FeatureBehind the Badge: The second Heskey to make a difference at LFC

“Emile would have made his debut for Leicester when I was about five years of age so you can imagine what that did for me through my childhood,” he says.

“I remember it like it was yesterday. It was just after he’d started playing in the first team as a teenager and my dad shouted, ‘Come downstairs.’ I went, then he pointed at the TV and said, ‘That’s your cousin.’

“That was when I noticed he had the same surname as me and my love for football effectively started there and then. Obviously, there are not many times that you can look at a TV and see your cousin playing football.

“It was an amazing time for me as a kid, having someone like that to look up to. Everyone has their childhood heroes and he was mine.

“He effectively shaped me to be who I am without doing anything other than be himself. That gave me my own idea of how I should potentially live my life and go about it.”

Today, Craig is player care officer at Liverpool’s Academy – a position he took up in October 2025.

Mainly working with the U9 to U14 age groups, his role centres around the wellbeing, pastoral care and personal development of the club’s youngest players.

Craig explains: “Day to day, it always changes, but one of the things that’s quite fixed is we have a player support meeting, which involves all of us who help support the boys in social, emotional and physical wellbeing, such as education, medical, psychology and safeguarding.

“There are quite a few of us on that panel and lots of different expertise in the room, and we’re all pitching in to get one goal, which is the best support possible for the players.

“I’m also constantly around training and games. Not because of any coaching needs but I’m a big believer that if you want to show support to the boys, you show attention to the main thing they’re here for. I think that’s one way we can build trust. The player care department must be neutral, so we deem it important for us to be visible for parents and players as a soundboard.

“I enjoy watching the boys play, it’s amazing to see them showcase what they are about, really work hard and try to be the best they can be. If you pay attention to that, you often get a little bit of a buy-in and that helps you build relationships.

“But overall, the role is really all about trying to help the boys become the best human beings they can be. You are helping to produce future dads, teachers and, obviously, football players.

“You want them to get the best experience they can have whilst they’re in our care and in terms of the most rewarding aspects of the job, seeing them become professional footballers is one of the biggest things for me.

“They can’t all be first-team players at Liverpool – you’d love them to be, of course, but they can’t be. Some of the boys I worked with at my previous clubs, Leyton Orient and Millwall, can be playing in the Premier League, Championship, National League North or South, or at a lower level, and I am still celebrating that.

“Just have your own journey, and that doesn’t have to be as a footballer either. Just seeing them do well in whatever avenue they take in life is a big reward.”

Craig is not, of course, the first Heskey to make a difference here.

His aforementioned cousin Emile, who is 12 years his senior, was a powerhouse of a striker who was instrumental in one of the great seasons in the club’s history – the 2000-01 treble-winning campaign.

Having joined from Leicester City for a then-club-record fee of £11 million in March 2000, Emile went on to score 60 goals in 223 appearances and was voted in at No.71 in this summer’s Liverpool’s Greatest poll.

“At the time he was doing what he was doing at Liverpool, it almost felt normal – but now, I look back and realise it wasn’t normal at all!” Craig states.

“I’m from London and this club has a massive following down south. I know so many people that love this football club – including my dad, who has always been a Liverpool fan.

“When you work at the club you really feel how much of an impact it has on the world, so for Emile to be voted as one of the 100 greatest to play here is just incredible.

“His journey really captured me and it channelled where I wanted to go with my own life. He was an inspiration and seeing what he was doing was very, very impactful.”

Craig idolised Emile from a young age, then, and he soon discovered that he too had a talent for the game.

“Obviously a lot of kids dream of being a footballer and it was also my dream, for obvious reasons,” he recalls.

“I think what also pushed the idea is once I got to secondary school, that’s when Emile had moved to Liverpool.

“I think he’d done his first season here at the time I started there. A few of my teachers were Liverpool fans and I went through my whole school life being called ‘Heskey’, not Craig! It was just something that became the norm.

“Obviously I wanted to be a striker, because Emile was a striker.”

Craig would prove good enough to play semi-professionally but also had the foresight to study, ensuring that he had solid back-up options should he not be able to forge a professional career in the game.

And while he never reached the footballing heights of his older relative, Craig’s journey as a player does have one significant thing in common with Emile’s – both have played internationally.

“I was fortunate enough to play for Antigua and Barbuda, which is our home nation. I qualified through both sets of grandparents and it was a massive experience for me,” Craig says.

“It was actually quite incredible how I ended up getting in contact with them. I was 18 and played in a sixth-form cup final, and I happened to bump into someone whose uncle was the federation rep at the Antigua and Barbuda Football Association.

“He said, ‘Do you fancy playing for Antigua?’ and if I didn’t bump into him, who knows if I’d ever have done it? They had come to England and done a camp at Ipswich’s training ground so I was there for about four or five days with the senior team, doing a tour all over the south east.

“At the time they said I wasn’t physically ready for senior football, which was probably right, but they called me up for the U20s. I think I spent about nine days away travelling across the Caribbean for games. Singing the national anthem and representing our nation was incredible.

“At the time, as much as it was a big deal, I felt like it wasn’t because Em was playing for England and I was playing for Antigua, which is obviously a very small island in the Caribbean.

“But the one person who always asked me questions about it, always asked ‘How did it go?’ was Em and that meant so much to me, getting that recognition from him of: ‘You’ve played international football too now.’

“I just loved playing and played for loads of non-league clubs. I found my level and even though the aim was always to try to become a pro, thankfully I had decent education behind me. I went through the university education route, making sure I got qualifications.

“Did I ever expect myself to end up working in football? Probably not, but the way things have gone full circle and here I am at the club where Em played is unbelievable.”

Craig’s route into the non-playing side of professional football began in 2019 when, at the age of 29, he joined Leyton Orient after he had overseen the club’s outreach educational programme at the college where he taught.

He remembers: “I was combining educational work with coaching but then the club asked me to go full-time on the educational side. It was a massive change and I was actually making more money in teaching, but it was football and I knew the opportunity was massive for me so I took it.

“I soon thought that I could focus on being a very good educator, a very good player support officer, rather than a coach.

“There are loads of great coaches out there, whereas the job that I’m currently doing, it’s niche. I thought, ‘I can be really strong at that,’ so I put my focus into that and stopped coaching at that point.

“A little later, I realised that education wasn’t necessarily what I was driving towards. It was more player support, more about helping the boys and them realising that yes, football is their life but there is more to life than just football.”

A move to Millwall followed, where Craig built a programme of player care from scratch that would expand to a scope of him supporting every player at the club, from U9s to first team.

“It was a brilliant eye-opener and the contrast was massive because you’d speak to a first-team player and it was quite intense, obviously it’s a very pressurised environment at that level, and then you’d go and see the U9s in the evenings and those little boys were just there to play football and enjoy themselves,” he says.

“The difference in the conversations I’d have was huge and I learned so much.”

After three years at Millwall, an opportunity that could not be overlooked arose.

“Leaving Millwall wasn’t something that was on the cards and I always said if I was to leave it had to be for a ‘wow’ opportunity – and that’s what Liverpool is,” Craig notes.

“I saw an advert and applied. I thought I might have a chance but knew I’d be up against a lot of people. It was a two-stage interview and I did my second interview here [at the Academy].

“I walked around and I was like, ‘Oh my God, this is a completely different world to what I am used to.’ I did the second interview and said to one of my friends, ‘I need to go home,’ because I was getting so locked into the thought of working here and I didn’t want to want it too much. I drove straight back to London.

“Liverpool told me to expect a call on a certain day and I remember that day being stressful! I was actually at Millwall’s stadium for the U18s’ photo day and the phone rang, so I ran to the other side of the pitch. Thankfully it was good news.

“I called my dad and I’ve never known him to be so proud of anything I’d done up to that point. You know when you can hear someone grinning over the phone? That was him and he reminded me of a picture he had taken of me and my sister in Liverpool kits just after Emile had signed here in 2000.

“Em had asked me to keep him in the loop and sent me a nice message of congratulations when I told him I’d got the job. For me to be joining the same club 25 years later – what are the odds? It’s like it was meant to be.”

Craig feels he has found his calling in life – and has also, like his cousin, found a home at Liverpool.

“Player care is where I belong, this is where my expertise is,” he concludes.

“I can only see myself growing more in this role and I think player care is growing as an area. It’s not set in stone and you’re always learning new things and adapting to new situations, which gives you a fresh perspective.

“There’s always more to be taught and it’s all about giving the kids as many tools as possible for life, not just football, and helping them to be open to change.

“If their future is at this club, that’s great. But if it’s not here, that’s fine too – it’s about making sure they know there are other avenues to get where they want to go in life.”

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