Graeme Le Saux: 'When the players came back, they were like kids in a sweet shop'
Back in September Real Mallorca leftback Baba Rahman, on loan from Chelsea, suffered a knee injury in his second game and didn’t play again. In January, they signed the left-back Leonardo Koutris on loan from Olympiakos, and in his second game he suffered a knee injury and didn’t play again either. That left Lumor Agbenyenu, on loan from Sporting Lisbon, as the only natural left-back at the club with La Liga’s smallest budget, playing in primera for the first time in six years and dangerously close to going down again. And now he’s injured too. There’s no one left.
Well, there is one man. The problem is, while the other left-back at Mallorca won the league and a Cup Winners’ Cup – more than anyone in the side – he’s not on the bench or in the B team; he’s in the boardroom. He’s also 51 and although that’s 51 going on 15, with the same youthful face as the days he flew up the wing, coach Vicente Moreno isn’t convinced. “I put my name forward, but they still haven’t replied,” Graeme Le Saux says. Then he starts laughing, which is something he does a lot.
The former England international is now a director at the Spanish club, so even if he’s not going to play, those injuries are his problem too. “You think: why do we deserve this? How can this happen?” he says. “That underlines the difficulties for the club, any club: creating consistency in chaos and unpredictability.”
And so, Mallorca must seek another imaginative solution – which is what Le Saux has spent a lot of time doing lately, from negotiating pay cuts to helping hire a new sporting director and CEO, while also trying to predict the impact of the pandemic from which Spanish football has now returned.
For Mallorca, 18th and a point from safety, it does so with the visit of leaders Barcelona on Saturday. It doesn’t get any easier. Doubts that Lionel Messi would travel are forgotten now: good news for the Barcelona manager Quique Setién, more bad news for Mallorca. “Well, it is considering he got a hat-trick against us last time,” Le Saux says. Another problem among many, reality bites, and yet he says so with a smile. And while conversation runs and runs, the enthusiasm never runs out.
The way Le Saux tells it, “a bizarre set of circumstances” brought him here. “I work at NBC with Kyle Martino, a former LA Galaxy player. He’s good friends with Stuart Holden, former Bolton player. And Steve Nash, basketball legend and unfortunate Tottenham fan. When they were looking at buying a club, Kyle remembered me talking about Mallorca and the club. Then I spoke to Robert Sarver, the owner of the Phoenix Suns. And that was the genesis of it.”
Sarver’s group bought Mallorca in January 2016. Le Saux prepared a report – “red flags” – but didn’t join until the following year. The president and now his sometime knock-up partner is former tennis player Andy Kohlberg – “the ball makes a different noise when a professional hits it” – while Le Saux became a non-executive director.
‘The owners have a sport background and Andy has a very good understanding of the psychology of elite sport,” Le Saux says, the logic underlining why having a player on the board makes sense. And yet when he says “name someone in England” silence ensues. “I’ve always banged my head against the table: there’s so little representation of former players at clubs, governing bodies, the Premier League. I’m not advocating jobs for the boys but it disappoints me. When I played, there was tension, a chasm, between the business and the playing side.”
Snobbery? “That’s definitely how it was, absolutely,” Le Saux says. “Ken Bates would always separate business and sport; players weren’t considered capable. They didn’t want that link, yet the biggest benefit is that I talk to ownership from a football perspective and when I talk to players and coach [on behalf of ownership] they know I see their perspective. It’s finding people that can wear a jacket and tie and football boots. If you get that right, everyone benefits. Take our recent salary deferral discussions: as a player, I’d been one of those team leaders dealing with the board, having to go back to the other players and say: ‘Look guys …’ Understanding that builds a trust you need.
“I see my role as a conduit between the board, ownership, and the football side. I’m not fluent in Spanish, which is a big disadvantage. Much as I lean on my wife – she’s from Argentina – I’m not sure that would work around the negotiating table: ‘I’m just going to get my wife,’” Le Saux says. He pauses, laughs, and adds: “Actually, maybe it would. She’s a brilliant negotiator. She wins all the time. So that’s not my role. But I speak to the CEO every day, the director of football. When I’m on the island I talk to players and the coach.
“I can’t believe it’s my third year,” Le Saux says, looking back on the creation of a new culture at a club that went through three divisions in as many seasons. Back in the top flight, they even beat Real Madrid, symbolic of how far they’d come. Of Mallorca’s starting XI that night, seven had been with them in the third tier and only three had played in primera.
“You know how someone’s trying to be calm but you can see the emotion underneath? That was the players. You need a balance between enjoying it – they felt they’d never play Madrid, let alone beat them – and not getting dis
tracted. You can’t think you’ve arrived.
“It’s a different emotional experience to playing, you have to learn to cope with the rollercoaster. It’s been fascinating working in a different culture. There are nuances within each league, how players think and operate. The first thing I did when I arrived was to tell the players and staff: ‘I want to learn from you’.
“And I draw on my experiences too. More than ever I appreciate the level I played at and the people I was with; there are so many lessons. With Blackburn people talk about money all the time but it wasn’t purely based on that. I came from Chelsea for £600,000. What made us successful was Ray Harford and Kenny Dalglish’s ability to recruit – our biggest difficulty here, future-proofing yourself – and to create an environment, an identity. We didn’t let opponents breathe. I remember battering Forest and genuinely feeling sorry for them.
“Kenny wouldn’t allow anything sloppy – even a throw-in. If a throwin was awkward to control, he would disproportionately lose the plot. That was the standard he set. I lived that culture at Blackburn, Chelsea, and England, and apply that daily now. Seemingly silly little things matter hugely: mindsets, responsibility, accountability. I could go on for ever about lessons from people like Terry Venables, Ray and Kenny. The amount of times Kenny said things and I thought: ‘Why are you picking on me?’ You go home, process it and think: ‘He’s right.’ Don’t take it personally. Learn, adapt, come back, move on.”
“Vicente deserves huge credit for that here. Go to training on Monday and whatever the weekend’s result, it’s a new week. Here we go again. It’s always a positive place.”
Now especially, post-lockdown. Le Saux joined negotiations over salaries, speaking to and for players, encouraging the club not to apply cuts if the league restarted. “It could have gone in a thousand directions, but plotting our way through has brought us closer together. You see good and bad in people in these situations. And everybody has emerged with a better understanding of each other.
“If you’d asked at the beginning of the pandemic what’s the best outcome, I’d say: this. How the players coped in isolation, their commitment to training, how they interacted, sessions with Zoom. I’m so impressed. Imagine you’re at the peak of your fitness, starting to gather momentum, you beat Eibar – our first away win – and suddenly, bang! The lights went out. The way they coped is admirable. When they came back to training, they were like kids in a sweet shop.
‘We have to ensure all that energy, pent up frustration, togetherness and enthusiasm is channelled into the final 11 games. You use everything you can, any potential advantage. Opponents having to come to the island, for example: might there be more sensitivity around travelling now? We have to be clever, ask how that might impact us.
“Playing in an empty stadium is disconcerting, almost physical, like the crowd has an energy you feed off. Take that out and it becomes hollow, it can do strange things to good players. We can draw on our unique experience in Segunda B. At one game, a clearance ended up in the local swimming pool. Go back, forget the Camp Nou, rewind two years to places we played before.”
Sure, but there was no Messi then. Imagine Moreno had turned to you, imagine he suddenly does, how would you stop Messi on Saturday night? Le Saux pauses, thinks and embarks upon a detailed analysis. He shifts his body sideways and points. “I’d do everything in my power to stop him using his left foot. I’d over-exaggerate so much to turn him right and force him towards the touchline,” he says, smiling, “while simultaneously screaming for help.”