Tony Adams

Adams was appointed as the 29th President of the Rugby Football League over the summer of 2019, succeeding Andy Burnham.

In 2019 Tony Adams was named Rugby League president. Fans of football and rugby league were surprised when Arsenal hero Adams got the job.

The former Arsenal and England football captain Tony Adams has been named president of the Rugby Football League from 2019, and will replace outgoing Andy Burnham.

On 10 April 2017, Adams was named as manager of La Liga strugglers Granada CF until the end of the 2016–17 season. At the end of the season, Granada were relegated from La Liga ending their 8-year stay in the top division. Adams lost all 7 games as manager and was subsequently sacked.

In 2015, Adams underwent heart surgery after suffering from chest pains. After the operation, he revealed that it had probably saved his life.

Described as a "stopper" by Tom Sheen of The Guardian in 2014, Adams played as a centre-back. A brave, rugged, and committed defender, his main traits were his leadership, aerial prowess, and his ability to read the game and time his tackles. While initially he was not known to be the most gifted player on the ball from a technical standpoint, he developed this aspect of his game under Wenger, and he later excelled as a ball–playing centre-back, in which he became known for his ability to carry the ball out from the back, as well as his penchant for undertaking individual runs. However, he was also known for his lack of pace.

Adams is a Patron for NACOA—a charity that provides information, advice and support for anyone affected by their parents' drinking. He is also a Patron for charity School-Home Support (SHS). SHS helps disadvantaged children and young people overcome barriers to education such as poverty, domestic abuse and housing issues.

In October 2012, Adams returned to Gabala FC in the capacity of Sporting Director.

Adams spent his entire playing career of 22 years as a centre back at Arsenal. He is considered one of the greatest Arsenal players of all time by the club's own fans and was included in the Football League 100 Legends. With Arsenal, he won four top flight division titles, uniquely captaining a title-winning team in three different decades, three FA Cups, two Football League Cups, a UEFA Cup Winners' Cup, and two FA Community Shields. A statue honouring Adams was unveiled at Emirates stadium on 9 December 2011, along with statues of Thierry Henry and Herbert Chapman. He won 66 caps for England between 1987 and 2000 and played at four major tournaments.

A statue of Adams was placed outside Emirates Stadium in celebration of the club's 125th anniversary on 9 December 2011. Manager Herbert Chapman and Arsenal's all-time top goal scorer Thierry Henry and later Dennis Bergkamp were also immortalised with statues outside the ground.

In May 2010, Adams signed a three-year contract to manage Azerbaijani club Gabala FC of the Azerbaijan Premier League. He departed as coach of Gabala due on 16 November 2011, before the end of the 2011–12 season.

On 30 December 2009 Adams was the guest editor on BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

When England manager Glenn Hoddle took the captain's armband from Adams and gave it to Alan Shearer, it was a bitter pill for Adams to swallow. Speaking at a fans' forum in 2008, Adams remarked, "I have some resentment over the way Glenn Hoddle gave the captaincy to Alan Shearer instead of me but I can let that go. I reacted positively. I disagreed with him [Hoddle] and he thought Alan could get more penalties being a centre forward. People know my reaction to that".

Adams remains a popular figure with Arsenal fans. In December 2008, more than six years after he left the club, Adams led out his Portsmouth side onto the pitch at Arsenal to be greeted with the chant "There's only one Tony Adams" by Arsenal fans.

Adams joined Portsmouth as assistant manager to Harry Redknapp in June 2006, a position left vacant by the departure of Kevin Bond. In his first season as assistant, Portsmouth finished ninth in the Premier League – their highest standing since the 1950s and won the 2007–08 FA Cup. Adams was appointed caretaker manager of Portsmouth in October 2008, alongside Joe Jordan, following the departure of Harry Redknapp to Tottenham Hotspur. He was subsequently appointed full-time manager. He was sacked in February 2009 after just 16 games in charge in which Portsmouth picked up only 10 points.

In July 2005, Adams accepted a trainee coaching role with Dutch side Feyenoord with special responsibility for its Jong team, which is a reserve/junior side. Adams later had a short spell seconded to Utrecht as a first team trainee coach in January and February 2006. While at Feyenoord he also worked part-time as a scout for Arsenal, watching games in Italy, France and the Netherlands.

In 2004, Adams was inducted into the English Football Hall of Fame in recognition of his impact on the English game, and in 2008 he was placed third in the 50 Greatest Gunners poll on the club's website.

In March 2003, just seven months after his retirement and with Arsenal BBC Sport named Adams as the former Arsenal player that the club would most benefit from returning.

After starting a sports science degree at Brunel University, Adams became the manager of Wycombe Wanderers in November 2003. He was unable to prevent the club's relegation to League Two that season, and although the club were top of the table in August 2004, a loss of form saw them fall down the table. He resigned from Wycombe in November 2004, citing personal reasons. He was succeeded by John Gorman.

In August 2002, just before the start of the 2002–03 season, Adams retired from professional football after a career spanning almost 20 years, his last match being the last league game of the season at home to Everton (the 2002 FA Cup Final was unusually played before the last league fixtures). He played 674 matches for Arsenal (only David O'Leary has played more) and was the most successful captain in the club's history. The number 6 shirt that Adams wore when playing was not used again until the 2006–07 season, when it was assigned to Philippe Senderos. It is currently unassigned following the departure of former club captain Laurent Koscielny.

Nicknamed "Mr Arsenal", he was honoured by Arsenal with a testimonial game against Celtic in May 2002 with many Arsenal legends playing, including Ian Wright, John Lukic and Adams's fellow back four stalwarts, Dixon, Winterburn and Bould. The game finished 1–1 with Lee Dixon, in his final appearance for the Gunners, getting their goal.

Adams continued to play for the national side, however and he finally appeared in a World Cup finals in 1998. His international swansong was England's unsuccessful UEFA Euro 2000 campaign. With Shearer retiring from international football after the tournament, Adams regained the captaincy. However, within months, England lost a World Cup qualifier to Germany in October 2000, the match being the last to be staged at Wembley Stadium, before the stadium was torn down for rebuilding. That match was Adams's 60th Wembley appearance, a record. With Sven-Göran Eriksson eventually taking the helm and under increasing pressure for his place from the emerging and improving Rio Ferdinand, Adams retired from international football, having made sixty-six appearances, before Eriksson picked his first squad. He was the last England player to score at the old Wembley Stadium when he scored England's second goal in a 2–0 friendly win over Ukraine on 31 May 2000. This was also his first goal since he scored in a friendly against Saudi Arabia in November 1988, thus making the record for the longest gap between goals for England.

In September 2000, as a result of his own experiences with alcoholism and drug addiction, Adams founded the Sporting Chance Clinic, a charitable foundation aimed at providing treatment, counselling and support for sports men and women suffering from drink, drug or gambling addictions. The clinic, which works to the twelve-step programme philosophy of Alcoholics Anonymous is based near Liphook in Hampshire and includes Kate Hoey, Alex Rae and Elton John as patrons, and is supported by the Professional Footballers' Association. Adams's former Arsenal and England teammate Paul Merson, himself a recovering alcoholic, is also a patron of the charity.

His recovery and rehabilitation were helped in no small part by the arrival of Arsène Wenger as Arsenal manager in October 1996. Wenger reformed the club's dietary practices and the players' lifestyles. Wenger stuck by Adams following his confessions about his drink problem, and the improvements in the regime probably extended Adams's career by several years. Adams rewarded his manager's understanding handsomely, captaining the club to two Premiership and FA Cup Doubles, in 1997–98 and 2001–02; he is the only player in English football history to have captained a title-winning team in three different decades.

In 1992–93 Adams gained the distinction of being the captain of the first English side to win the League Cup and FA Cup double, lifting the European Cup Winners' Cup the following year.

Despite this success, a battle with alcoholism, which started in the mid-1980s, increasingly blighted his life as he was reportedly often involved in fights in nightclubs. On 6 May 1990, Adams crashed his Ford Sierra into a wall in Rayleigh and when breathalysed his blood alcohol level was found to be more than four times the legal drink-drive limit. On 19 December that year, at Southend Crown Court, he was imprisoned for four months (being freed after half of his sentence on 15 February 1991) He became one of the most high-profile recovering alcoholics in the UK; his battle with alcohol is detailed in his autobiography, Addicted, which was released in May 1998 to enormous critical acclaim.

After a highly promising start to his international career, Adams suffered a series of setbacks during the early 1990s. He was surprisingly left out of the 1990 FIFA World Cup squad by manager Bobby Robson, and missed UEFA Euro 1992 due to injury. However, he still maintained a regular place in defence, and after the retirement of Gary Lineker in 1992, Adams unofficially shared the captaincy of England with David Platt, though Adams became England captain outright before Euro 96, as Platt's place in the side became less secure. England reached the semi-finals of Euro 96, before losing on penalties to Germany.

Together with Lee Dixon, Nigel Winterburn and Steve Bould, Adams was part of the "famous back four" that lined up in Arsenal's defence, which under George Graham was renowned for its well-disciplined use of the offside trap. On 1 January 1988, he became Arsenal captain at the age of 21; he would remain club captain for the next 14 years until his retirement.

Adams made his debut for England against Spain in 1987, and played in UEFA Euro 1988. England lost all three games, but Adams scored one of England's two goals in the tournament in a 3–1 defeat to the Soviet Union. He was the first player to represent England who had been born after the 1966 World Cup win.

Adams's strong discipline of the defence was considered a factor in Arsenal winning the League Cup in 1986–87 and then the First Division championship twice; the first in 1988–89 after a win over Liverpool in the final game of the season; the second in 1990–91, losing once all season.

Adams signed for Arsenal as a schoolboy in 1980. He made his first team debut on 5 November 1983 against Sunderland in the First Division, four weeks after his 17th birthday. Adams became a regular player in the 1986–87 season, winning his first major trophy that season when playing in the Football League Cup Final win over Liverpool at Wembley.

Born in Romford, Adams grew up in Dagenham and was a pupil at Hunters Hall Primary School from 1971 to 1978 and then Eastbrook Comprehensive School from 1978 to 1983. His cousin is fellow professional footballer Steve MacKenzie.

Tony Alexander Adams MBE (born 10 October 1966) is an English football manager. As a player, Adams played for Arsenal and England, captaining both teams. In 2019 Tony Adams was named President of Rugby Football League.