Wanderers, Rovers & Rangers

John Duerden

Description

Throughout history British coaches have made their presence felt across the world. From helping humble teams become the super clubs we know today to tactical innovations as the game grew nation by nation, the British had a huge hand in shaping football's early global history. In the modern age they are still to be found far from home but where once they were at the forefront they now walk some of the less travelled pathways. Even some of the highest profile footballers have found coaching careers that have taken them to places they may never have considered before and Tony Adams, Bryan Robson and Howard Kendall talk about their adventures as Wanderers, Rovers & Rangers, along with with many more as the book charts a course through the world of British coaches near, far and everywhere in between. Hear about the British coaches who have dealt with outbreaks of Ebola in Africa during World cup qualification, earthquakes in Japan, dictatorial big club owners in Spain, match-fixing in Southeast Asia and prejudice about the British way of playing almost everywhere. Meet characters such as Bob Houghton, who took Malmo to the 1979 European Cup final, Tony Waiters, the former England goalkeeper who led Canada to their only World Cup in 1986 and Gary White, the young Englishman who gave Guam a first ever World Cup qualification win in 2015. Wanderers, Rovers & Rangers tells the story of modern British coaches plying their trade worldwide and some of the incredible triumphs and disasters along the way. From the sublime to the ridiculous one thing becomes clear - football has never mattered more worldwide, and British coaches will continue to carve their own paths through the game.

Informations

• Publié par: Ockley Books
• Date de parution: 24 août 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781912643868
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

Published by Ockley Books Limited, Huddersfield, England
First published August 2018
All text copyright of the identified author, the moral right of John Duerden to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without prior permission in writing from the author,
John Duerden , and the publisher Ockley Books
ISBN 978-1-910906-163 eBook ISBN 978-1-912643-868
Layout design by Michael Kinlan, edited by David Hartrick
Printed bound by: Biddles Printing, King s Lynn

TO MY MUM AND DAD, WITH LOVE
Thanks go to David Hartrick at Ockley books for his enthusiasm and Roger Domeneghetti for making it all read better. The book obviously could not exist without the coach interviews. So many thanks to all those British coaches who gave their time and opinions and I just hope that I have done them justice. Thanks also to the people behind The British Coaches Abroad Association. Their website - britishcoachesabroad.com - is not only fascinating but is obviously a labour of love.
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
THE STORY SO FAR
THE WHYS AND THE WHERES
THE BRITISH DISEASE
LEARNING THE TRADE
THE UPS
UP AGAINST THE ODDS
EBOLA, EARTHQUAKES, LAWSUITS AND REPLAYS
WORKING FOR THE MAN
STARS, SCRIBES, SUPPORTERS
BRITS EVERYWHERE IN INDIA
BACK TO BLIGHTY
PROLOGUE
It is still a privilege to be a British football writer in most parts of the world. The respect is perhaps not as high as it once was but hailing from the home of the modern game helps you make a good first impression. In 2008, I attended Shanghai Shenhua s last training session before the new season kicked off, not to watch it as such, but to talk to coach Wu Jinqui, one of the nicest guys in Chinese football, who was fired by the club s ruthless owner, Zhu Jun, shortly after the season began in the same week that his mother died (though he came back to succeed Gus Poyet in 2017). As training finished, Wu turned to me and asked me what I thought of the session. He seemed genuinely interested and it was a question he would not have asked a local journalist. I mumbled some inanity about how the set pieces were great and how Hamilton Ricard was looking sharp in the new system. The former Middlesbrough striker was to be less happy on the final day of the season when he missed a penalty that cost the club the title, although at least Kylie Minogue shared the blame, as her concert at Shenhua s usual stadium prompted a move to an unfamiliar arena.
Rightly or wrongly, when it comes to football, the British media is by far the most influential around the world when it comes to setting the international agenda. The English language helps of course. Most Chinese journalists can read at least enough English to understand your bog-standard transfer rumour. Doing so in Italian or German is a much less common skill. As well as the appeal of the English Premier League, the relative ubiquity of the language means that in many countries journalists are getting all their European football news from the English media. If you are writing for one of the country s best-known media organisations then you will usually be welcomed with open arms and anything you say be heard by open ears.
If only the same could be said of Blighty s coaches. At one time, you could find Brit coaches in clubs such as Barcelona, Ajax and AC Milan. The odds of such a thing happening in the near future are long. In coaching terms, the reputation of the country is not as high as it used to be and while there are many sons of Albion abroad earning a living, the destinations are these days are not quite as glamorous in football terms though often a lot more exotic and interesting. This book is about these men and their stories, why they came overseas, how they were and are seen, their owners, players, fans, media and lives, and what it is like these days to be a British coach overseas.
The idea for the book came in two stages. The venue for the first was a nondescript hotel on the eastern side of downtown Bangkok on 3rd September 2010. There was tea, lots of tea, as three Englishmen - Bryan Robson, Bob Houghton and Steve Darby - talked of football and life overseas. I was there too, just enjoying the tales of job offers from Tehran, life in Bangkok under military curfew, and summers in Cape Town. It was fascinating. Robson, the best known of all three, was just months into a spell as the head coach of the Thai national team. For the former England captain, working abroad was all new and still full of wonder, and the frustration at the way things sometimes worked, or didn t, was equally fresh.
Darby and Houghton may sound like a firm of High Street solicitors, but they are old international hands. Darby, a native of Liverpool, has been in Southeast Asia for decades and, at the time, was Robson s assistant, just as he had been Peter Reid s assistant with Thailand not long before. Houghton has been all over. The Londoner took lowly Malm to the 1979 European Cup final before working in North America, China, Saudi Arabia, India, Uzbekistan, to name just a few.
When we sat down for chat and chai, he was in charge of India and in the Thai capital for a friendly. He had braved the terrible traffic that constantly chokes the buzzing metropolis for the pre-match Press conference. Held around one of those long rectangular tables in an upstairs conference room, it was a low-key affair as this was a game between two nations that found themselves with nothing to do on a FIFA match day, although India were preparing for a rare Asian Cup appearance four months later.
Houghton was, not exactly annoyed, but obviously a little frustrated at the questions that were asked as soon as the floor was open. They came from both local and visiting journalists, and focused on the nationality of the two coaches. Just two months after Spain had thrilled much of the world and lifted the ultimate global prize with a kind of football that seemed light years ahead of anything coming from England, the questions reflected concerns as to what spectacle we would be treated to at the Muang Thong Stadium the following evening.
Are you going to play 4-4-2? Will India and Thailand play the long ball? The questions were variations on the same theme. In a summer when La Roja were sexy, England were looking old, predictable and a little on the ugly side. Houghton wearily promised, in his laconic style of speaking, reminiscent of ex-Clash frontman Joe Strummer - another internationalist - that India was not looking for a team of six-footers and would not treat the fans to a version of 1980s Wimbledon. OK, the team kicked off with a long, diagonal ball towards the corner flag to win an attacking throw-in in an advanced position, but this was largely an entertaining game between two technically minded teams trying to play decent football.
After full-time and the post-match Press conferences, Robson returned to downtown Bangkok for a few beers in the Manchester United bar around Sukhimvit, where what you pay for a pint of Stella is not that different to the prices at home. Local journalists munched on the squid that had been grilled outside, talking about the 90 minutes just witnessed. Thai or English, we still play the same, smiled one. Still can t score. The taxi driver on the way back to the city said much the same thing, lamenting 1980s hero Piyapong Pue-On, who scored goals for fun and, so the legend goes, turned down moves to big English clubs.
There are plenty of other far-flung technical areas ploughed by British feet and quite a few tacticians out there broadening horizons, their own and hopefully those of others. In football coaching, we may have a reputation for insularity and simplicity that may only now be starting to change after the twin World Cup wins of 2017, but this is not the full story. There are lots of stories from these tactical travellers - many of which had to leave home as they were not getting a look-in at British clubs - and I hope that this book is able to recount just a few.
Much has changed since 1966. The English national team were on top of the world back then, and an Englishman, Denis Neville, was in charge of the national team of the Netherlands. Not only that, Neville gave Johan Cruyff his international debut before returning home to take over at - wait for it - non-league Canvey Island.
THE STORY SO FAR
The late nineteenth century must have been a wild time at Britain s ports. It was the peak of the imperial epoch, time for empire-building in more ways than one. British sailors, soldiers, engineers, businessmen, traders and missionaries and plenty of others went far and wide, and plenty took a ball with them. Soon they were bouncing merrily along the paths forged by ever-growing business links between the first industrialised nation and the rest of the world.
Take South America, for example. By the late-1800s there was a huge number of Britons in Latin America - as many as 40,000 in Argentina alone, mostly concentrated in Buenos Aires. In their leisure time many of these expats played sport and formed clubs, and in 1867, Yorkshire-born brothers William and Thomas Hogg founded the first football club in South America, Buenos Aires FC. The indigenous elite also began to play football due to the social cachet afforded by its links to Britain and within a decade the sport had spread to the masses, a process replicated across the continent.
Alexander Watson Hutton arrived in Buenos Aires in 1882 to teach at the Saint Andrew Scottish School but he fell out with the board over their lack of a sporting programme, so two years later he started the English High School, where he taught the pupils football. In 1893 he helped establish the Argentine Association Football League, becoming its first president, and he is acknowledged as the father of Argentine football . The Scots had quite an influence on football in that country and Jos L