TractorBoy7

Member
Joined
Jun 20, 2014
Messages
344
Reaction score
0
Points
0
View attachment 357505

Journey - "Travelling one place to another"


The postman delivers the post. I sprint down the stairs after hearing the rattling of the letter box. My heart is throbbing, months of hard work... am I about to be rewarded?

I see the letter I desire and I immediately ignore all the other post, from magazines to Pizza Hut offers. I ripped open the letter, tearing the thin white paper to shreds in the process and there it was. A letter from the FA announcing I had achieved my Level Three coaching degree.

Who would have thought it? A part-time Sunday league footballer barely breaking the first team who's on the cusp of a much desired managing career. I booted up my computer and got to work. Looking all over Europe for coaching jobs that could pay me full time. I looked at England and Scotland, all of Scandinavia, Iceland, Spain and Portugal, Italy and Germany. Applying for every job I could lay my eyes on.

After a full day of applying to jobs, I am now in the process of waiting for a reply, if any.


My journey begins...
 

I woke up the next morning with nothing but excitement. I swiftly got dressed and brushed my teeth. It was a beautiful May morning. The sun was beaming through every window in my small 2 bedroom house.

I only had one thing on my mind.

I turned on my computer and sat down, biting my nails with anticipation and nerves. The start-up was slow but that was normal, I looked at the desktop looking for that precious Google Chrome icon. I looked past my various Football Manager games until I saw what I was looking for.

As soon as the web browser was open, I immediately opened Outlook. I entered my details and logged in.

I had a rather large 20 unread messages, meaning every job I applied for, i had gotten a reply. Immediately I saw that my hard work had finally payed off. I had 17 job offers! 3 of my applications were unsuccessful in the process.

I had offers from some teams in the lowest Norwegian, Swedish and Portuguese league. Amazingly I saw that I had an offer to coach Uniao Madeira in the second tier of Portuguese football. However, I thought at this stage, I'm better off with the smaller teams and growing as a manager in the process. I looked at the locations of the clubs and facilities in great detail. I wanted a club that not only fulfilled my philosophy of youth, but also was in a relatively large city or town in which I could live in.

After about 2 hours of Google searching I had finalized it down to 3 clubs:

- Akropolis IF, situated in Stockholm, Sweden. A very poor club in terms of facilities. They literally have no juniour coaching or youth recruitment. Basic youth facilities and poor training facilities. However, the fact it's based in Stockholm appeals to me. They are in the 4th tier of Swedish football.

- Naval, situated in Figuira de Foz, Portugal. A beautiful coastal town of 60,000 inhabitants. A very clean looking beach resort and a tourist destination. With average training facilites, average youth recruitment and average junior coaching, this is already a favourite of mine. However, the insecure finances and poor youth facilities are holding me back from the job interview. They sit in the third tier of Portuguese football.

- Espinho, situated in Espinho, Portugal. Another coastal paradise on the west coast of Portugal. The location is ideal, the finances are okay and the training and youth facilities are both average. However youth recruitment and junior coaching and are poor. The team sits in the third tier of Portuguese football.

I've been given a lot of time to reply. All I have to do is decide... which one?
 
Last edited:

After much consideration, I had it down to 1 team. 1 club that I thought I really could enjoy managing at and start my career. Naval.

I did a standard Skype call with the chairman and his translator to agree the terms and vision of the club. They asked whether a top-table finish was acceptable and I agreed. They asked if I had a particular philosophy that I wanted in place and I told them all about how I wanted to make use of their recruiting infrastructure and develop players using their youth setup. The Skype call ended and they said they would get back to me within 24 hours.

I went to bed.

I woke up the next morning and did my usual routine, turning on the computer, etc. I checked my emails and to my delight I had an email from Naval. However, my delight was cut short as the letter went on the say "We're sorry to say that you did not get the managerial job at Naval C.F. We wish you luck in your future endeavors."

I was hugely disappointed. Although I imagined that a career in football managing would be full of much disappointment, I didn't expect it within the first few days.
 

After the temporary set back of being unsuccessful with Naval, I had two options left. Espinho and Akropolis. These teams could not be split apart through judgement. I wanted to manage them the same. Therefore I did the only think I could thing of to decide between two things... I flipped a coin.

Heads was Akropolis, tails was Espinho. I flipped it and it what seemed like hours the coin landed on the ground showing heads. That was it. I quickly emailed the Akropolis hierarchy saying I was interested and again, we had our discussions over Skype. The Chairman, Erik Englund, spoke perfect English and the meeting was over very quickly. I negotiated a £300 p/w wage and the philosophy that I'll buy younger players for the first team. A bonus in the contract is that they'll pay for my plane to Stockholm and any trips I want back to England during the holidays, if i wish.


I arrived in the beautiful city of Stockholm on a warm June afternoon. It was the 19th of June by now and I was ready to settle in. I was escorted around the facilities by one of the Directors of the club Ibrahim Leinar. He showed me all the training pitches, facilities and where my office would be. I slept in a cheap motel that night as I still had not found a house. The board with all their hospitality, were paying for my stay.

The next morning I woke up and went to the training ground via taxi. The players were warming up for their game later that day. Now, my contract doesn't start until the 30th June, so I was due to watch the team at 19:30 in the evening.

I watched the boys train under player assistant manager Giannis Tsombos, who I had every intention in keeping in place as my number two. He led the team well and was also a very clinical finisher in the shooting drills. The lads had a bit of a laugh with a crossbar challenge at the end. Notably everyone had a laugh when young centre midfielder Carel Kawele-Kuzona missed the ball and fell over backwards in the process.

Spirits seemed to be high among the squad despite the manager being sacked a few days earlier, and this showed on the pitch that evening. As I watched in the Chairman's box with the directors and the director of football, we saw our assistant Giannis Tsombos bag a hattrick against Rotebro.

I was looking forward to my time in charge...

 
Top