The British Barcelona - A Swansea City Story

rossoldiniho

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Today was one of the weirdest in my career in football, it was the day legendary Danish man Michael Laudrup was hired by Swansea City, only to be sacked hours later!

I began the day as usual and everything was perfectly fine up until about 3 in the afternoon, then I received a phone call from the Swansea City chairman...

“Mr Clarke, we would be extremely interested in your services in a very flexible capacity.”


“What do you mean?”


" We want to put Swansea back on the map after Brendan Rodgers left. We would be very interested in your services not only as a direct football consultant for the football club in terms of our youth development, but as the manager of the senior squad.”


“I don’t manage senior teams; I’m 54 years old, I have never been given a managerial position before…”

“We have followed your career, and we know that you are what we need, the missing piece of our puzzle. You can lead us back to the championship, I'm sure of it."

"Anyway Michael Laudrup was just hired weren't he?"

"That was a mistake, a very costly one infact, we feel you're the man to take us forward."

“Well, I can’t say I’m not flattered…”


“We are also willing to offer you a contract of £1,500,000 a year, with personal bonuses dependingon how well we do in domestic competitions.”


“That is an exceptionally generous offer; will you give me time to consider?”


“I’m afraid time is of the essence, we will need a response within 48 hours.”


“Then I don’t need 48 hours. I’m your man.”


That was it, I was packing my bags and planning my route to the Liberty Stadium...


 
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I would reccomend changing the gold font to a different colour as this will put people off reading the story.
 
Nice one bud, makes it look more a lot more sophisticated and easier to read.
 
A short taxi trip, a few conferences and the signing of some legal paperwork after arriving in Swansea, I was sitting in my temporary office pondering my first moves.

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Usually the willing players are the local young players; respectful and hardworking players that would run around and give you everything every training session, with a passion for the sport and excited about the club’s future, and normally it is, rather unsurprisingly, the foreigners that are lazy and feeling sorry for themselves, strutting around with arrogance, taking there place in the team for granted and not understanding what winning means to the fans.



But thankfully Swansea City are diiferent, there was a sense of togetherness unlike at the other clubs I've worked at. Everyone gave 110% effort and everyone helped eachother out. I could instantly tell that The Swans were the right club for me.

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After watching the players train for the first time I was pleased with what I saw but I knew that a number of signings will have to be made, largley due to the squad being so small. I also noticed 9 players that didnt look as if they wanted to be here and quite frankly they didnt look good enough so I have let those 9 players leave; Stephen Dobbie (Leeds on loan, £500k loan fee), Alan Tate (Southampton, £1.5m), Federico Bessone (Derby on loan, £250k loan fee), Kerny Agustein (Catania, £1.5m), Luke Moore (Leeds on loan, £50k loan fee), Andrea Orlandi (Las Palmas, £500k), Wayne Routledge (Leicester on loan, £500k loan fee), Mark Gower (Sheffield Wednesday, £800k) and Scott Donnelly (Derby, £1m) .

Aswell as that I loaned out 4 youth players for the season, Daniel Alfei, Rory Donnelly, Jamie Proctor and Ashley Richards joined Yeovil, Exeter, Luton and Bournemouth respectively.
 
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