Boss wins top award
AND LUQUE TAKES PLAYER HONOURS
Maidstone boss Hakan Hayrettin says he is honoured to be named National League South manager-of-the-year.
Hayrettin received the award after leading the Stones to title glory in the first completed season since he took charge two years ago.
They were unfancied against bigspending rivals such as Dorking, Ebbsfleet and Havant, but Hayrettin moulded a championship-winning squad.
He’s been recognised for his achievements, while 22-goal top scorer Joan Luque is named the league’s player-of-the-year.
The Spanish winger is one of three Stones players in the team-of-theseason, along with left-back Jerome Binnom-Williams and centre-half Joe Ellul.
“I’m honoured and privileged to accept the accolade of manager-ofthe-year,” said Hayrettin.
“I’m the figurehead but I’ve got a great team of people working with me who I couldn’t have done it without.
“I’ve pushed the buttons of other people to get what I wanted, I can’t do it by myself.
“It’s my ideas, my philosophy and my ethos that helped us get there but I’ve had to, along with my staff, get the best out of people, and we’ve done it.
“I play aggressive, everything I do, I want to win. I’m intense, everything is based on winning for me.
“I go back to that bad spell we had in October/November, I didn’t waver in my beliefs and to compete with the other teams and go on the run we did was unbelievable.
“Every manager wants to be the best they can, regardless of finance or budgets.
“I knew what I wanted, I implemented what I wanted, I never went away from that.
“I stuck to it and believed in it. I’m like that as a person, I was like that as a player, I’m like that as a manager.
“The more aggressive you become, the more chance you’re going to have success.
“The more aggressively you motivate, to get your people onside, the more they believe in what the end result will be.
“In my mind, it was: this is the challenge, I need to do this, how I am going to do this?”
Hayrettin stressed how fortunate he’s been to play for the likes of John Still, Martin O’Neill, Barry Fry and Frank Clark during his career.
He’s learned from all of them but been his own man in leading Maidstone to their most significant championship since Still won the Conference in 1989.
“I was lucky to play for all these good people, and you learn from all of them, but you have to do things your own way,” added Hayrettin.
“I knew as time progressed it was about me being consistent in what I was doing.
“I picked up a lot from different people but I’ve moulded myself into what I believe was the right thing for me going forward.
“When you do a job it’s about your philosophy and how you get that across to your players, how you want to play the game, how you want to approach it.
“It’s about problem-solving and I knew in my mind I wanted to do things a certain way and I used my knowledge and experience to do that.
“I’ve won leagues with Grays and Luton and now Maidstone. Is that a fluke? It can’t be.
“I have complete faith in my ability to manage and how I manage and how I structure things around me to get the best out of everybody.
“We worked hard this season and we’ll have to see where we go from here if we’re going to be as successful as we have so far.
“Sometimes things don’t go the way you expect them to go, that’s life, but I’m overly proud to be managing this club and very pleased that I’ve had the pleasure of working with all these guys.”
Maidstone have announced a preseason friendly at Cray Wanderers on Sunday, July 24 (3pm).