Final whistle
Adams plunging in over his head in Andalusia
Britons now seem to get jobs in Spain through being mates with Far Eastern club owners
As his choice of attire might suggest, Tony Adams does not lack in self-confidence. At the end of last month, the former England and Arsenal stalwart was named as sporting director of Granada, the struggling La Liga side. On his first day at work he arrived wearing a tweed suit in a shouty check design of the sort usually worn by the member of a stag party heading to Cheltenham races who has lost a bet.
It might have been in need of a volume control, but the outfit was indicative of the Adams approach to his new job. Cattle generally enter crockery stores with greater restraint. Within 10 days, he had made his first directorial decision: to fire the first-team coach, Lucas Alcaraz. Which, perhaps, was no real surprise given that Granada are currently seven points from safety at the basement of La Liga. What was perhaps more surprising was the identity of the man he appointed to take charge for the seven remaining games of the season: Tony Adams.
It is often said of English football coaches that they do not get out enough. Too few of them seek employment overseas, most preferring home comfort to the learning opportunities elsewhere. Not Adams, though. After a less than stellar start to his coaching career at Wycombe and Portsmouth, he headed to Azerbaijan in 2011, spending a year at Gabala. Then last season he was in China, working at the Super League side Chongqing Dangdai Lifan.
Even so, for all his wanderlust, when drawing up a list of Englishmen likely to land a job in the Spanish top flight, Adams’s name would be near the bottom, marginally below Gary Neville.
There is a clue, though, in the identity of the Granada owner. In 2016 Jiang Lizhang bought the club for € 37 million (£31.6 million) from Gino Pozzo, whose family still own Watford and Udinese. Lizhang is also the chairman of Chongqing Dangdai Lifan, where he first worked with Adams. And like Peter Lim, the president of Valencia who has had a long working association with Neville and gave him a job coaching there, Lizhang first found his enthusiasm for football watching 1990s Premier League games beamed out live to the Far East.
For him, Adams represents a link to that legendary television era, a no-nonsense flagbearer for a formative period. So it was that soon after meeting him, he made the former Gunner vice-president of DDMC, the sporting company he owns, and subsequently tasked him with sorting out the Andalusian club. Adams set about the job with a gale of energy. In his first public statement, he said the entire system on which Granada operated needed to be overhauled. There are 17 loan players in the first-team squad, including two from Chelsea and one from Manchester United. He wants to move to a position where all the players are owned by the club. It is a blueprint as bold as his suit. And it will take time.
Not that time is something he has in abundance. Seven games to effect escape, unable to speak the language, dependent on the multilingual United player Andreas Pereira acting as dressing-room translator to help him communicate with a bunch of loanees: good luck with that.
Indeed, while you cannot fault his get-upand-go, you fear Adams might have plunged in way over his head. Once Britons earnt jobs in Spain after excelling in England. Now they seem to get them through being mates with star-struck Far Eastern club owners. It is hard to imagine it will all end well.