Who is Dundee FC's David Longwell? From teaching John McGinn the Cruyff turn to Red Bull swoop

The Courier

a day ago

David Longwell's career has taken him from Paisley to Orlando to New York to Shrewsbury, Burnley and Fylde over two decades of coaching.
Now he's back in Scotland, taking on Dundee's newly-created position as technical manager alongside new head coach Steven Pressley.
The 51-year-old from Renfrew has worked under coaches of the highest calibre – from Vincent Kompany to Jesse Marsch and Ralf Rangnick – and is credited with helping through Scotland internationals John McGinn, Kenny McLean and Lewis Morgan at St Mirren.
Longwell began his long career in academy football as a community coach at St Mirren before working his way up to head of youth development.
He had a brief spell as Gary Teale's assistant as the Buddies failed in their battle against relegation from the top flight. Dundee United boss Jim Goodwin was a key man in the St Mirren team at the time.
During Longwell's time in charge of the academy a host of first-team players emerged in Kenny McLean, Stephen Mallan, Sean Kelly, Jason Naismith, Jack Baird, Lewis Morgan and Kyle Magennis.
The star, though, was John McGinn, now a Scotland and Aston Villa hero.
McGinn said in 2021: 'The youth coach at the time – David Longwell – he was my coach for 13 years.
'He stressed the importance of technique and if anyone remembers the old Love Street, they had an indoor 5-a-side park.
'It wasn't massive so were just doing Cruyff and Zidane turns for three or four years.
'I now usually do it when I make a bad touch or something! But the amount of times I did that at St Mirren made it natural.'
Longwell then left Paisley for Florida, joining Orlando City as their academy manager before being head-hunted by New York Red Bulls to head up their burgeoning youth setup.
Jesse Marsch was manager with future Manchester United boss Ralf Rangnick calling the shots across the Red Bull group from RB Leipzig.
Longwell's time in New York ended abruptly in 2018 with NYRB deciding to 'part ways' before he returned to the UK with Shrewsbury Town.
His old boss from St Mirren, Brian Caldwell, was in charge of the Shrews where he also stepped up to first-team coaching under Steve Cotterill.
Burnley, Dundee's strategic partners, came calling in 2023 and as academy boss he implemented the structure wanted by Vincent Kompany before he left for Bayern Munich.
However, he resigned from the Clarets in August 2024 amid claims he sent a scathing assessment of the club's first-team squad to the wrong WhatsApp group.
Longwell and Burnley have never commented publicly on his exit.
In January 2025 he arrived at National League strugglers AFC Fylde as assistant to former England international Kevin Phillips. Phillips would be sacked in February with Longwell and Chris Neal taking interim charge but unable to keep the club up.
Things ended amicably at Fylde, leaving Longwell free to join Dundee in their new-look approach.
From the outside, Dundee were looking for a new manager after the sacking of Tony Docherty.
The inside approach was different, though. It would be a head coach coming in and a new role created.
The Dark Blues went looking for someone to fill the newly-created technical manager role and approached Longwell.
'I think they were looking to bring someone in who has got maybe the skillset that I possess,' he told DeeTV.
'When you're looking for a head coach to be really focused on individuals, it's very hard.
'Managers or head coaches, their main thing is to try and win games of football and the pressures of that can be quite high.
'I think they're looking for someone who can really focus on the players to support the manager so that it doesn't just have to be his sole responsibility.
'It's a really interesting move from the football club.
'That then is what will make the team better because if every individual becomes better then the team becomes better.
'I think it's only going to benefit the club.
'They identified myself, I've been at Burnley before and I think I've done a good job when I was in there.
'They've obviously got connections with Burnley.
'Dundee asked to speak to me and it was a really interesting conversation, something I was really excited about.
'They are trying to develop the club, develop the team, try to link everything together.
'I've done that at a lot of clubs before.'
Longwell will answer to technical director Gordon Strachan in the new chain of command at Dundee.
But he will also help with recruitment and support head coach Steven Pressley in first-team training.
However, Longwell admits the exact nature of his role will evolve over time.
'I think it'll be quite fluid. I'll probably take on a lot of different things,' he added.
'At the moment I'm helping with recruitment.
'Between Gordon [Strachan] and Billy [Kirkwood], they're doing a lot of work within that along with John [Nelms] and Steven [Pressley] will have an influence in that as well.
'So I'm trying to help with that as one part of the role.
'From a day-to-day basis once the season gets going I think it'll be a case of whenever the manager's planning training it will be a case of assisting wherever he wants.
'Every head coach or manager will be slightly different in how they want training to be so I think my role day-to-day will be what he wants me to do.
'Over and above that it's then looking at those individuals within training – how do we try and develop them.
'Then over and above the main team training it's how do you try and implement different structures and strategies and different things that you can actually work with players.
'That might be analysis. It might be on the pitch. It might be in the gym.
'So, it's really to try and tailor that to each player.
'I think day-to-day it'll be very flexible and there'll be a lot of work entailed in it.
'I'm never shy of putting the work in to try to get the very best out of people.
'It's not going to happen overnight. It will take a bit of time for that to happen.
'There'll be small differences that you'll see and then hopefully over a period of time, you'll see bigger differences.'