an interview with Chris Coleman

No one respects us, and it suits me fine
EXCLUSIVE By LEE CLAYTON - D Mail



Chris Coleman took his wife to the opera for Valentine’s Day. "I’m not sure I want you to put that in the interview, it’s not so good for my reputation." Too late.

Madama Butterfly is not where you might expect to find the second youngest manager in the Premiership on a night off.

"It was very good. Mind you, every now and again I was off — will Tottenham play one-up, or two-up? I can’t switch off from the game. I am living it, I am fully into it — and I love it.

"Everyone is looking to you, as manager. What are you going to do? Are your tactics right? Is your team right? It’s the excitement, I like that. It puts a lot of people off, because they don’t want the responsibility, but I like being the boss," says Coleman.

He does too. He’s been on the courses, got the badges. But he’s not one for the modern appliance of science.

"A lot of people try to complicate it because it makes them look good. The more you make it nice and simple, the easier it is for players," he continues.

"Saying that, in our training, we monitor heart rates. They wear watches so we know that we’re not training too hard or we’re not training hard enough.

"I have a team of people. The players are told: 'We know where you should be going into this game — you should be maxing out when it comes to match time'. That sounds complicated, but it’s not.

"We use ProZone, but you can bore the tears off your players. We don’t beat up our players with it, we don’t threaten them with it. It’s a good tool, but some managers hide behind it.

"They throw down a piece of paper, with stats. I prefer to sit down and talk, to communicate with my players, to trust myself. You need that connection with your players.

"Football’s not scientific, you can make out that it is, but it’s a football pitch that’s the same size, give or take two or three yards. The rules are the same, there is one football and 11 versus 11.

"Some managers like to make themselves look good. 'This is how good I am and I am very intelligent'. Some of it, well, it’s a bag of nonsense."

The impressive Coleman has been in charge of Fulham just short of four years. He was once their captain, until the horrific injuries sustained in a car crash forced his retirement after a 21-month struggle with "so many operations I lost count". It was at least a dozen.

At 36, he can never take part in training or play football again, though the metal rod and pins have recently been removed from his right leg.

Instead, his highly-rated backroom staff, led by coach Steve Kean, implement his requests.

He drives past the crash site on the school run every day. He has stopped there since, to explain to his four children what happened when daddy’s Jaguar V8 swerved across a narrow road.

Well, he told them what he can remember, because he passed out after his right ankle twisted and broke as he hit the brake, before destroying 20 metres of wrought iron fence and uprooting two trees.

It took an hour for firemen to cut him from the wreckage. I have brought dramatic pictures of the accident scene to our meeting, held in the offices of the management company run by his mentor, former Crystal Palace manager Alan Smith.

I’m not sure what his response will be, but Coleman agrees to look at them. "It’s a long time since I’ve seen these," he says, spending a few moments looking, remembering.

"It’s not great, is it? See, there’s my trainer on the front seat," he points. There is a brief shake of the head, a tightening of the lips. "I was going too fast. It was January, there was sleet, an animal came across the front of me, I swerved and hit a steep kerb.

"It will be with me forever. I’ve stopped there since and shown my children, told them what happened. I drive past it when I take them to school now and we don’t talk about it. We’ve moved on.

"Of course I think about it from time to time. I think about where I might have been playing today. My mother told me that everything happens for a reason and I didn’t believe that at all at the time. But you either let it finish you off or you say, 'Right, I am not going to let this stop me'."

It proved to be the defining moment of his career. "I had help, from a woman called Brit from the Royal Ballet. She’s a sports psychologist and she helped me to deal with the mental side, the trauma. She was brilliant," he explains.

"The time I spent trying to get back was a killer for me, but it prepared me for management. Losing hurts, but not as much as having to retire."

The end of his playing career plunged him into management, yet when chairman Mohamed Al Fayed asked him if he wanted to replace Jean Tigana at the age of 32, Coleman told him to give the job to Mark Hughes.

"I had sat in his dressing room as a player for Wales. It was his first game in charge of the national team, in Belarus, and he delivered an address that was dripping in emotion. It made you afraid to fail," he says.

Fortunately for Coleman, Fayed had already decided on his next boss. Coleman rarely agrees to a one-on- one interview and this meeting has taken some arranging.

"If we go unnoticed at Fulham, it suits me down to the ground," he explains. "We are often the last team on Match of the Day, we get the least amount of publicity and I use that with the players. Nobody likes us, nobody respects us. It suits me, I’m in my first job, I like to avoid the fuss."

Here’s the fuss: ●In his first pre-season he saved £5million on the wage bill. ●He has sold star turns Louis Saha, Edwin van der Sar, Steve Finnan, Luis Boa Morte and Steed Malbranque, but still Fulham are making progress. ●His team are two points from the Premiership’s top 10 and one win from the last eight of the FA Cup. They play Spurs at Craven Cottage on Sunday.

Now they are at the crossroads: do they invest in the team and go in search of a consistent top-10 finish, or hope Coleman can continue to motivate and inspire his current group?

"If we are going to take it to the next level, then we need investment and recruitment; the chairman, the board, we are all singing from the same hymn sheet.

"I have a good relationship with the chairman, Mr Fayed. It can be fiery. He’s been accused of losing interest but, in the four years I’ve been in it, I’ve never once had to search for him. He calls me.

"If it’s not going well, he’ll ask me to go and explain why. He’s passionate, he cares. He’s 100 per cent involved. And he’s not been here for a few years, he’s been here for 10 years and spent more than £150million of his own money.

"The worry with some foreign owners is, how long will they be here for? You can’t ask that of our guy. Fulham would not be where they are without him. Everybody should know that."

Just like everyone should know that Chris Coleman is an outstanding young manager — even if he wants to keep that to himself.

 

Top interview. Thanks VB.