‘It would have been easy to go but my w Ork wasn’t done’
Farke believes his Norwich side can ditch their ‘yo-yo’ tag after an immediate return to the Premier League
‘We don’t want to be a flag in the wind: we have always had clear principles on how to play’
Is Daniel Farke the most underappreciated manager in English football? It is a strange question to ask about the man who is on the brink of his second Championship title in three seasons, who receives regular messages of admiration from Pep Guardiola and whose Norwich City team play some of the most stylish football in the country.
Promotion was secured at the weekend hours before their match kicked off against Bournemouth, and Norwich are on course to beat their haul of 94 points from the 2018-19 campaign.
Yet for all that, Farke seems oddly underrated. The 44-year-old from west Germany last received the Championship manager of the month award in November 2018 and whenever a plum domestic job becomes available his name is never linked to it.
Farke does not win awards; he just wins matches.
“It’s not important for me to be in the spotlight. I’ve had invitations from Germany to go on the big TV shows, but I always decline,” he says, smiling, during a rare interview. “I don’t want to be the guy on camera all the time, annoying people.
“After our promotion two years ago there were opportunities in Germany and it would have been easy to leave, but the project at Norwich was not finished.”
Norwich have done Farke’s talking for him on the field, dominating the Championship this season with a brand of football that is exciting and energetic.
Club records have been consistently broken and the recent 7-0 thrashing of Huddersfield – their biggest win in nearly 70 years – was Farke’s vision in high definition. The 3-1 defeat by Bournemouth on Saturday night was their first in 14 matches, but they will be crowned champions tomorrow night if they beat Watford.
“I’m proud of the lads,” Farke says. “To win the title as one of the favourites, with that pressure, and show consistency and dominance is very impressive. If we can finish with at least 95 points it would be the best season in our history.”
Appointed as Norwich’s head coach in May 2017, Farke’s journey has been a capricious one since those days when he was playing as a striker in the lower leagues of Germany. He was prolific with SV Lippstadt, but never made it to the top level.
Management was never an ambition when he retired at the age of 31: he studied for a degree in economics at university as preparation for life after football.
“I was thrown in at the deep end with a coaching role at Lippstadt, doing a sporting director job at the same time as the club had no money. But as a player I was always thinking as a coach. ”
Farke did succeed at Lippstadt, guiding them from the sixth division of German football to the fourth. An offer to take over Borussia Dortmund II was his reward in 2015.
“I was successful early in my career as a manager and that helped me,” he says. “If I’d got the feeling I couldn’t be the best at my job, I would have done something else.” Farke is now reflecting on another promotion to the Premier League, and the preparations start now. This summer he is planning a proper break. He works long hours, away from his partner and young children, who still live in Paderborn.
“It’s not easy to relax,” he says. “I do a lot of running to clear my head. I read a lot of literature and biographies. I’ve just finished One Hundred Years of Solitude by the Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I find them inspirational.” Farke’s second promotion is even more admirable when you consider Norwich’s dismal finish to last year’s Premier League campaign.
After returning from lockdown in June, Norwich lost all their remaining nine games, scoring only one goal, and finished bottom.
“I couldn’t allow myself to suffer too long,”
says. “You’ve been playing in the best league in the world and then go down to the toughest league in the world. You have to create a new atmosphere.”
After relegation there were two major departures, with £38.5million raised from the sales of Ben Godfrey to Everton and Jamal Lewis to Newcastle United.
Farke spent just over £6million on new signings, with the intention to recruit players who can develop under his style of play.
Usually operating with a 4-3-3 or 4-2-3-1 formation, Norwich overload the centre of the pitch and dominate the ball in an approach which mirrors that of Guardiola or Chelsea’s Thomas Tuchel.
“We don’t want to be a flag in the wind: we’ve always wanted to have clear principles on how to play,” Farke says. “You have to be flexible and adapt or you become a dinosaur.
“The time for one-man shows in football is over, it has to be a team effort.”
Farke is quick to highlight the influence of Stuart Webber, Norwich’s sporting director, and his coaching staff, while his players have also responded to the challenge. Many individuals have stood out, from Teemu Pukki with his 25 goals to highly regarded defender Max Aarons.
An unsung player has been centre-back Grant Hanley: he missed four games at the start of the season and Norwich lost two of them. There have been only four league defeats since. Oliver Skipp, the midfielder signed on loan from Tottenham Hotspur, has been outstanding while playmaker Emi Buendia’s numbers underline his consistency, with 13 goals and 16 assists.
The big question now is whether Norwich can survive next season and avoid forever being dismissed as a “yo-yo club”. Indeed, after the Huddersfield demolition, the joke doing the rounds was that Norwich were perfectly placed to lift the Championship title in 2023.
“My gut feeling is that we will be much better prepared than two years ago,” Farke says. “After the last promotion we used it to sort out all the financial problems, invest in the infrastructure and extend the contracts of our younger players.
“We will have more experience this time and we can invest a bit more in the squad now. We will still have our financial restrictions, but we can be more ambitious. The next step is to become a permanent member of the Premier League.”