Earlier this week, I spoke privately with left-back Danny Rose. I wanted to set some things straight and ask him to play a bigger part. So, while we lacked an attacking threat from full-back in the first half against Hull, Rose was magnificent today: he made himself available for the midfielders throughout and marauded forward boldly, putting in several fine crosses. He then scored the winner in the second half. It was no less than we deserved after we racked up 27 shots, of which nine were on target. We’re fifth, three points adrift of second place and one off fourth, ahead of the clash with Liverpool, one of our rivals for Champions League qualification. There’s no respite.
The ‘other game’, the action on the touchline, provided entertainment aplenty. I feel for the fourth official, having to listen to what Miguel was saying and also to our opposite numbers with their ‘f*****g this’ and ‘f*****g that’. Burnley felt that Sissoko should’ve been sent off. And obviously when a coach talks about a possible sending-off at his press conference, everyone else picks up on it. On the other hand, no one mentioned that Barnes’s foul on Dembélé in the first half could also have warranted a red card. Neither did I. I dream of a world in which analysis doesn’t always focus on the latest flashpoint, in which controversy – fuelled by a coach’s words – doesn’t block out everything else. Very unlikely to happen.
We have given everyone two days off afterwards. I’m going to spend them in Barcelona with my family.
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It’s funny; we don’t rest in Barcelona, what with all the get-togethers with friends, meals and walking, but I come back feeling rested because my mind unwinds, because we break out of our everyday bubble. The strongest memory from this trip will be the meal we had in one of those traditional Catalan restaurants that use vegetables from their own garden.
On the flight back to London, I mulled over the matter of the emotional ties that we’ve established with the players. There are other ways of engaging with them, but however much experience I accrue, I don’t see myself changing on that front. I like to forge emotional bonds with the people that I work with.
Truth be told, this isn’t proving my toughest year. My most difficult period came at Espanyol, when every decision, every loss, seemed like the end of the world for me and my family. Nevertheless, English football is five times more challenging. Handling the team is more complex when you’re a manager rather than a coach. On top of that, you have less time between matches, which are so intense that they leave you exhausted, and afterwards you have to spend an hour with the press, trying to think up different answers to the same questions.
Paradoxically, I’m usually calmer in defeat than in victory, as I aim to keep a cool head to analyse the reasons for the loss and start searching for solutions. It’s always that much more of a stretch to make improvements when you’re winning and everything seems to be going well.
Having said that, after losing a match, the most you feel like doing when you get home is having a glass of wine before hitting the hay. Sometimes I take it out on my children or, in particular, my wife. Something she says, any innocuous comment, can light the fuse and I end up exploding.
The 23rd of the month is our wedding anniversary. We’ve been married 24 years. My dear, patient Karina.
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We resumed training yesterday, Wednesday the 21st. We were on double duty today. In the morning, we trained out on the pitch, splitting the players into groups, with those of them who are feeling the strain after too many matches continuing with recovery exercises. In the afternoon, we did gym work. At around four o’clock, the families of the squad and coaching staff arrived for some festivities.
Today it was announced – alongside the now-classic picture of me posing next to him, wearing a suit – that Hugo Lloris has signed a new contract keeping him here until at least the age of 35. It makes me proud that so many players have shown their commitment by renewing their deals. In the last year and a half, no one else has tied down as many players who would be of interest to other clubs. That says more than I ever could.
It was all plain sailing with Hugo. We told him we wanted to offer him a long contract. He sat down with the chairman one afternoon and it was all sealed there and then. He then expressed himself clearly in the interview accompanying the announcement, saying that he believes we can do big things and are going in the right direction. I decided to piggyback on the good news by making a declaration of intent on Sky Sports, telling them that, ‘Our dream is to win the Premier League.’
More good news: as the meeting with Southampton has been moved from the 26th to the 28th and though we’ll have fewer days to recover for the subsequent clash with Watford, it means a lot of the foreign players will be able to fly back to their countries for Christmas. So we’ll eat together at the training ground on Saturday 24th and then go our separate ways.
This is the first time in four years that my staff and I are going to have a relaxed Christmas.
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Our next opponents are Southampton. I sometimes ask myself why we left. If you had to pick one team that played consistently good football over the four years in which we’ve been in England, it was our Southampton side in 2013–14. It was our first full season and our notable results included running out victorious at Anfield against a Liverpool team who almost won the league. Their fans clapped us off. That’s what we left behind.
I don’t think we grasped just how good we were. We had a group of 13 or 14 players who changed the way they thought about football, passionately dedicating themselves to the cause. We finished that campaign eighth, but we deserved better given how we played. It was an extraordinary achievement, the product of enthusiasm and a steep learning curve, and the triumph of a team ethos. And synergy.
It all started with chairman Nicola Cortese’s visit to Cornellà-El Prat. We were playing Sevilla that day and Southampton had their eye on Philippe Coutinho. Nicola liked the way I, the coach, handled myself in the technical area and was bowled over by my young Espanyol side that showed passion and aggression on and off the ball. When we left the club in November, Jesús and I decided to set up an office at home and we planned to meet several times a week over the following six months to look back over the job we’d done, organise our training material, improve our footballing philosophy and so on. We agreed to start in the new year, so in the meantime we’d get together to go running, chat or grab a bite. A few offers came in and we even met officials from Dynamo Kyiv and Olympiacos. I went to Argentina in mid-December to spend Christmas there.
While in Argentina, an agent called me. ‘The Southampton chairman wants to overhaul the club,’ he said, ‘and he’s been really impressed by what you’ve done at Espanyol.’
I phoned Jesús: ‘Whoa! I just got a call from England.’ Then I had Nicola himself on the line and when the conversation was over, I called Jesús again: ‘Listen, I’ve just spoken to the chairman. He wants to meet me. Get ready, we’re going to London on 6 January.’
We watched and analysed as many Southampton games as we could, including a 5–1 loss in the FA Cup, and Jesús drew up a short report. We were prepared. We got to the hotel early and saw Nicola’s Mercedes parked outside, but he didn’t get out until 4 p.m., the scheduled time for the meeting. He was accompanied by Les Reed, the club’s executive director.
Nicola spoke in English and I responded in Spanish, with Jesús translating both ways. Three hours went by as we talked about Southampton, football and playing identities. They were looking for an ambitious coach who would fit in with the club’s vision with respect to their academy and the desire to instil a high-energy, bold style of play. I asked Jesús to explain that the brand of football we like would work well in the English league: a combination of bringing the ball out from the back, dominating possession and pressing, along with a few other things that suit the English mentality and personality, such as endeavour, physicality, mental strength and teamwork. We would help the players, who I presumed were hungry for success, to be lionhearts – I t
hink I was the one that came up with the cliché. Referees in England let the game flow more, so our team would have to compete intensely and be extremely fit, because the ball is in play for longer here than elsewhere and matches constantly swing from end to end.
As the meeting was drawing to a close, Cortese said, ‘I like what I’ve heard. I want you to be our coach.’ In perfect Spanish – the bastard!
We went back to Barcelona and met Nicola for the second time there. We started thrashing out the package for my assistants, but we couldn’t reach an agreement, so I said forget it, that we were calling the whole thing off. Two or three days went by and it looked like that was that, that the deal had fallen through because of an inability to agree about the wording of a few clauses – contracts are different in England and Spain.
And that was when Jesús and my wife intervened to help me with the decision.
A private jet was sent to Barcelona to pick us up. There was a bottle of Moët & Chandon on board, plus fruit and other stuff. ‘We’d better not touch anything,’ I said. Miki, Toni and Jesús agreed. ‘We don’t want to give them the impression we’re here for a lark.’ When we touched down that 17 January 2013, the country was covered in three feet of snow. We went straight from the airport to the hotel to seal the deal and put pen to paper, and we later had dinner there with various employees from different departments of the club.
We took training for the first time the next day. Everything remained blanketed in white, so it took the groundstaff quite a while to clear the snow off the pitches – there was no undersoil heating. Then about 200 players turned up! Or it seemed so. There was no induction, introductory talk or anything like that. I led the activities as we broke the ice with a warm-up, some rondos and some simple exercises practising game scenarios. All quite light. The chairman and Paul Mitchell, Head of Recruitment, came to watch. On the second day, we added more tactical work and demonstrations, with the help of José Fonte, who doubled as a translator.
We were warned that our first game, at home to Everton just four days after we arrived, could be marred by protests. The fans were unhappy about the sacking of Nigel Adkins, the manager who had guided the club to back-to-back promotions. They were also none too amused by the appointment of someone who didn’t speak English and had no experience in the Premier League (but how can you gain experience if no one will hire you because you lack experience?). Many people thought Cortese was crazy.
I didn’t give any of that a second thought when taking my place pitchside. The grass was bright green; its aroma enveloped me. The floodlights were on, creating the feel of a stage, a big occasion. The stadium was full; the sound of the crowd was different from Cornellà, bringing to mind a calm, yet powerful wave. I felt a metre taller. That’s when it sank in that we had entered a whole new, terrifically exciting world.
The Everton we were up against were a fine side, with David Moyes in the dugout. And we were fantastic. We were aggressive, never letting them breathe, and we got the ball forward quickly. All that was missing was a goal, so it finished 0–0. On the way to the dressing room, I gushed to Jesús: ‘If they’ve responded like this after three days of training . . .’ Afterwards, Rickie Lambert came up to me and said, ‘I’m sorry, gaffer. We’re sorry for letting you down; we should’ve won.’ I’d never heard a player speak that way after a draw. I got the sense that it was the squad’s way of welcoming us, of reaching out to us right from the outset, and the gesture felt genuine.
But the moment when we fell in love, the side with us, us with the side, took place in Barcelona. After the Everton match, coinciding with the international break, I took the team to Spain. We trained in the FC Barcelona training centre and I feel that impressed the guys. That and the fact so many people stopped me to greet me or take a picture. ‘This guy is somebody’, they must have thought. At the first session, our real work started. It was intense, they had to step up to the mark if they wanted to do what we needed of them. Les, Nicola, Paul, they were all watching.
I think, on all sides, it was love at first sight – or fourth sight if you count the previous superficial training sessions and our first game. The players gave us their fullest attention, which is something I’d worried about since I couldn’t communicate in English. They gazed back at us intently. They trained at full tilt even though there were things they didn’t understand. I glanced at Jesús and Miki and we exchanged smiles. The seeds had been planted.
We acted as if the whole thing were normal, as if we’d been doing this thing of working abroad for years. As soon as we were awake enough, having breakfast before 7 a.m., we’d start talking about training, the players, tactical ideas and exercises. We were like four cables that, when put together, jump-started an engine and turned on the headlights.
We wanted to make the most of every minute of the experience of being in England, so by 7.30 we were already on the way to the training ground. It was still dark outside. The snow lasted for several more days. It was bitterly cold . . . When we arrived, we’d huddle together and drink mate. If mate gourds could talk . . . For the first month, we were based in an old farm building that would flood when it rained. Three weeks in, the club sorted out an office for us in a dressing room, but it was completely open-plan. We managed to get a folding screen to create separate spaces. Sometimes Miki and Toni had to nip out so that Jesús and I could talk with a bit more privacy.
We’d work through to eight or nine in the evening. Then we’d have dinner together, watch football if there was a match on, and fall asleep.
It wasn’t always easy being cooped up together for so long – as was the case from January until our first summer in Southampton, when we finally moved into our own houses – but we’d go to bed looking forward to getting up at six the next morning.
I was the last one to leave the hotel, which felt very big and very empty without the other three.
We were surprised to discover how wide-ranging the role of a manager is in England and we ourselves added to it with new things that suddenly occurred to us. For example, we replaced the laundry detergent that was being used because it didn’t have the right smell. I like the club’s kit to have a signature scent, to create the sensation that you’re putting on something familiar. We tested several options before finding one we liked.
It was at training that we felt most in our element. The squad continued to listen to us, understanding that it was a matter of our way or no way, although we didn’t let them lose sight of the need to enjoy themselves. ‘If we work hard during the week, everything will seem much easier during games,’ I told them repeatedly. We’d play an hour-long 11-a-side game on Wednesdays, with no stoppages – there were no corners or goal-kicks. If the ball went out of play, the game would restart immediately with another ball. It was relentless. Those players have told me since that, even today, they still hear Jesús yelling out ‘press, press, press’ in their dreams.
That attitude spread throughout the squad. The players did everything at full pelt, whether latching on to the ball, pressing, getting into position or sprinting back to start moves. Then it was on to the next exercise at the same pace, or time to hit the gym. And rinse and repeat: another day, another double session.
They hated the Gacon test, a gruelling intermittent shuttle run. It became a notorious example of the physical demands we make, even though we actually do tougher drills. To start with, the players have 45 seconds to cover 150 metres, with 15 seconds to rest afterwards. In each subsequent 45-second rep, they have to run 6.25 metres further, with the intensity steadily increasing.
We came up with different ways of building play from the back. Our central midfielders would drop in to cover for the full-backs, who bombed forward a lot, especially Luke Shaw. Our main striker, Rickie Lambert, ceased to be a fixed target man; we told him to roam about freely. And so on and so forth. We had a blast.
‘We’d need two hearts to play the way you want, gaffer,’ some of the players quipped. Kelvin Davis, one of the goalke
epers and also the club captain, once brought the clock from the dressing-room wall out on to the training pitch to remind us how long a session had been. The cheek of him! We laughed.
We worked around the language barrier. I spoke through hugs, contact, with my facial expressions and my gestures. My poor English forced me to find other ways to read people, which suited me just fine. But it also led to some peculiar situations. My third match at the helm was away to Wigan Athletic. After falling behind in the first half, we played really well in the second period and turned the scoreline around, only to concede a last-minute equaliser. I was seething when I went into the dressing room. I started swearing and even kicked a box, before looking at Fran Alonso – who was helping me with interpreting duties at the time, and is now at Everton – as if to say, ‘How are you going to translate that, then?’ At the end of the day, though, I was just marking my territory; the choice of words in English was neither here nor there.
Roy Hodgson, the England boss back then, paid me a visit because he wanted to call up several of our players. I told him – in the Manager’s Room, in front of Nicola – that I’d have to start speaking English soon. ‘No, no, no. Carry on as you are,’ Roy replied, ‘because people are getting more interested in you with each passing day. They’re intrigued.’
Nicola expressed similar sentiments: ‘Don’t worry, you don’t need to speak English. You’ve got an interpreter and it’s better that way. Otherwise you could get caught out because it’s not easy. You’re best off keeping your head down for a bit.’
Having taken charge when the club was in the thick of the relegation battle, we ended that first season 14th, well clear of the drop zone. That summer, we held a pre-season training camp in Catalonia to continue pressing home our ideas. The players tell me that they still remember how we made them hold arrows against the soft tissue area of each other’s throats; they then had to move forward until the arrow snapped. Or when they – and I – walked barefoot across hot coals. These were bonding exercises, meetings of minds. And they did everything that was asked of them. They couldn’t get enough.
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