I always say to the Spurs players, ‘It’s all recorded up here. One day I’ll show you the looks on your faces when you go out the door to train, and later I’ll show you your faces when you head back to the dressing room. Why don’t you make the same face when you get back to the dressing room as when you head out to training? Why not enjoy training? Why don’t you love it? Do you only see training as something difficult, an obligation? Do you like football? Or is it just a job for you or a way to earn money? If the answer to this last question is yes, you can’t be the best, it’s impossible . . .’
When I say that, I often think about those girls.
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Many people told me that I would be crazy to take over an Espanyol side in crisis, that it would go badly. As a consequence, I would disappear from the map. I was 37 and I’d retired three years earlier. When it was offered to me, my head was telling me not do it and it’d be difficult to save them. Maybe I didn’t have enough experience, but I followed my gut. I said to myself, ‘Why not?’
Halfway through the season in January 2009, the team languished 18th in the table with only 15 points. I was the third coach that campaign, which was the last one at Montjuïc. The Cornellà-El Prat stadium was set to be completed ahead of the summer and an inaugural fixture against Rafa Benítez’s Liverpool was in the offing, but first we had to stave off relegation.
My first game was in the Copa del Rey quarter-finals against Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona, with Messi coming off the bench in the second half, yet we held them to a 0–0 stalemate. Not long after in the season we headed to the Camp Nou in the league as the basement boys, yet we beat them with Iván de la Peña bagging a brace. He had never previously scored twice in a game, not even at youth level. We ended up surviving comfortably. We finished tenth on 47 points, thanks to a spectacular second half of the season.
We had some decent campaigns. Twenty players from the academy were handed their debuts during my tenure. I had a showdown with club legend Raúl Tamudo, I made mistakes, we won, we lost and I learned from every second of it. Those five seasons allowed me to develop into a coach that championed a particular style of play and did so at a club that we all at home loved.
In the midst of all that, on my watch, our captain Dani Jarque passed away, aged 26. The blow to the club is still being felt.
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The decision to come to England had plenty to do with my wife and Jesús Pérez, who had already become my assistant at Espanyol. Of course, I’ll always be grateful to Nicola Cortese, the Southampton chairman, for having the courage to bring me in. But, in truth, I did not want to join. Why? First of all because I didn’t know a word of English, and second because I’d left Espanyol in November and planned to get my head in order and start studying English from January until June. I even had a teacher lined up. I wanted to devote weekends to the family and then be fresh to take on another challenge in five or six months’ time.
I’d watch my son play football at the weekend, I’d take my wife out for dinner on Saturday evenings, we’d go to watch a film on Sundays, I’d watch live football. It would’ve been the perfect world, but suddenly after finishing one day, I was offered the possibility of going at it again. My head was about to explode.
This is how we made the decision: I was with Jesús and my wife, discussing whether we should say yes or no. It all felt overwhelming for a moment and I said I wouldn’t go to England, that’s it, goodbye. I went to the bathroom downstairs and silence descended upon the house.
I wasn’t scared. I respect everything and everyone, but I don’t fear anything. My four years at Espanyol had been so tough and I thought, ‘Where do I have to go? Southampton? Where’s that? In England? No bloody way!’ We’d started tracking all the major leagues and gathering information, but, as I said, I’d already planned the following six months in my head.
I went back into the lounge and both of them were staring at me. My wife said, ‘You have to go.’
I looked at Jesús and he said, ‘I agree, we have to go!’ Of course, he wanted to go because he spoke English! I thought, ‘What can I say to a player when I do not understand a word of what is said to me?’ Jesús insisted, ‘It’s an opportunity for you.’ My wife agreed. I don’t know why she had that vision, but she said that England was a good place for me.
At that moment I decided to accept the offer.
From then on, of course, I started watching game after game. I immersed myself in Southampton, the other teams, the whole Premier League and all the rest.
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I don’t know if two weeks’ rest is long enough after a gruelling Premier League season. It’s an unknown. To put it another way: holidays are never long enough. It happens to all of us. When you have a perfect week, you want another one. If you have a month off, you’ll certainly want another one. In my 17-year playing career, I always said, ‘The day when I stop playing football will be the day when I enjoy my holidays again, I’ll have unlimited holidays.’ Pah. It’s hard to do that, isn’t it? When you don’t know what’s happening with your future, those holidays feel very different compared with when you know you have a fixed target ahead of you. When you don’t know if you’re going to work, if you’re going to find a team, holidays stop being that coveted source of relaxation.
I am lucky I work at Spurs, a top club, but it’s been a confusing summer with mixed emotions. We start pre-season tomorrow. My blood still boils when I think about the Newcastle game – we need to keep looking for the reasons. Of course, what we achieved and the way we did it didn’t go unnoticed. Big European clubs have been looking for and interviewing prospective new coaches. They want excitement and hard work. Not to mention success as soon as possible. One of them rang me, one that wants to change things and win the lot. They got in touch on several occasions, but it isn’t time to change. Pep Guardiola is coming to the Premier League with Manchester City, José Mourinho is taking over at Old Trafford, Antonio Conte is going to Chelsea. We’ll have to perform really well to be at their level. But we can do it.
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On Friday 1 July, Jesús, Toni and Miki (Miguel D’Agostino, a former teammate from my Newell’s days) started working with the players who weren’t on international duty and also with the group of youngsters who, at the end of last season, we’d decided would be given a chance to train with the first team.
My team and I love helping young players. It’s like planting a tree, watering it and watching it grow. All the fruit that it bears comes from the land and environment that you put in place. There’s nothing quite like winning with the team you joined at 13 or 14 and have given your heart and soul to. You then move on to play for the first team with a feeling of identity that offers the team an added extra. It’s something that will be stamped on every side I coach. It was instilled in my genes during my time at Newell’s, it’s what Griffa and Bielsa taught me.
In any case, moving up is not an automatic process. Over a three, four, five or six-month period, the players with potential train with the first team until they are ready. We don’t just play footballers from the Under-21s straight away. As with everything, there is a process of adapting to training and gaining acceptance. The first-team players need to feel that the youngster is part of the group, so his time comes when a majority endorse him with both sporting and personal recognition.
Today, Monday 4 July, I joined up with the squad.
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We worked on improving the squad early on, even before last spring. It’s the chairman who takes the final steps when it comes to transfers, especially with regard to financial decisions and we do have our limits in that field. We’re kicking off pre-season feeling calm, as we’ve sealed two signings that will boost the squad: Victor Wanyama from Southampton and Vincent Janssen from AZ Alkmaar. It’s now time to see what other options might crop up.
I already know Victor from when Southampton signed him from Celtic three years ago. He has the human attributes we want, as does Janssen, who we need for a positi
on for which we already have a number one. It was a pleasant surprise to find someone like Victor back then, a mature 21-year-old with clear ideas in his head and burning to be part of the group. These things can be detected quickly. You don’t go around with a questionnaire to deduce which characteristics a player possesses, but psychology plays a part. On top of that, everything is explained to them, so there’s no excuse. There are no surprises, so there can be no complaints.
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We’ve based the first few days of training on getting our rhythm back and reconditioning the players, but without going as far as working on our style of play because many members of the squad are still missing. From day six, we’ll start applying some of the basic concepts of the game, both in and out of possession, in preparation for the first friendly at the end of the first ten-day training block.
In this period, we’ve been able to focus on players who are knocking on the first-team door. Two in particular: Josh Onomah, who we ended up convincing to stay, despite him having one foot out of the club after many clubs showed interest – he made his debut for us, age 18, in November 2015 replacing Dele Alli; and Marcus Edwards, another sensationally talented player with the ability to dazzle – he’s a little Messi.
We keep trying to get all the layers of the club (chairman, sporting directors, first team, academy heads) to push together in the same direction, so we don’t lose anyone we want. John McDermott’s job, as head of coaching and development since February this year, has been crucial. Not all the effort is focused on the pitch: the youngsters’ parents need to be convinced that their sons are going to get a chance at the club.
Many hours have been invested in the club’s structure and in debating the new arrivals’ situation over these first two weeks. I have to admit that the working day has been extended since I came in. I love chatting to everyone. We aren’t here watching videos all day long. I spend plenty of time speaking to people at the club.
I like going through situations over and over again, so that I can see things from different points of view and consider a range of scenarios before making a final decision: transfers, moving players up and down, deciding if a player isn’t cut out for us or has gone off the rails. I make group decisions, rather than unilateral ones.
We try never to rush our steps.
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Our 12 international players arrived two days before we headed to Australia for the International Champions Cup to face Juventus (26 July) and the Champions League runners-up Atlético Madrid (29 July). We then play Inter Milan in Oslo. It’ll be a short but intense pre-season.
Before we left, a decision had to be made about the players that had just touched down. Should we make them train with the others and take them to Australia to play in two friendlies, despite being short on preparation time? That would have meant two days of travelling without training, getting to a hotel, staying there for seven nights, going from summer to winter, not knowing what condition the pitches and facilities would be in and then two more days to travel back. It would have meant they’d start proper pre-season ten or 12 days after the others.
Alternatively we could leave them in London and they could be eased back into training, giving them stability and a calmness after Euro 2016 and their holidays. If so, we would expect them to be in good shape when we got back from Australia. We decided on the latter.
When the club initially suggested the friendlies to me a while back, I explained that the dates seemed fine, but the internationals wouldn’t be going. I kept my word. I know the club were concerned about letting the fans down by touring without the big names. It happens: clubs say yes ten months earlier and in the final few days, there is a lot of debate to be had. The most important thing is the players’ fitness. It’s true that our fans in Australia, and there are many of them, expected to see players like Harry Kane, Hugo Lloris, Dele Alli and co., but they have to understand that footballers aren’t machines, they need rest and suitable training regimes to be able to compete for ten months.
We won that battle. I think the players who stayed home were happy, although they do have plenty of homework to do.
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Jet lag has set in. We spent two days travelling which involved leaving one morning and arriving the following evening.
Yesterday after dinner, I went for a drink with Toni, Miki and Jesús, the hardcore coaching team, at a bar at the Grand Hyatt in Melbourne where we’re staying. I mentioned I could see energy levels were down. We were, in fact, all shattered. A man suddenly appeared and he wanted to say hello to me. He was wearing a Tottenham tracksuit top and started thanking me for what we’d been doing at the club. He was a Malaysian lawyer who’d come to see the Juve match with his wife. His family supports Liverpool, but he’s a Tottenham fan because he’s always liked the club’s style of play. He follows us all over the globe. He usually brings his six-year-old son, although he left him at home on this occasion.
He had something different to say. Yes, he was thankful that we’ve been competing at the highest level, but he started mentioning a heap of things that are often undervalued. Most of the time in football you only see those who win trophies, but this man explained how proud he was of our side. He felt that not having remarkable individuals from yesteryear like Ossie Ardiles, Ricky Villa or Paul Gascoigne made us a strong team and the fans really like the sense of collective belonging that we exude.
He looked back on that tough 2–2 draw with Chelsea at Stamford Bridge which ended our hopes of the title last season. He cried that day, as did his young son. He told me something that stuck in my mind. It wasn’t the expected result, but the team showed how much it hurt not to win, which signified a change in history, not just in recent terms, but possibly over the last 30 or 40 years.
Allan Dixon, our first-team manager for non-football activities, was also there and he took down the fan’s details because I invited him and his family to the training ground, to see how we work. I want him to speak to the players about those group values that he appreciates so much from a distance, and explain to them what their behaviour on the pitch means to people, young and old, who live in other countries and on other continents. Sometimes these things aren’t valued highly enough.
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I’m in almost daily conversation with the guys we left behind in England. I WhatsApp them a lot. I told Danny Rose that it hurt me to send them messages during the Euros because they disappointed me at Newcastle. He admitted they still feel ashamed of that performance.
We’re videoing training sessions both here and in London. The London videos are sent to us in Australia. I’ve just been watching one from yesterday morning. I copied a part of the session and sent it back to them, congratulating them on their work. Sometimes intensity levels drop when the manager is absent, but these boys are fully aware of how important the process is and they give it their all without anyone needing to watch over them.
Before we look at Juventus-related footage ahead of our game against them, we’ll play the video from the Tottenham training ground. As the guys come into the meeting room, they’ll see just how hard the others are training back in London.
You should never stop studying the finer details. Eric Dier scored for England and performed well in midfield, although it was a difficult tournament for the team. Manchester United want to sign him to play in that position, although he arrived here as a centre-back. It’s not always easy to keep your feet on the ground after representing your country. We’ll have to keep tabs on Eric. He’s a young and intelligent guy and it’s all happening very fast for him. Dele Alli is also experiencing a new situation. Praise can create confusion.
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It’s the night before the Juventus game. We did gym work in the morning and then some activities with local dignitaries at lunchtime. We later visited the Melbourne Cricket Ground, the legendary cricket and Australian football stadium where we’re going to play.
Before training, we had the first press conference of the season which, in genera
l terms, went well. The journalists asked me about what had happened at Newcastle and if my anger had waned. I said that it hadn’t and I’ll only be able to calm myself down when we’re all together and I tell the players what I need to say to their faces.
I brought all the players and coaching staff together at the start of our open training session. I stood them in a line facing the stand where all the fans were. At the end of the short talk, we all applauded and greeted the people who had made the effort to be there. It started pouring with rain and some parts of the pitch became waterlogged, but we managed to do some tactical drills to work on some specific patterns of play both in defence and in attack.
At the end of the session, Toni, Jesús, Miki, a club director and I went out for dinner at a fine Melbourne restaurant. We all went for the twelve-course taster menu which had a bit of everything, including kangaroo, and suitable wines. Toni is a fellow wine lover, although I don’t think he’s always been one. When we were at Espanyol, we developed a tradition of going out for dinner the evening before matches. One day at the Juan Carlos I hotel, they brought over a wine, we sampled it and Toni said, ‘No, this one is no good, I don’t like it.’ We got them to bring us another one, but we made sure they put the first wine in Toni’s glass again. He tried it and with a serious expression on his face, stated, ‘Yes, this one is good.’ We never let him forget that incident.
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It’s the evening of 26 July. We played Juventus, the Italian champions, who put out a star-studded line-up. We lost 2–1 but confidence was flowing, especially in the second half. Érik Lamela scored for us after a powerful run by Wanyama and we put the Italians under real pressure in search of an equaliser. It was the first game for many of the 17- and 18-year-olds, and there were a few pleasant surprises. Twenty-year-old Will Miller, for example, a committed, hardworking player who always gives his all, did well in the first 45 minutes. We found out that he’d been the main actor in Oliver Twist (a BBC One adaptation in 2007), Runaway (2009) and others. I asked him why he gave up acting and he told me that he wanted to play football. It was tough being a footballer and going to acting school and spending time with his friends, so he’s leaving that side for now, maybe to take it up again further down the line. An interesting story.
Brave New World Page 4