Christopher Gerald Bart-Williams (16 June 1974 – 24 July 2023) was a

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kick (football), kicking a football (ball), ball to score a goal (sports), goal. Unqualified, football (word), the word ''football'' generally means the form of football t ...

coach and professional player. Born in Sierra Leone, he represented England internationally. As a player, he was a defender and

midfielder In the sport of association football, a midfielder takes an Glossary of association football terms#O, outfield position primarily in the middle of the pitch. Midfielders may play an exclusively defensive role, breaking up attacks, and are in t ...

and notably played in the

Premier League The Premier League is a professional association football league in England and the highest level of the English football league system. Contested by 20 clubs, it operates on a system of promotion and relegation with the English Football Lea ...

for

Sheffield Wednesday Sheffield Wednesday Football Club is a professional association football club based in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England. They compete in the EFL Championship, the second level of the English football league system. Formed in 1867 as an off ...

Nottingham Forest Nottingham Forest Football Club is a professional association football club based in West Bridgford, Nottinghamshire, England. The club competes in the Premier League, the top tier of English football league system, English football. Founde ...

and

Charlton Athletic Charlton Athletic Football Club is a professional association football club based in Charlton, south-east London, England. The team compete in the EFL Championship, the second level of the English football league system. Their home ground is ...

. He also played in the

Football League The English Football League (EFL) is a league of professional association football, football clubs from England and Wales. Founded in 1888 as the Football League, it is the oldest football league in Association football around the world, the w ...

for

Leyton Orient Leyton Orient Football Club, commonly referred to as Orient, is a professional association football club based in Leyton, Waltham Forest, London, England. The team compete in EFL League One, the third level of the English football league system. ...

and

Ipswich Town Ipswich Town Football Club is a professional football club based in Ipswich, Suffolk, England. The club currently competes in the EFL Championship, the second tier of English football. Ipswich Town were founded in 1878 but did not turn ...

, in Cyprus with

APOEL APOEL FC (; short for Αθλητικός Ποδοσφαιρικός Όμιλος Ελλήνων Λευκωσίας, ''Athletikos Podosferikos Omilos Ellinon Lefkosias'', "Athletic Football Club of Greeks of Nicosia") is a Cypriot professio ...

and in Malta with

Marsaxlokk Marsaxlokk () is a small, traditional fishing village in the Southern Region, Malta, Southern Region of Malta. It has a harbour, and is a tourist attraction known for its views, fishing and history. As of March 2014, the village had a populati ...

. Born in

Sierra Leone Sierra Leone, officially the Republic of Sierra Leone, is a country on the southwest coast of West Africa. It is bordered to the southeast by Liberia and by Guinea to the north. Sierra Leone's land area is . It has a tropical climate and envi ...

, He was capped by

England England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...

at youth level and went on to play for England under-21s and was called up to train with the senior squad although he never won a full England cap. Following retirement, Bart-Williams moved into coaching in the United States and notably worked as assistant coach of

Women's Premier Soccer League The Women's Premier Soccer League (WPSL) is an amateur women's soccer league in the United States. History The WPSL is the longest-running active women's soccer league as it enters its 25th season in 2023. The WPSL is also the largest women ...

side SoccerPlus Connecticut.

Early life

Born in

Freetown Freetown () is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Sierra Leone. It is a major port city on the Atlantic Ocean and is located in the Western Area of the country. Freetown is Sierra Leone's major urban, economic, financial, cultural, e ...

, Sierra Leone, Bart-Williams grew up in

North London North London is the northern part of London, England, north of the River Thames and the City of London. It extends from Clerkenwell and Finsbury, on the edge of the City of London financial district, to Greater London's boundary with Hertfordshi ...

and attended The School of St. David's and St Katharine's in

Hornsey Hornsey () is a district of north London, England, in the London Borough of Haringey. It is an inner-suburban, for the most part residential, area centred north of Charing Cross. It adjoins green spaces Queen's Wood to the west and Alexand ...

Playing career

Early career

Bart-Williams began his professional career at the age of 16 with

and scored on his debut, a 4–0 win against

Tranmere Rovers Tranmere Rovers Football Club are a professional association football club based in Birkenhead, Merseyside, England. The team competes in , the fourth level of the English football league system. Founded in 1884 as Belmont Football Club, they ...

on 2 February 1991. He made 36 league appearances with the club and scored twice.

Sheffield Wednesday

showed interest in him and subsequently bought him for £275,000 in November 1991, the year they won promotion to the

Football League First Division The Football League First Division was the top division of the Football League in England from 1888 until the end of the 1991–92 season, when its teams broke away to form the Premier League. From 1992 to 2004, the name First Division was g ...

and were also winners of the

Football League Cup The English Football League Cup, often referred to as the League Cup and currently known as the Carabao Cup for sponsorship reasons, is an annual Single-elimination tournament, knockout competition in men's domestic football in England. Orga ...

. Once with Sheffield Wednesday, Bart-Williams was immediately given a first-team place. He began his career playing as an attacking

. On 12 April 1993, he scored a

hat-trick A hat-trick or hat trick is the achievement of a generally positive feat three times in a match, or another achievement based on the number three. Origin The term first appeared in 1858 in cricket, to describe H. H. Stephenson taking three Wick ...

against

Southampton Southampton is a port City status in the United Kingdom, city and unitary authority in Hampshire, England. It is located approximately southwest of London, west of Portsmouth, and southeast of Salisbury. Southampton had a population of 253, ...

in a 5–2 win. Bart-Williams played for Wednesday as a substitute in the

1993 FA Cup Final The 1993 FA Cup final was contested by Arsenal and Sheffield Wednesday at Wembley. The original match, played on 15 May 1993, finished 1–1. Arsenal won the replay on 20 May, 2–1 after extra-time. It was Arsenal's sixth FA Cup final victor ...

replacing

Chris Waddle Christopher Roland Waddle (born 14 December 1960) is an English former professional football player and manager. He had a spell as Burnley manager during the 1997–98 season, but has not returned to coaching since. Largely since retiring he h ...

in the first game and

Roland Nilsson Nils Lennart Roland Nilsson (born 27 November 1963) is a Swedish professional football manager and former player. He was most recently the head coach of Allsvenskan club IFK Göteborg. As a player, Nilsson played 116 games for Sweden, making ...

towards the end of the replay. Bart-Williams also helped the Owls reach the

semi-finals in the 1993–94 season and also appeared in their short-lived

UEFA Cup The asterisk ( ), from Late Latin , from Ancient Greek , , "little star", is a Typography, typographical symbol. It is so called because it resembles a conventional image of a star (heraldry), heraldic star. Computer scientists and Mathematici ...

campaign (the club's first European run since the 1960s) the previous season.

Nottingham Forest

After four years, he moved to

for the sum of £2.5 million. Bart-Williams had a successful spell with Forest, and even though he played as a defensive midfielder he managed to score 35 goals, even being the club's top scorer in the 2000–01 season, and was often clinical from free kicks and penalties. During a game in 2000, Forest tried to experiment with their formation by playing 3–5–2 and played Bart-Williams as a sweeper. This experiment turned out to be a successful one as Nottingham Forest won 5–0 against

Burnley Burnley () is a town and the administrative centre of the wider Borough of Burnley in Lancashire, England, with a 2021 population of 78,266. It is north of Manchester and east of Preston, at the confluence of the River Calder and River B ...

, with Bart-Williams scoring twice. In 2001, Forest found themselves in financial difficulties and had to sell their better players. Bart-Williams turned down moves to

and

Birmingham City Birmingham City Football Club is a professional football club based in Birmingham, England. Formed in 1875 as Small Heath Alliance, it was renamed Small Heath in 1888, Birmingham in 1905, and Birmingham City in 1943. The team compete in the ...

Later career

In December 2001, Bart-Williams left Forest, signing for

, initially on a short-term contract. In May 2002, he signed a new two-year deal at the club. Bart-Williams had 20 appearances and two goals. After spending two seasons with Charlton, Bart-Williams moved to

, initially on loan in September 2003, and then permanently for the rest of the 2003–04 season. He was released at the end of the season and decided to move away from English football. Next for Bart-Williams was a move to

in Cyprus in September 2004. He had been linked with a return to Nottingham Forest, although the rumour was denied by Forest. After unsuccessful attempts to lure

Paul Gascoigne Paul John Gascoigne (, born 27 May 1967), nicknamed Gazza, is an English former professional footballer who played as an attacking midfielder. Regarded as one of the best playmakers of his generation and one of the best English footballers of ...

to the club, on 6 August 2005 Maltese team

signed Bart-Williams. But he managed only eight appearances and was sent home only two months into his three-year contract.

Coaching career

After retiring from professional play, Bart-Williams moved to the United States to coach alongside former U.S. women's national soccer team head coach

Tony DiCicco Anthony D. DiCicco Jr. (August 5, 1948 – June 19, 2017) was an American soccer player, coach, administrator, and TV commentator. He is best known as the coach of the United States women's national soccer team from 1994 to 1999, during which ...

. He served as an assistant for the

Boston Breakers The Boston Breakers were an American professional women's soccer club based in the Boston neighborhood of Allston. The team competed in the National Women's Soccer League (NWSL). They replaced the original Breakers, who competed in the defu ...

, a team in the WPSL. He also was head coach of their reserve squads under the SoccerPlus Connecticut club. Bart-Williams joined the

Quinnipiac University Quinnipiac University ( ) is a private university in Hamden, Connecticut, United States. The university grants undergraduate, graduate, and professional degrees. It also hosts the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. History What became ...

men's soccer programme as an assistant coach, helping to lead them to a 2013 MAAC

championship In sport, a championship is a competition in which the aim is to decide which individual or team is the champion. Championship systems Various forms of competition can be referred to by the term championship. Title match system In this sys ...

and the first round of the

NCAA The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates College athletics in the United States, student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, and Simon Fraser University, 1 in Canada. ...

soccer tournament. He also served as an assistant coach for the Quinnipiac University men's soccer team for six years. Bart-Williams ran an international soccer training and college recruiting service, CBW Soccer Elite, placing talented student-athletes in American college soccer programmes. Bart-Williams was also a consultant to Charlotte Soccer Academy's U.S. Soccer Development Academy programme and was the head of Gulliver Schools' boys' soccer programme in Miami, Florida. In February 2022, Dade County F.C. announced he had been appointed as head coach to oversee all their football programmes.

Death

Bart-Williams died on 24 July 2023, at the age of 49. He had been working and living in the United States. His death came on the same day as his former Sheffield Wednesday manager

Trevor Francis Trevor John Francis (19 April 1954 – 24 July 2023) was an English footballer who played as a forward for a number of clubs in England, the United States, Italy, Scotland and Australia. In 1979 he became Britain's first £1 million pla ...

Career statistics

Honours

;Sheffield Wednesday *

FA Cup The Football Association Challenge Cup, more commonly known as the FA Cup, is an annual Single-elimination tournament, knockout association football, football competition in domestic Football in England, English football. First played during ...

runner-up: 1992–93 ;Nottingham Forest *

: 1997–98 ;England U19 *

FIFA World Youth Championship The FIFA U-20 World Cup is the biennial football world championship tournament for FIFA members' men's national teams with players under the age of 20. The competition has been staged every two years since the inaugural tournament in 1977 when i ...

third place:

1993 The United Nations General Assembly, General Assembly of the United Nations designated 1993 as: * International Year for the World's Indigenous People The year 1993 in the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands had only 364 days, since its ...

;Individual *

Player of the Year: 2000–01 *

PFA Fans' Player of the Year The Professional Footballers' Association Fans' Player of the Year (often called the PFA Fans' Player of the Year, or simply the Fans' Player of the Year) award is given to footballers in the top four flights of English football, the Premier L ...

: 2000–01 First Division

References

External links

Chris Bart-Williams at Marsaxlokkfc.com
*
CBW Soccer Elite
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bart-Williams, Chris 1974 births 2023 deaths Footballers from the London Borough of Haringey People from Hornsey English men's footballers England men's youth international footballers England men's under-21 international footballers England men's B international footballers Men's association football defenders Men's association football midfielders Men's association football utility players Leyton Orient F.C. players Sheffield Wednesday F.C. players Nottingham Forest F.C. players Charlton Athletic F.C. players Ipswich Town F.C. players APOEL FC players Marsaxlokk F.C. players English Football League players Premier League players Cypriot First Division players Expatriate men's footballers in Cyprus Expatriate men's footballers in Malta Expatriate men's soccer players in the United States English expatriate men's footballers Sierra Leone Creole people Sierra Leonean emigrants to the United Kingdom English football coaches Black British sportsmen