EXCLUSIVE: John McGinn reflects on how meeting his mum in detention at school was ‘the day that taught the Aston Villa star to grow up’… and reveals the message Steven Gerrard gave him when the ex-Liverpool midfielder made him captain

There are moments in our childhoods that chide us still. However insignificant they may seem to others, they stay with us. The time you smashed a family heirloom. The time you threw a stone and it hit your little brother. The time you teased your dogs so enthusiastically, they got into a bloody fight. The time your school report was so bad, you put it on the fire and watched it burn.

John McGinn’s mind is drifting back 15 years to his moment. 

He is the son of two teachers. His dad, Stephen, taught English and history. His mum, Mary, began as a maths teacher and then trained in computer science. But McGinn is talking about something else they taught him. Something more valuable than dates of reigns or codes on a screen. He is talking about an incident he considers a formative experience.

Others might count it as barely worthy of note, but the Scotland international can draw a direct line from it to the moment in the summer of 2022 when Steven Gerrard told him he was making him Aston Villa captain.

McGinn was 14. He was a pupil at St Columba’s High School in Clydebank, where his mum was a member of staff. His dad had been offered a job there, too, but McGinn’s elder brothers had vetoed that. Their mum was popular with the kids but the brothers were insistent that one parent at their school was more than enough. 

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‘I had always been a people-pleaser and I was in an RE lesson and was messing around with my pals, laughing too much,’ says McGinn. 

‘I couldn’t stop laughing and even when the teacher took me out of the class, I couldn’t stop. I could see my pals through the window and that made it worse.

‘My twin sister, Katie, was in the class. She was mortified. She had a smaller group of pals but they were more mature than me and my friends. That’s a strange dynamic as well, when your twin sister’s in the class. 

‘She was brilliant. When I was training with the St Mirren youth teams, she’d sometimes do my homework for me.

‘Anyway, I got dragged out of the RE lesson and the school had a kind of isolation room, a room where the kids who had got into trouble went to serve their detention. And on this day, I got to the detention room and I got one of the biggest frights of my life because the teacher who was supervising the detention room was my mum.

‘She was beyond embarrassed. She had to log every person that got sent to the room and I could tell she was horrified. That night was a frosty one at home.

‘I don’t think she believed me when I said I was just laughing. She told me I needed to remember that, when I was at school, I was representing her and she had to work with that RE teacher and with all the other teachers and that maybe I ought to think about that the next time I was disrespectful in a class. It made me think and, actually, it made me change.

‘At that time, everything was going quite smoothly for me. Football was going well. I was one of the best players in the St Mirren junior teams. I thought I was bright and I could have a laugh with my pals. Like I said, I had always been a bit of a people-pleaser, but I decided I was going to be a better person.

‘After that, I was a wee bit different. It did wake me up a bit and made me grow up quite quickly. I tried to be a nicer guy.

‘My mum always says that she is proud of my football achievements but she likes it when someone comes up to her and says ‘Your son gave his time for this’ or ‘He couldn’t have been nicer’ and that makes her proud more. That sticks with me.

‘It’s the way I’ve been brought up. Maybe it was only a small thing but it was a lesson about respect.

‘It also chimed with St Mirren’s values. They had an amazing record of bringing young players through and there was a guy there called David Longwell, who was the academy manager. 

‘He was really hard on us, but really good for respect, discipline, keeping changing rooms tidy, speaking to coaches properly.

‘I never ever saw myself as a captain but when Steven Gerrard, a man who is held in such high regard in football, told me he was making me skipper he said, “Be yourself, treat people the same way you are treating them now, treat them with respect. That’s why you deserve to be the captain of this club”. 

‘Even though he is no longer at the club, it rings in my head.

‘There are a lot of people behind the scenes at clubs now. The budgets are increasing, we are getting more and more staff and it is more important there is a human level everyone is on. 

‘Whether you are the star striker like Ollie Watkins or someone who’s a part-time cleaner, when you are in this building you are the same.’

McGinn’s ideas, his work ethic and his talent as a midfielder, with a lovely left foot and the kind of technique that allows him to play a variety of roles, have combined to make him the leader of a Villa side which has quickly emerged as one of the great success stories of the season and which will break into the top four if they win at Tottenham on Sunday.

There was alarm at the club when McGinn hobbled off towards the end of Scotland’s draw in their Euro 2024 qualifier against Norway last Sunday because he is Villa’s conductor. 

Optimism has grown that he will be fit to play in north London. When he plays well, Villa tend to play well. He is a relentless runner, a ferocious presser and a man who uses his body to guard the ball as jealously as any player in the top flight.

Beating Spurs will not be easy. McGinn knows that. It will also pit him against a team coached by another manager he admires, Ange Postecoglou. McGinn’s grandfather was Celtic chairman many years ago and there is a part of him that is cheering on the former Bhoys manager in his exploits south of the border.

‘When he was appointed Spurs manager I heard the same old nonsense us Scottish people hear down here: “Oh he’s only done well up there because it’s a pub league”,’ says McGinn. 

‘But I had spoken to the Celtic players and my brothers who had played against his teams and they spoke very highly of him.

‘Tottenham are exciting to watch. Their home game with Chelsea recently was the wildest 100 minutes of football I’ve ever seen. 

‘I have never met their manager but I only hear good things about him. It’s similar to the way the manager is thought of here. They have a clear identity how they want to play and they stick by it.

‘We thought we could challenge for the top four before the season started. We had a lot of belief in the team. Then we went to Newcastle on the opening day and lost 5-1. Any sort of over-confidence, arrogance, complacency we might have had, all that came out in one game and collided with a few injuries to two of our main starters.

‘That was good for us, it brought us back to earth. We had a bit of a chastening experience at Anfield this season, too. The minute you think you’re doing OK in this league, not only do you get beat, you get smashed.

‘We are in uncharted territory, a lot of us. The potential is high but it’s about keeping everyone fit, focused and humble. That’s my job, that’s the manager’s job. Humility’s a big thing in this league because, if you take your foot off the gas, you’re in trouble.’

McGinn has spoken before about how much he relishes playing for Unai Emery, who was never given a real chance to succeed in his first foray into English football with Arsenal, but is now proving at Villa why he is so highly regarded in the European game.

McGinn is 29 and has always been someone who plays with infectious enthusiasm, but you do not need to speak to him for long to understand that he feels Emery has unlocked more potential in his play since he joined from Villarreal last year.

‘He is really, really good at bringing everybody’s best qualities to a plan,’ says McGinn. ‘There might be times where I have played up front but our game plan isn’t the same as the week before when he had Moussa Diaby up front. He will coach a completely different style and formation in immense detail to suit me being in that position and we will work and work on it.

‘I could turn up for training on a Tuesday and he’s wanting me to work on being a left winger and I could turn up on the Wednesday and he wants me to work on being a central midfielder. Every detail gets improved. Every detail gets analysed and examined. There’s no ceiling. I know I’m getting older but there is no ceiling to what you can learn from him to improve.

‘Today, we spent a long time analysing our defeat by Nottingham Forest a few weeks ago. If we go behind in a game, it’s about flipping the mentality from dwelling on the opportunity we might be about to lose to being more positive about how to deal with it. Take a deep breath, deal with the noise from the home fans and be confident in our ability to turn it around.’

The players were rapt as they listened to their manager. No one collapsed in fits of laughter. No one had to be dragged outside. No one got a detention. No one had to face a mother’s wrath.