FROM BARROW TO BANGLADESH
Forget Southgate – England’s 2022 World Cup campaign kicked off in Laos
England’s first qualifier for the 2022 World Cup is still two years away, but one Londoner has already taken his first steps on the road to Qatar.
A full 41 months before the World Cup proper gets underway, qualifying recently began with the first round in Asia. Guam overcame Bhutan and Malaysia thumped Timor-leste, but it was the tie between Bangladesh and Laos that featured the first Englishman to take part in qualifying for the 2022 finals.
Jamie Day began his playing career at Arsenal under the watchful eye of Arsene Wenger, but he was unable to force his way past Patrick Vieira and Emmanuel Petit in the Gunners’ midfield and departed without making a single first-team outing. He went on to play alongside Eddie Howe in the third tier at Bournemouth, before an extensive career in non-league.
He became player-manager of Welling at 30, and was assistant manager at National League side Barrow when he received a surprise call a year ago.
“I have a friend who’s an agent in Australia, and he said that his company might be asked to find the new coach of Bangladesh,” Day, 39, tells Fourfourtwo. “He asked if I would be interested, and I said yes. I didn’t hear anything for weeks and I thought it was dead, but then he rung and said, ‘The vice-president of the Bangladesh FA is in London – can you meet him and tell him your ideas?’
“I had the meeting and they said, ‘The job’s yours.’ I was lucky, really. When you’re working in non-league, you don’t expect an opportunity like that to come up. When it did, I couldn’t say no. I was in the right place at the right time.” Bangladesh’s technical director, Paul Smalley, is also English, and Day has been followed to South Asia by assistant manager Stuart Watkiss – a former Mansfield boss – and goalkeeping coach Bobby Mimms, once part of Blackburn’s Premier League title-winning squad. “I live in the middle of Dhaka and it’s really hectic – completely different to any place I had experienced before,” says Day (above). “In England, no one has a clue who we are, but in Dhaka we get stopped on the street and asked for selfies! There are 180 million people in Bangladesh and 20 sports channels, so people see you on TV and recognise you.” Day persuaded his players to rein in their curry intake, in the hope of improving diets, and it worked: Bangladesh overcame Laos in World Cup qualifying. “We travelled to Laos for the first leg and won 1-0,” he says. “It was a strange feeling to be there, taking part in World Cup qualifying, because I’d never been in that situation before, and if we lost I knew I might never be in that situation again. “We then drew 0-0 at home to get through to the group stage – a great achievement. We could be playing Australia, Japan, China or South Korea. Last year I was the assistant manager at Barrow. If you’d said to me back then that I would be the first Englishman in World Cup qualifying, I would have laughed. “I’d never have dreamed of this.” Chris Flanagan