The Mail on Sunday

The PE teacher who now tells Bale and Ronaldo (joint value £165m) what to do

Paul Clement never made it to the top as a player … but today he is guiding some of football’s biggest names at Real Madrid

- From Rob Draper CHIEF FOOTBALL WRITER IN MADRID

ENJOYING the early spring sunshine at Real Madrid’s Valdebebas training ground, the Sierra de Guadarrama mountain range glistening with snow in the distance, Paul Clement cannot quite believe the turns his life has taken.

When the 41-year-old Londoner arrives to work here every morning it is to coach Gareth Bale and Cristiano Ronaldo in a Real Madrid team that are top of the league, are effectivel­y through to the Champions League quarter-finals and in the Spanish Cup final.

‘Fifteen years ago I was a PE teacher,’ says Clement. ‘It has been an incredible journey. I would never have thought I was going to work at Real Madrid, but what it makes me think is that 15 years on from now anything is possible.’

In an era when English coaches have supposedly gone out of fashion, Carlo Ancelotti’s No 2 at the world’s biggest football club b is not doing too badly. Clement is the man who so impressed the Italian manager at Chelsea that he recruited him for Paris St-Germain then brought him to the Spanish capital when he took the biggest job in world football.

These days, Zinedine Zidane, , one of the greatest footballer­s s of all time and now on the Real al backroom staff, goes to Clemm ent, who played for Banstead Athletic and Corinthian Casuuals, for coaching advice.

‘He really wants to understand nd everything we’re doing and why hy we’re doing it,’ says Clement. nt. ‘He’s very inquisitiv­e. He was a fantastic player and he has serious ambitions to be a coach.

‘This is a lovely place to come to work every day. The lifestyle, weather, people, everything: my wife and my family love it here. It’s a whole mix of things but the weather makes a big impact on life here. In Paris, I remember for six months I never saw the sun!’

Clement and Ancelotti are basking in approval of late: the team are playing well, with the panache expected of them. Yet there is a tragic absence. Nick Broad, the sports scientist who worked with Clement and Ancelotti at Chelsea and PSG and would undoubtedl­y have joined them at Real, died in a road accident in January last year.

For Clement, it was not the first time his family had been touched by tragedy. In 1982, when Paul was 10, his father, the QPR and England full-back Dave Clement, killed himself. He had been suffering from de depression after breaking his leg.

I was 10 when my dad died but I have vivid memories of talking football with him

PAUL CLEMENT

(pictured at three with his parents) on his footballin­g father, Dave

Paul says he will never forget the day his friend, Broad, was killed. ‘It was January 18,’ he says. ‘I remember him walking out the door saying, “Give us a call later”. But then he called me and said, “You might need to come and get me, I’m struggling here. I’ve broken down on the side of the road”. When I called him back his phone was just ringing and ringing; the car had been hit.’

Broad, 38, had been killed by another vehicle which had crashed into his as he waited for help. ‘He would have been here, 100 per cent, because I know Carlo had an unbelievab­le respect for him,’ says Clement.’ He was a real talent. I spoke at Nick’s funeral and I said he was Carlo’s best signing. He had an unbelievab­le amount of skills. We miss him a lot.

‘We’ve carried on a lot of these things but it’s not the same. What you haven’t got is his brain and his intelligen­ce here. We had worked together at Chelsea but we didn’t have the relationsh­ip at Chelsea that we had when we moved to Paris. We really looked out for each other. Nick and his wife and my wife became friends and in Paris we did a lot together.’

Both Chelsea and Paris St-Germain, who flew in players and staff, were strongly represente­d at the funeral. However, for Clement, the tragedy meant the change of location last summer seemed a natural progressio­n. ‘It just made the decision to leave Paris easier and that’s no fault of the people there because the club were magnificen­t around what happened to Nick. It was a tough period. Paris will always be remembered now as great because we won and it was a great period, but also because of the tragedy of losing Nick there.’

Clement, like Broad, had risen on the back of Ancelotti’s success. He was a junior coach at Chelsea when Luiz Felipe Scolari’s sacking saw him elevated to the first-team bench to fill in alongside stand-in manager Ray Wilkins in February, 2009. He was retained by Guus Hiddink when he took over and then Ancelotti.

While he played only at non-League level, Clement has football in his veins. His younger brother, Neil, like their father, played as a fullback in the top flight, making 300 appearance­s for West Bromwich.

Clement is, understand­ably, saddened by the thought that his father did not live to see the footballin­g

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success he and Neil have enjoyed. ‘I still see a lot of people, the older generation who are around my dad’s age — he would have been 66, 67, Harry Redknapp’s generation. And everyone I talk to speaks really highly about my dad, both as a player and what he was like off the field.

‘I was 10 when he passed away, but I do have some vivid memories of talking football with him. He had just started to think about coaching, he had done his coaching licence (at the FA school) in Lilleshall. I sup- pose it was being in that environmen­t from a young age, going to training with him in the car, it certainly put something in me. It’s in the blood almost.’

Clement has been fortunate in that one of his early jobs was with the Republic of Ireland Under-21 team, where he worked with Don Givens, a former QPR team-mate and great friend of his father. ‘That was really nice because my dad and Don were tight as anything, so to have that opportunit­y to work with him was really special.

‘Don liked to talk about him as well because he lost a great friend. They used to do everything together. They used to travel in to training because we lived in the same area out in Berkshire. It was really nice to hear those kind of stories, because I wouldn’t have heard that from anyone else.

‘I still think mental health issues are even a bit taboo now. You’re only seeing a small amount of people coming out and talking about it. There’s a little bit more acceptance but it’s a really common problem across society, not just football. Footballer­s aren’t outside of it. They’re not superhuman. They get paid a lot of money but they’re normal guys and it affects a lot of people.’

Despite his heritage, it has been a slow and steady progress to this elevated level. Playing profession­ally was never a serious option, so he instead opted for university and then teaching at Glenthorne High School in Sutton. He was coaching Chelsea’s youngsters in Battersea Park when a youth team job came up at Fulham and then the Republic of Ireland role before he returned to Chelsea’s academy.

Neverthele­ss, it is now Clement who is in charge when £85m Bale and £80m Ronaldo take the field at Valdebebas just as Zlatan Ibrahimovi­c and David Beckham did at Paris St-Germain. ‘I think my most uncomforta­ble period in terms of coaching was when I made the step-up to first-team level at Chelsea.

‘I was always questionin­g whether I was ready for this level, whether I had the knowledge for this level. That was a real period of transition for me.

‘I was going into a dressing room when Michael Ballack was the captain of Germany. He was a big character. John Terry was the captain of England — and he was a big character, along with Frank [Lampard] and Ashley [Cole]. In addition to that you had Petr Cech, a leader, and Didier [Drogba] as well. Right through the team you had a lot of strong characters and personalit­ies and really playing at the top of their game in that period. So that was an experience.

‘But when I went to Paris, having had that experience at Chelsea, I really felt able to work at this level, I’m comfortabl­e at this level. Having worked at Paris and won the title with Zlatan and other really good players, having had a good relationsh­ip with them, I had more confidence. And now, coming here, to an even bigger club, that’s helped me.’

The pedigree of players he has coached affords him the extraordin­ary privilege of observing some of the greatest players at close range every day. ‘When I was at Paris, Zlatan had just scored four goals against England, including the famous overhead kick. When he came back to training, everyone was excited to see him and he had a big grin on his face, particular­ly when he saw me as an English guy.

‘So I said, “Look, congratula­tions, Zlatan. You did amazing — four goals against England’s B team!” But on the training ground that day I saw something I’ve never seen before in my life. We trained in a small group and I think he was still riding a wave of ecstasy from that game. From the first ball to the last ball, I’ve never seen anyone train at such a high level.

‘And he scored an almost identical overhead-kick goal in a small-sided game with tiny goals, 2x1 metre goals. Everyone’s jaw just dropped, saying, “Oh my God, he has done it again”. I’ve never seen anyone train like it and it was a real one-off moment for me, I can’t remember anything ever like it before.’

THE question that begs to be answered is when his illustriou­s CV will be put to use as a manager. In a world bereft of English coaches, the No 2 at Real Madrid would surely be on course to take charge at a Premier League club at some stage? Offers thus far have been declined.

‘I’m enjoying this experience immensely and I want it to continue as long as possible. But I do have great ambition to be a manager. I think it really depends on whether the right opportunit­y comes up, with the right club and the right owner. I don’t know if that’s in a year or in five years but it’s something I really want to do, absolutely.’

‘Carlo has said that I really need to go and do it next time. I don’t think he wants to get rid of me! I’ve actually heard him say, “I’ve already thought about the time that you will go”.

‘He has said to me, “You need to do this”. And that’s good for me. It gives me confidence — he’s got belief in me that I can do it’.

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 ??  ?? AT HOME: Paul Clement is
loving life in Madrid and is proud to be
working alongside – and winning the respect of – superstars like
Cristiano Ronaldo and Gareth Bale
AT HOME: Paul Clement is loving life in Madrid and is proud to be working alongside – and winning the respect of – superstars like Cristiano Ronaldo and Gareth Bale

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