham Hotspur, where he was a losing finalist in the 2001–02 Football League Cup. He spent one season at newly promoted Portsmouth, scoring the club's first Premier League goal, before joining West Ham United, where he helped the club gain promotion from the 2004–05 Football League Championship. The following season, Sheringham appeared for West Ham in the 2006 FA Cup final, becoming the third-oldest player to appear in an FA Cup final.
Sheringham is currently the thirteenth-highest goalscorer in the history of the Premier League with 146 goals, and is the competition's 34th-highest appearance maker. He holds the record as the oldest outfield player to appear in a Premier League match (40 years, 272 days) and the oldest player to score in a Premier League match (40 years, 268 days). He was capped 51 times for the England national team, scoring 11 times, and played in the 1998 and 2002 FIFA World Cups, as well as the 1996 UEFA European Championship. He retired from competitive football at the end of the 2007–08 season with Colchester United, at the age of 42. He has since managed League Two club Stevenage, and ATK of the Indian Super League.
Something of a late developer on the international scene, Sheringham did not win his first England cap until the age of 27 in 1993. Under the reign of manager Terry Venables (1994–96) Sheringham came to be the preferred strike partner for Alan Shearer. During this time, England had a wealth of strikers with the likes of Andy Cole, Ian Wright, a young Robbie Fowler and Les Ferdinand all battling to partner Shearer in the England team.
The two formed a famous partnership at international level, as they complemented each other's strengths: Shearer the out-and-out goalscorer, big, strong and powerful, Sheringham just 'dropping off' his strike partner, finding spaces, creating play and providing key passes, forming the link between Shearer and the England midfield. The pairing came to be known as 'The SAS' ('Shearer and Sheringham') and their most successful time together came in Euro 96, held in England. Their most famous contribution was in the 4–1 victory over the Netherlands, a game in the opening group stages in which they both scored twice against one of the strongest teams in the tournament. Though England were eventually knocked out in the semi-finals, many believed that that squad of players such as Sheringham and his contemporaries including Paul Gascoigne, Steve McManaman, Tony Adams and Paul Ince, had done the nation proud. At this time, the England squad were also criticised heavily in the media for their part in several off the field incidents during the lead up to the tournament, where Sheringham, McManaman and Gascoigne were photographed drinking heavily and playing "dentist chair" drinking games as well as destroying the first class cabin of a Cathay Pacific flight which went down poorly with the public.
Sheringham continued to be a first choice selection under new England manager Glenn Hoddle (1996–99) until the emergence of new teenage superstar Michael Owen during the course of 1998 saw him overshadowed. Although Sheringham began the 1998 FIFA World Cup as a starting player with Owen on the bench, after Owen replaced him and almost turned around a defeat against Romania in England's second game of the tournament, it seemed likely that Sheringham's front line international career had come to an end.
He was not selected at all for UEFA Euro 2000 by then manager Kevin Keegan, but the retirement of Shearer (despite being four years younger than Sheringham) from international football after that tournament and the arrival of new manager Sven-Göran Eriksson in 2001 saw a return to international favour for him. He was often deployed as a tactical substitute late in games by Eriksson, valued for his ability to hold the ball up and create intelligent play. In 2001, Sheringham scored an important goal for England against Greece in a World Cup qualifying match within 15 seconds of coming on as a substitute, although this event is overshadowed by the 93rd minute equalising free-kick by David Beckham.
He was selected as part of Eriksson's 2002 FIFA World Cup squad after impressing throughout the 2001–02 season with his club, and played in the famous 1–0 win against Argentina, almost scoring a goal with a volley that was well saved by the Argentine goalkeeper, and made his final England appearance as a substitute in the 2–1 quarter-final defeat to Brazil in Japan. His twelve appearances for Eriksson were all as a substitute.
At the age of 36, that defeat signalled the final end of Sheringham's international career, during which he had earned fifty-one caps and scored eleven times for England.
Upon his retirement from professional football in 2008, Sheringham has been a noticeable figure on the world poker scene, playing in various competitions worldwide. He made the final table in the €5,000 No Limit Hold'em Main Event in the EPT Vilamoura, finishing 5th out of a field of 384 players, winning €93,121.
In May 2014, Sheringham was appointed as an attacking coach with West Ham United. He was credited with a change in West Ham's style of play which led to a run of good form at the start of the 2014–15 season, earning striker Diafra Sakho the Premier League Player of the Month award for October 2014.
On 21 May 2015, Sheringham was appointed to his first managerial role, taking charge of League Two side Stevenage, replacing Graham Westley. With the club struggling with injuries, he registered himself as a player, aged 49, for a Herts Senior Cup match against Welwyn Garden City in November of that year, but did not play. He was sacked on 1 February 2016, with the club 19th in the league having collected only three points from their previous eight matches.
On 14 July 2017, Sheringham was named as the new head coach of Indian Super League club ATK. On 24 January 2018, Sheringham was sacked by ATK after winning only three of his ten games in charge of the Kolkata-based outfit.
Sheringham's son Charlie, born in 1988, also became a professional footballer. The two made the FA Cup third round draw together in December 2013. Sheringham has two more children with Kristina Andriotis, whom he married in 2016. Earlier in his life, he dated models Danielle Lloyd and Katie Price.
In 2020, Sheringham competed on the first British series of The Masked Singer, masked as "Tree".
English Premier League Hat-Trick 2000-10-28 | English Premier League 2 Goals 2000-10-14 | English Premier League 2 Goals 2000-09-05 | UEFA European Championships Player Of The Match 1996-06-18 |
1984-1991 |
1985 (Loan) |
1985 (Loan) |
1988 |
1991-1992 |
1992-1997 |
1993-2002 |
1997-2001 |
2001-2003 |
2003-2004 |
2004-2007 |
2007-2008 |
2014-2015 Coach |
2015-2016 Manager |
2017-2018 Manager |
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