Sol Campbell’s lament ‘I’ve applied for 10 jobs in football management and got nowhere’
Sol Campbell talks to Thom Gibbs about his fruitless search for a managerial job and the art of defending
Two Premier League winners’ medals, four FA Cup trophies, one League Cup and a 10-year spell in which he made England’s squad for every major international tournament. So why can Sol Campbell not get a job as a manager?
He claims to have made applications for 10 vacant positions now, seven of which did not even result in an interview. The three times he has been invited to pitch for a job in person he has been unsuccessful. “I had one in Kazakhstan, one at Oldham and recently Oxford,” he says. Understandably he is beginning to wonder what is holding him back. “I’ve got my own mind, and I’ll talk about it, but I’m willing to listen,” he says. “I’m very balanced like that. If you don’t want a guy who’s balanced, who wants to win, and can bring people together well … I don’t know. I don’t know what kind of club you want. I don’t know what type of manager you want. Maybe they want puppets?”
As a manager Campbell would build from the back, the area of the pitch he excelled in as an imperious centre-half during his 19-year career. How Arsenal could do with a player of his stature for Sunday’s imposing League Cup final against Manchester City. Now 43, seven years retired after a brief final fling with Newcastle United, he preaches the need for any successful side to be built on “strong foundations”. It all sounds eminently sensible, but the process of auditioning for a job is unfamiliar for anyone who has spent most of their professional life as a gifted rare commodity, to be pursued rather than pursuing. Does he get nervous ahead of job interviews with club executives?
“I get nervous because now I don’t know what they want,” he says. “Do they want spreadsheets or do they want me to talk about the job? Because some people have spreadsheets and then when they get the job they can’t actually do the football.
“The club hierarchy is from a different background now, they’re from a business background. When you do an interview maybe they want those spreadsheets because that’s what they understand. What they don’t understand is that when you get on the pitch it’s all about how you deal with the players, what kind of philosophy you’re going to implement. Football knowledge, not managing knowledge.”
Sol Campbell 2018 is essentially indistinguishable from his playing days. Always a singular character, he described himself as “one of the greatest minds in football” in a separate interview earlier this week. Since calling time on his playing career he has dabbled in politics, putting himself forward as a potential mayor of London and publicly backing Brexit.
Pressed on the subject now, he responds with a marginally curt “I’m out of that game”.
He is engaging company, especially when speaking about the intricacies of football as a defender. Outlining how he would have coped with Harry Kane, Campbell stresses the difficulty of facing a striker who can hurt opponents from close range and outside the box. “Every one-two, you have to go with it,” he says. “When he is floating around trying to get in, pick him up early. Make sure he has no space to operate in. If he is not locked down, you just know the ball is going to ricochet to him and he will get in.
“I know it is mad to say you have got to anticipate a ricochet, but you have to make sure that if he is free, that someone is nearby. The minute you think he is nowhere near the play, that is when it happens.”
It sounds exhausting, mentally draining, how did he do it at the top level for so long? “It was very difficult but I just wanted to do it
‘The club hierarchy is from a business background now. They understand spreadsheets’
again afterwards. It didn’t bother me working out all those sums. I had more capacity to keep going.
“That’s the thing with top players, the higher you go up, the more you want. You want to push your body, push your mind, push what you want to get out of that particular season. I wanted to see how high I could go and how many centre-forwards and teams I could play against and shut out, or beat.
“It was always a war, but I just wanted more and more. The higher I went up, the more my brain could handle it. You notice sometimes in teams, the physical could be there but once the mental starts dropping out, that is when the top teams win.” Campbell had two spells with Arsenal, the first after a highly emotive 2001 free transfer from Spurs, the second an 11-game firefighting assignment during a 2010 injury crisis. He speaks warmly of Arsene Wenger, but did the Frenchman actually coach much defending?
“Not really,” Campbell
says. “Arsene focused more on forward play. The defending side, he was not big on that.”
Campbell believes Arsenal’s defence occasional lack the fortitude to stand their ground in tough games. But he has a partially tender answer to the question ‘How would you have managed yourself as player?’ “I would give him a hug, and give him a kick up the rear end at the same time,” he says. “But also allow him to operate as a young man.”
Did he get enough hugs and breathing space? “Yes. When I was growing up, my habits were misconstrued as laziness, not caring. But when I got out on to the pitch I did care about football, I just showed it in a different way.
“Coaches now are a bit more versed in mannerisms, and don’t always put those mannerisms into stereotypical past experiences. Someone might be lazing around but then they get on the pitch, they train really hard, but when they’re off it that’s their downtime. Hopefully they’re a bit cuter about understanding that.”
Campbell clearly believes he has something to contribute to this modern approach to management. For now he will bide his time before he can put his ideas into practice. More courses beckon, as do further coaching qualifications, more observations of matches and training sessions.
Watching, learning and waiting for his chance.