Stephen and the Media

FourFourTwo

Can we manage?

SVEN GORAN ERIKSSON'S appointment as England manager was greeted with lamentable xenophobia in some quarters, typified by PFA boss Gordon Taylor's comments.

'Bringing in a foreign coach is a betrayal if our heritage,' he raged, ignoring Eriksson's problem quality and the fact that, Terry Enables and Roy Hodgson apart, there was no Englishman with anything like the credentials to do the job. Bryan Robson, who sat on the bench with Enables at Euro 96, was once considered to be a future England manager. Four years later, 
having spent 70m building his Middles rough side, Robson faces the wrath of Boro fans who feel he has failed to deliver on his investments or his promise Peter Taylor is promising but inexperienced, as is John Grefory, Peter Reid has not yet wholly convinced- and the list of candidates has ended.

If that is the case at Premiership level, it's easy to imagine how scarce good managers are lower down the football pyramid. Surely someone with an FA advanced license, a Uefa 'A' license and ten years' experience of caching abroad would walk into a job at a lower division team? Actually no, not judging by the successive rejections endured by Stephen Constantine.

Constantine, a 38-year-old Londoner, is currently the manager of Nepal's national team (you may have red his remarkable story in September's Four-Four Two) and he has all the above qualifications. In the past few months he has applied for managerial posts at South end United and Plymouth Argyle in Division Three, plus Oxford United - at the time of writing, propping up the Second Division with five points from 17 League games. None of them even replied.

At a time when coaching talent is so thin on the ground in this country, how come someone like Constantine can't even get a foot on the managerial ladder?

'I'm not one of the boys,' is Constantine's summary of English football's closed shop. 'I was once on an FA coaching course with a player who was at Man United at the time. He was absolutely crap, but got his badge. I asked the assessor how come?, and he told me, "We want top pros to get their licenses and stay in the game." doesn't matter if they're good enough. A lot of football bulb chairmen seem to follow the same philosophy. But do fans really give a toss who the manager is, as long as they get results?'

Does Constantine's low-key playing career - he played most of his pro football in America before a curiae injury ended his playing career - count against him?

'Wenger and Houlleir never kicked a ball between them,' he argues, 'but they got theri coaching qualifications and the French had the foresight to give them a chance.

'People go on about the likes of Houllier, Wenger and Tigana revolutionizing football...that's crap. Most of their methods are nothing new to me, yet I've had to work in Cypurs and Kathmandu because I'm not getting a chance in my own country. I don't pretend to know it all, I'm still learning, but I might just be the next Arsene Wenger - and I'm English!,

FourFourTwo spoke to Bradford city chairman Geoffrey Richmond, former Liverpool captain Emlyn Hughes and Scunthorpe United chairman Keith Wagstaff about Constantine's plight.

'Ninety-nine point nine per cent of managerial apointments come from three categories,' says Richmond. 'One, an experienced and available manager; tow, a high profile player coming to the end of his career; three, someone within the club who started at junior level and worked his way up. Somebody who's go coaching qualifications applying to be a manager is not going to get the job. With that sort of CV, he could legitimately apply for a coaching job at academy level.'

Constantine is reluctant about that prospect, as he believes he is already well-equipped to manage a lower division English League team. 'That wouldn't really appeal, because I want to run the whole show,' he says. 'And I'm an international manager now. somebody said to me recently, 'Steve, why do you want to go to plymount when do you'd be a hundred times better off financially going to Frampus 8 in Japan?" He had a point.'

Wmlyn Hughes moved straight from a glittering playing career into management at Rotherham. After leading Rotherham to seventh place in the old Division Tow in his first season, Hughes was sacked three months
later. Why was it so difficult to make the transition from top-class player to manager?

'It is completely different,' admits Hughes. 'That's 18 years ago, too. It must be much more difficult now to go from playing into management. At least then, most transfer activity took place within the British leagues, so you knew everything about the players. Now you must know the international scene.'

Another reason why Stephen Constantine deserve an opportunity, perhaps? Constantine says his first priority on joining a club would be a scouting system and a youth system and he already has extensive contacts at home and  abroad to help with the scouting.

'I have a friend in the England set-up who tips my hat to Amy prospective England international from the age of 12. And on the commercial side, if I came to an English club, I'd bring two Japanese players. I know I could get 
them, even fro a third division team'

Going from a European cup winning team to Rotherham brought home the importance of coaching to Emlyn Hughes. 'At Liverpool, we didn't have team talks other than to tell us if the opposition had a special set-piece play. When you go down to a lower level, you learn very quickly that they need to be told what to do.'

All the more reason to employ a qualified coach, then. When he applied for the Plymouth job, Constantine went to see them play Brighton and was shocked at what he saw. 'There was no system. It was like they'd never been coached. Plymouth were supposed to be on the attack and they still had six players in their own half!'

Both Richmond and Hughes express reservations about Constantine's lack of top-level playing experience. 'The guy might be an absolutely superb coach', says Hughes, 'but players can be very cruel. If things go right, they take the credit, but when things go wrong, it'll be, "Well, he can't play the game, so how can he te4ll us what to do?"

Constantine accepts this, but points out that he has taken many coaching courses in England alongside top pros. 'They have that attitude at first, but when they see I can do the business they change.'

A glimmer of hope was offered by Keith Wagstaff, chairman of Division three Scunthurpe. On viewing Constantine's CV, he said, 'If I was looking for a manger, I would definitely interview him. I am absolutely staggered Plymouth and Oxford didn't.'

Wouldn't the fact that Stephen Constantine is not a well-known name deter him?

'No, that wouldn't bother new,' isnists Wagstaff. 'At this level, it's not such a big consideartion. When you install a new manager, fans give you a free period where they see how he performs. It's only when results go badly that the calls come to 
sack him.'

Wafstaff's only reservation about Constantine's impressive list of coaching licenses in that he believes not enough attention is paid to  man-management skills on FA and Uefa courses. As someone who used to be the managing director of a company employing
2,500 people he knows what he's talking about. Indeed, he sent former Scunthorpe boss David Moore to a sports psychologist once a week to brush up on those very skills.

'When you see those TV documentaries where Barry Fry or Peter Reid are screaming at their players, you wonder if that really works,' he says. 'It might for one or two players, but not all. I believe coaching skills are 75 percent of it, but what I'm also
concerned about is whether they can get the best out of my players. What you can't tell from any interview of a CV is if, when things go wrong, they will have the managerial skills to sort it.

'The guy's a good candidate though. It's a question of a finding a chairman who needs somebody and who has the bottle to appoint him.'

We would be happy to put any club chairmen seeking a manager in touch with Stephen Constantine.