Alonso takes Lewes role
Lewes, the community-owned club who in 2017 became the first and only football club in the world to pay male and female players equally, have appointed a women’s team manager who has worked alongside Mauricio Pochettino and Ronald Koeman.
Fran Alonso, the 42-year-old Spaniard who, in the summer, ended a seven-year association with Premier League football with the arrival of Marco Silva’s own backroom staff at Everton, had been Ronald Koeman’s first-team assistant at Goodison Park and, before that, Mauricio Pochettino’s technical coach at Southampton.
Alonso outlasted Sam Allardyce and David Unsworth at Everton, all the while volunteering as technical director of Southampton Women. “Almost two full-time jobs,” he said, “but I loved it.”
Today, he is unveiled as manager of second-tier Lewes, whose chairman, Stuart Fuller, wants the club “to be up there competing with the likes of Arsenal and Manchester City” in the Super League.
Alonso is under no illusions, either, that Lewes will have fewer resources than his Premier League clubs of old. “I’ve got experience in how to develop a team using people who want the best for others,” he explains. “That’s all I want to do here. The way they run the club is not the way that many other clubs are run. It’s special. This is the perfect scenario for a young manager like me to try and change the life of the players, the life of the club, but especially the life of the community. That’s why I am a coach.”