If I could sleep right here on the pitch then I would!
HARRY KEWELL ON HOW HE’S LOVING LIFE WITH LEAGUE TWO CRAWLEY...
HARRY KEWELL has a straight answer to the loaded question of how he finds himself in a little dugout in Sussex.
‘SatNav,’ he says. ‘And there’s no place I’d rather it took me.’
With that he points to the four corners of Crawley Town’s small ground, the home of the club that ranked 19th in League Two last season.
He’s been here since May 23, 10 years to the day since he lost a Champions League final for Liverpool, and 12 years since he won it.
‘Happy days,’ he says. ‘But that was then. This is my first job managing a club and I can’t tell you how I excited I feel. I want to taste it all.
‘Football is my life, it is what I was born to do, all I know, where I feel comfortable and feel at home. Now I have this. It’s not an audition or something to see if I like it — I know I want to do it. Honestly, if I could put my bed in the middle of that pitch and sleep right there, I probably would.’
Aged 38, Kewell is starting the next phase. The first stage was his two decades as a wonderfully slick playmaker at Leeds, Liverpool and Galatasaray and the second will put into practice what he learned from the likes of George Graham, Guus Hiddink, Frank Rijkaard and Rafa Benitez. David O’Leary, not so much, as it happens.
But the surprise to Kewell is that he is taking the step into management at all. He recently left Watford after two years as head coach of the Under 23 side but prior to that position the thought of being in charge never crossed his mind.
‘It just wasn’t something I considered,’ he says. ‘I focused solely on playing and I played until 2014. Then I opened an academy back home in Australia and that was when I realised I was excited about coaching.
‘I remember standing on a pitch showing a little kid how to strike a ball cleanly and the satisfaction, wow — pure joy! After that I got my badges and I was hooked.’
His observations from working under leading managers are fascinating, from the brilliant madness at Leeds to overrunning Europe with Liverpool and overachieving with Australia.
‘I loved George Graham,’ he says. ‘I came through at Leeds and he was manager. I was so scared of him. But I have so much time for him. I just shut up and played football when I was young and you take so much from a manager like that — that is something a lot of young players could learn.
‘At Liverpool, Benitez was tough, ruthless. I always remember thinking how smart he was because he had a way of listening to you, saying, “Yes, perfect, yes”, but then you leave his office and realise you have agreed to do something entirely different to what you were asking. Every time. He is a tactical genius who knows what he wants and if you don’t do it you are out.
‘Another manager I loved working for was Hiddink with Australia. He never cared for GPS or heart monitors, it was all in those eyes. He knew precisely how to talk to anyone. He has heard it all before, every player has tried every trick in the book and he sees it a mile off.
‘Probably one of the best I had was Rijkaard at Galatasaray. I always thought I had an open mind but he just saw and under- stood everything. His ideas are fantastic, his vision and theories after being at Barcelona — he was a pleasure to play for.’
O’Leary, less so. ‘We obviously did well at Leeds,’ Kewell says. ‘David inherited a good club and great team but for me Eddie Gray (O’Leary’s assistant) was the man. David O’Leary was more the focal point, the manager, and everyone did what he said, but for me Eddie Gray did most of the work there.’
The work for Kewell at Crawley is just starting. He had ‘a few rejections without replies’ elsewhere but believes he has been appointed because of his track record in developing players — ‘10 of my squad got a first-team opportunity at Watford and the owners here saw I could progress players’ — and his approach will be firm.
‘I am very strict,’ he says. ‘I was brought up strict, my father and coaches were strict, and I believe in manners, paying attention, admitting mistakes. If I find out people have been silly I will come down on them.
‘But I also want them to ask questions. I always asked questions and it used to rub some managers up the wrong way, but I always saw football as a game of chess and you have to know where the pieces go and why.’
Kewell’s hope, as it is for so many young managers, is to ‘learn my trade, then build a project here’.
‘It’s the start,’ he says, and the intention is to satisfy his ‘big ambitions’ in management.
‘Why not aim for winning the Champions League one day?’ he says.
That’s a long way from Crawley and League Two but Kewell is on the road.
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