Chris Hogg was an England youth international and a trophy winner in Scotland as a player, before making his way in youth coaching at Ipswich and Newcastle, and as an assistant manager to Liam Manning with MK Dons, Oxford, Bristol City and Norwich.
But before all that he dreamt of being BMX world champion.
"I have been competing all my life," Chris Hogg tells Your Site. It is more than a line. In his case, it is true. "From the age of five through to eight or nine, I was the British champion on BMX." For this boy from Middlesbrough, football was not his first love.
"I was obsessed. I wanted to be world champion, basically. My old man's a painter and decorator. He used to have to work every hour god sends to get enough money to drive me down to London for the meets. We would drive to the racetracks every Sunday.
"I would be in the back of his van, paint pots everywhere. I would jump out the back and go race. Probably not ideal preparation! If I had a bad race, it would eat at me all week. Even now I can feel the feeling of that. It is probably where my work ethic comes from."
That work ethic briefly saw him work as an electrician after football. Even now, he still gets the odd text message about jobs. But since the age of 10, his true passion has been football. It was this that brought an abrupt end to those early adventures on the bike.
His schoolfriends were all playing football and despite, incredibly, never having kicked a ball in anger until that point in his life, Hogg decided that he wanted to pursue that instead. It was a decision that did not go down well with his parents at the time.
"My dad was devastated. My mum was quite upset because she loved me biking, had paper cuttings around the house, a little VHS of me riding. I was sponsored by GT too so my mum had to send the bikes back - and they were worth a few quid as well!"
The prospect of a professional career at that stage seemed absurd. "My mum actually started laughing when I told her I wanted to play. I had never kicked a ball. But I wanted to give it a go. I was terrible at first. I just couldn't do it. I remember everyone laughing."
But that work ethic kicked in. "The next day, I went in the garden and spent every hour god sends on it after that, repetition after repetition. Very quickly, I was having trials. York signed me. By 15, I was playing for England in the Victory Shield on Your Site."
Hogg signed for Ipswich and moved there at 16. He remains married to Lisa, the daughter of club legend George Burley, having met soon after. And though he was unable to break into the first team at Portman Road, there was success north of the border with Hibs.
"I had never even been to Scotland but I had a great five years there, captained them, won a trophy." That 2007 League Cup win with Hibs remains a highlight. "I remember being on that open-top bus and seeing grown men crying. That is why you do this."
But long before retiring from injury aged 27, Hogg had been coaching. He completed his UEFA B Licence when he was only 22. "I would help out with the youth team in the afternoon. I just started looking at the game differently, putting myself in scenarios."
He admits: "I thought I was a real coach. It was not until I went back to Ipswich's academy that I realised I had not really been coaching, I had just been running session. I was doing it without really understanding why I was doing it and what was important."
At Ipswich, under the guidance of experienced academy coach Bryan Klug, Hogg learned his craft. "I am not a big believer that just because you have played the game then you know how to coach. I really wanted to understand the methodology behind it."
He started at the bottom. "I was working with seven and eight-year-old kids. I was out of my comfort zone but I added more layers as a coach. It really made me think about how you deliver information. The instinct is to shout but if you whisper people come closer."
For a period, Hogg was worked with players from nine to 18 on the same day. "I got this accelerated development timeline. I had a range of experiences that would take a hell of a long time now. Within four years, I had worked with every age group up to the 21s."
The next step came when Mick McCarthy left and Klug was asked to take the first team on an interim basis. Klug took the press conferences but was keen for Hogg to be heavily involved on the training ground. "We had four games in the Championship."
In at the deep end, aged 33, it was a crash course. "It was a lesson in the dynamics of leadership, when the club is in a bit of turmoil. How do you have an impact quickly? Emotionally, how do you keep a group stable? It kind of gave me a taste for it," he says.
This was the practical side of it, but Hogg knows the theory too. He has his UEFA Pro Licence having done his final dissertation on cognitive load theory, learning how players learn, establish how much information is too much for someone to take on board.
"Attention spans are down so you have to be clever about how you deliver information. How much is too much? There was a lot of research, supported by neuroscience, looking at Formula One drivers. It was fascinating to discover how they filter the data.
"It was about looking for the signs of overload because you lose the effect of your words after talking for 12 minutes." It is a factor not just in team talks but all meetings. "You can have 250 a year in the same room. It is not conducive to performance," he explains.
After that brief taste of senior leadership at Ipswich, Hogg was appointed as the manager of Newcastle United's development team in 2020. "I am from Middlesbrough so my dad did not talk to me for a few weeks but it is a club that gets under your skin."
He was tasked with "running the U23 team but also linking to the academy manager, changing the culture, looking to create pathways" and was enjoying the responsibility until life took a turn when his old friend Liam Manning called him with some news.
"We were putting a lot of structures in place at Newcastle and were just seeing some light at the end of the tunnel when my phone rang," Hogg explains. "It was Liam and he said, 'I've just got the MK Dons job and I need you to come with me, are you in?'"
Hogg and Manning go way back to their days in Ipswich's youth team. "He was the year below me. We were not really close at the time but when I went back to Ipswich at 27, he was one of the first faces I saw. We developed a friendship that is there to this day."
Manning had left for West Ham, Hogg for Newcastle. But there was an informal agreement that they should work together if one of them got a management job. Hogg had to do it. "Before I had even said yes I found myself driving back. That was the start."
It began a journey for the duo that took them to four different clubs as they worked their way up the pyramid together. At MK Dons, they were desperately close to winning promotion. "A point away from automatic." At Oxford, they helped escape relegation.
It remains a highlight of Hogg's coaching career. "Stood on the pitch after winning 3-0 at Forest Green crowding around the kit man's phone waiting on results elsewhere. I still remember the noise of the supporters when they realised we were safe," he recalls.
The biggest achievement might also be the biggest regret. Bristol City have not played top-division football in Manning and Hogg's lifetime but they reached the play-offs under them only to miss out on the Premier League. "That was a big one," he admits.
"People say we only made it, we did not win them. I get that. But I would argue the memories of that day are powerful, seeing what it meant to the players and to the fans." A summer switch to Norwich City felt like a natural next step but it proved a struggle.
"Things were difficult, especially with some players who had never experienced the relentlessness of the Championship. It is unique." They were sacked 15 games into the Championship season, having lost the majority of those matches by the odd goal.
"There were people around us looking at the expected points and saying keep doing what you are doing but I knew we needed the points." For Manning and Hogg, it felt like the right time to go their separate ways. He has not joined him at Huddersfield Town.
"Liam always knew I would forge my own path at some point," Hogg explains. "I am glad we had that journey. Liam won't mind me saying it because he says it himself, it was more of a partnership, two good friends developing an idea, trying to be successful."
And the thrill for him remains the prospect of being the best that he can be. "It is you versus you every day. How can you get better?" What excites him most is the potential. On his BMX bike he dreamed of becoming world class. As a player, it was not possible.
"A big driver is my own playing career. I was not happy with my career. I did everything that I could to be the best, never drank alcohol, did hot yoga before it became popular. But as a player, I had limitations. As a coach, there are not those same limitations.
"It is not about me physically, it is about how I treat people, how I behave, my knowledge of the game and how you impart than on people. That is why I want to maximise everything that I can in my coaching and get to the highest level I can.
"The top might just be helping a group of people fulfil their potential and enjoy the work. It is not about status, it is more about meaning." It is a wild ride that began on his bike and has taken him around Britain as player and coach. Now, Hogg is ready for management.
