Stephen Constantine: London to Kigali and life as a professional football manager in Rwanda

“My love affair with football started in the early 70s. The first game I ever attended was Tottenham against Arsenal. My dad was a Tottenham fan and it was the game where Ray Kennedy scored a 97th-minute winner with a header. He was 18 or 19 at the time and that won us the championship - and to do it at Tottenham was even better. And then five days later Charlie George hit that screamer from outside the box against Liverpool in extra-time and we won the FA Cup 2-1! Arsenal till I die!”

“Ever since I can remember I wanted to play professional football, like most of us do. I had trials at Chelsea - scored a hat-trick in a trial game at Uxbridge Stadium and got a letter six weeks later saying I wasn't good enough! Had a trial game for Millwall - there were 30, 40 of us down at the old Den. Got picked to play against Fulham the following week as a trialist and then they said we've got five keepers but you did decent in the trials and we needed to have a look at you. I think I would have been too small to be a keeper.

“We then moved to Cyprus. I played for AEL Limassol. I was 17, training with the first team, I had a couple of appearances. Then I ended up back in England, before going to the States. I played one year in college over there and then I signed a professional contract. My first and only professional contract was with the Pennsylvania Stoners in the American Soccer League. I was 20, 21 at the time but only four foreigners were allowed. I didn't get much playing time and before the end of the season the team actually folded. We were sponsored by Alpo, a dog food company. I ended up playing in New York for the New York Freedoms. We were quite a big club at the time in New York. I was captain and then did my ACL. I had figured out quite early on that I wasn't going to any World Cup or Premier League anytime soon. I thought the only thing I've ever wanted to do in my life is coach or play football. So I thought, ‘OK, let me do my badges while I’m in the States’.

“I had 10 years in the States from 1982 to 1992. I did all my qualifications and then came back to England and did all my badges again in England. I did prelim, intermediate, full badge and UEFA conversion, and then the pro license in 2003-04. I can't think of anything better to do after playing. For me it's coaching and being on the pitch with the players. When you think about it, I'm quite lucky because I've always known what I wanted to do. I've washed dishes in diners in Pennsylvania. I've been on building sites in Cyprus and the US. I've done all sorts of jobs to try and keep myself involved in the game. I had a flower stand in Brooklyn on the subway! I guess for me it was a no-brainer to coach and I would do anything possible to make that happen.”

“The leap to Nepal was quite simple, really. Early on in my career, I did all my badges, and we moved to Cyprus. I started with a men's team in Cyprus. They were in the fourth division. I had worked at a couple of clubs in the academies. I was working for friends of mine, Nick and Demetris Gregoriou, they own the grammar school in Limassol. We've been besties since I went to the grammar school when I was in Cyprus. I think we were about 11 when we met. They were trying to develop their football programme in the school, so they asked me to go in. I'd have two lessons a day. I would coach the kids in the morning and then I'd go to the fourth division team that hired me while I was at the school.

“One of the kids in the school played for me. He told his dad that I was good. His dad said, ‘we need help’. So they were second from bottom of the fourth division, 12 points adrift with about nine or 10 games to play. Most of the players were older than I was. I was 29 at that time. We won the first four games and the president invited me to dinner. I was single then, so dinner's a dinner! He said to me, ‘coach you’ve given me a big problem’. I said, why? He said, ‘well, I know I offered you the job, but I've been trying to get out of paying 250,000’ - which was their budget for the year - ‘now you've won four games, it looks like we've got a chance to stay up’. He said, ‘it's done now, I'm not going to throw you to the wolves, let's see what we can do’. We ended up winning those first nine games. We managed to stay up by a point on the second week before the end of the season. Things took off for me from there.

“I coached a couple of teams in Cyprus, but the Nepal thing came about because while I was at the grammar school, I was faxing CVs to anybody that had a fax! I didn't care where they were. The only thing that was of interest to me was football. One of the faxes went to a thing we got from the LMA. It was called FACA at the time, Football Association Coaches Association. In one of their emails was, ‘are you interested in coaching in Asia?’ I'm sure they sent that to hundreds of other guys. There was a list of about 35, 40 countries. I ticked every box on the list!

“I decided to go back to the US to do my A license. While I was in the States at my friend's house, I got a call about three o'clock in the morning from some guy called Ganesh Thapa. I said, ‘can I help you, it's three o'clock in the morning?!’ He said, ‘yes, I'm the president for the All Nepal Football Association, we want you to come and coach the team’. I said, really? He said, ‘yeah, when can you come?’ I said, ‘well, I'm in the States’ and I had just been offered a job as head of an academy in Virginia - not that I was thinking about going to Virginia, by the way. He said, ‘when can you come?’ I said, ‘I've got to book my ticket and blah, blah, blah’. He said, ‘look, come tomorrow’. I'm in the United States, I can't come tomorrow! I need to get back to London, where by now I have a wife and a daughter. He said, ‘OK, we'll send you the ticket’. So the next day I booked the ticket. The day after, I flew back to England. It was in July, peak season for the Sherpas. There's not going to be any flights to Nepal. Everyone wants to go to Everest!

“I get home and go down to see my wife, who was working in the supermarket - just to tell you how bad things were. I went to see her and said, ‘I'm back’. She went, ‘oh, great, how long for?’ I said, ‘it should be a week, 10 days at least, I'll catch you later’. So I went home and looked after the little one, we were staying at her mum's. About five o'clock, the phone rings and my father-in-law says, ‘Stephen, someone's on the phone for you, I couldn't quite understand him but it’s Ganesh Thapa’. He says, ‘hello, how are you?’ I said, I'm good. He said, ‘great news’. What's that? He says, ‘we got you a flight’. And I'm thinking next week, this week. He says, ‘no, it's today’. Today? Yeah, you leave at 9pm UK time. And it was two o'clock in the afternoon! Really? I had only landed early that morning. And at 10 o'clock at night, I was at the airport, at Heathrow. They wouldn't let me through because there was something wrong with the name. They had put Stephen as my last name, and I'm going, ‘no, no, no, it's not’. Long story short, I jump on the plane and I fly to Kathmandu.”

“I did three stints in India. The first time I went, I could see that there was potential. They hadn't quite figured out that there's money in football at that point. We traveled from New Delhi to Jamshedpur, which is just outside Calcutta. That was a 23-hour train ride! Non-AC, by the way. We had a tournament called the LG Cup. And this was our preparation for the Asian Games. So my boss, Alberto Colaco, said to me: ‘Coach, I know we haven't got too much time. You're going to have 10 days with the guys before you go to this tournament. Don't worry about the tournament. We're going to get two games, maybe three. Just go there, evaluate the sport. And we expect that you're going to do what you did in Nepal’ - which had gone quite well.

“So we went to this tournament in Vietnam. We ended up in the final. We were an under-23 team, the Asian Games were under-23. We were only allowed three players over the age of 23 - Bhaichung Bhutia was one of those, and IM Vijayan another. We ended up playing Vietnam in the final. We were 2-0 down after about 20 minutes and I'm thinking, ‘oh my God, I've got to do something here’. One of the guys was a young player. Most of my players were 19, 20, 21, that kind of age, and this lad was wheezing big time. So I get him off and put another kid on, switched sides. We won 3-2 in the last minute, and the lad who had come on - who was in his second game as a centre-forward - he scored the winner. Then we went to the Asian Games. We also finished runners-up in the Afro-Asian Games in that first stint of mine. We really set some standards.

“And then the second time it was, ‘coach, we want to go to the World Cup’. I said, ‘we're not dominating the South region with Bangladesh, Maldives and Pakistan, and we're not going to the World Cup’. I said, ‘I reckon I can take us to the Asian Cup but I need this, this, this, this, this and this’. They gave me everything in terms of staff. I was able to bring good quality people with me and we went about setting down the parameters of how we want to work. Because of my success 10 years earlier, people knew what to expect. I'm no nonsense - discipline, tuck your shirt in, behave, that kind of thing. We won the SAF tournament. We won Intercontinental. We qualified for the Asian Cup. We were the second youngest team - average age was 23 and six months and Vietnam beat us by a month. First game, we destroyed Thailand. Second game, we destroyed UAE and lost 2-0. Alberto Zaccheroni came up to me after the game, he's put his hands on my face and said, ‘I don't know how we won this’. And then he says, ‘but you'll be alright, you just need a point against Bahrain’. So we go to the third game, we're playing Bahrain. Not our best game, but didn't deserve to lose to a 93rd, 94th minute penalty. And that was it. We were out. We would have gone to the last 16.

“And then the third stint, I was asked by East Bengal, one of their biggest clubs, to come. It was the worst time in their history. They had no money, 12 players when I arrived, one foreigner. My job was to put the foundations in place because I left after the season with the most points that they had in the ISL. We finished fourth from bottom, but the foundations were laid and then the CEO or the manager wanted to pick the 11 and decide things. I'm not doing that. I'm going to pick the players that I want to bring in. So we left, but a massive club. We played Mohun Bagan, there were 90,000 in the stadium. So if anybody says India don't play football, I would have to question that. That was the India adventure.”

“I have been called a chameleon several times, mainly because I can adapt. I have been taking Kinyarwanda lessons - ‘Mwaramutse’, which means good morning, or ‘Mwiriwe’ means good evening. It's quite a difficult language. I can't say I'm doing very well, but I've only actually had a few proper lessons since I've been here. I'm going to learn the language because I believe I should. The same as I believe I can't be a national team coach if I'm not living in the country. I know there's a lot of guys that do that, but they say ‘most of our players are playing in Europe’. I'm like, ‘yeah, but you being in the country motivates the local players to get out of the country to go and play at a better level’.

“I'm in charge of all of the age groups from 15 all the way up. We are obviously looking for new players because in the past several years, I won't say the other coaches have not done a good job, but there's been no real development. If you’ve got no grassroots, you've got no elite and you've got no chance. So what I've done is brought in a youth development officer, a lad called Nicholas de-Long. He's going to be taking responsibility for all of the youth team ages. The main thing for me is when you're in a country, you must respect where you are. I am not going to change them. I'm not going to change the culture. And coming late to training is not culture. Going to the airport in your flip-flops is not culture. It's just bad manners. Cultures, the food, the language, the dress that the people wear, how they pray, I don't ever get involved in any of that. I'm here to improve your football culture, if you let me. I try to learn as much as I can about the people, the language, what makes them tick.

“It's very, very difficult sometimes on so many levels. We haven’t even spoken about the sacrifice of the family and all of that. But if I'm going to do something, I'm going to do it 100%. And generally, as a person, I haven't had personal issues like that. The issues have always been, why are you late? Why is that not done? Why can't we do this? Why can't we do that? The kit is no good. We came back from Cape Verde, it took us 72 hours. We had two days in Senegal doing absolutely nothing. So obviously, I went ballistic. And when I get upset, it's not a good place to be around me. I say things, I might throw in the odd expletive, but why was this allowed to happen? Why was I not told about these things? So those are the issues. We turned up to the airport in Pakistan after drawing 0-0 with Cambodia, and they came in two minivans. I said, ‘there's 35 people and all the baggage, what are you thinking?’ So it's a lot of these issues that I really shouldn't have to deal with.

“I set up a scouting network. We have a guy called Derek Bragg, who is from England. He scouts all over the world. He's one of the scouts who started the Wyscout platform. It's putting out fires, trying to convince people. Our U17s recently qualified for the AFCON for the first time in their history. And that programme is being overseen by Nicholas de-Long. So we have the U15s now, they're playing in the FIFA World Cup. I said to them, ‘this is who you're representing, don't let me catch you with flip-flops, no caps’, these kinds of things. So we're trying to set the standards here. And winning that game against Ethiopia for the U17s was massive. The revolution has begun. And that happened when we won the FIFA series. In March, we beat Grenada and Estonia. You could say in Cyprus, there's a good level of football there. They sack their managers every few months. And unfortunately, I don't think they like people like me, who even at my own detriment at times, I'm going to tell you exactly what I think. It doesn't mean that I'm right. It doesn't mean that you are wrong. I will do it in the politest way I can, unless I've lost my rag, which doesn't take long.

“I love my job. The good bits, the bad bits. I'm the only Englishman dead or alive that has coached eight national teams. I'm going to go for 10 at some point, or maybe I stay in Rwanda for a few years. We’ll see. We need about four points to qualify for the next Africa Cup of Nations. We've got Mali home and away. And then we've got Liberia away and Cape Verde, who we beat a few weeks ago at home. Nightmare games. I just hope we can nick something in Mali. And we want Liberia and Cape Verde to draw both their games when they play each other and we'll be alright.”

“I've had quite a few surreal moments. But I guess one really stands out. I was driving from Khartoum when I was in Sudan. And my boss, Kamal Shaddad, he looked like Don King. He had the hair, everything! You went into his office and he was sitting in between two stand-up air conditioners. I'm sitting there and I'm freezing! I said, ‘sir, are you not cold?’ He said, ‘you see me, how I am, I’m able to stay like this because of the cold, I am preserved!’ So I saw a left-back play for one of the clubs in Sudan against Merrikh. I remember thinking, big, strong left-back, got a long throw, I'll go and see him next week.

“So I decided to go. I grabbed the driver and said, ‘come on, let's go, how far to Hasahisa?’ He said, ‘about four hours’. We better get moving! We must have been two hours into the trip and the president calls up. For some reason, he called me Stephenson. ‘Stephenson’, he said, ‘where are you?’ And I said: ‘Sir, I can see sand in front of me, sand either side, and sand behind me. We're in the car and going to Hasahisa. There's a player I need to see’. He started getting a little agitated. ‘Who gave you permission to go to Hasahisa?’ I said, ‘I didn't know I needed any, I'm the national coach and I'm going to see a left-back’. He said, ‘Stephenson, this is Al-Qaeda territory, it's really not a good idea for you to go down there’. I said to him, ‘yeah, but it's three hours now, we've only got another hour, we'll be alright, don't worry’. He got quite agitated, started screaming at the driver, and then he hung the phone up!

“So we're driving down to this place in the middle of nowhere. After about half an hour, maybe 40 minutes, I see this Jeep coming up. I couldn't see from the front, but it was a Jeep. And I saw four or five guys in the back. I couldn't make out who they were or anything like that, but they came up to us and made us stop the car. Then two guys jump out and they opened my door. They pulled me out of the car. They all speak in Sudanese and I'm thinking, ‘what the f*ck is going on?’ They put me in the back of the car and they sit me there. That was the moment where I thought, this is it, my remains will be found somewhere in the desert between Khartoum and Hasahisa and no one's going to know what happened! For the next 15 minutes, I'm like, can anybody tell me something? They're not saying anything. And then maybe 10 minutes later, I look around and I see the football stadium in the background. What Mr. Shaddad had done is told the security there to go and get me from where I was - he gave the driver's number and told them to take me to the stadium as fast as they could under close escort. By then, I had already peed myself!

“Anyway, they took me to the stadium. I went in and there's people coming and going. I couldn't see anything. I said, ‘I need to see the game, I came here to see this kid’. So they said, ‘OK, come with us’. They took me downstairs and they sat me next to the fourth official - 48 degrees of sunshine, I lasted 15 minutes! I saw the left-back and then I drove back to Hasahisa. And, yes, I did pick him for the national team! That was my most surreal experience, but I’ve had plenty of others.”

“I must confess that I do struggle with needing to do something every day. National teams, you have got five windows, but there is something special about being asked to be somebody's national team coach. If you had asked me a few years ago, I would have said ‘alright, let me live to 65 but I want to be the England manager for a year or two years’. I would have gone ‘okay, I’ll take that’. As a kid, or as a young man, if you said ‘you can be 65 and play for England or you can be 75’. I’d take 65 and play for England.

“Not being involved on a daily basis kind of does my head in a bit. I’m doing scouting workshops, we went all over Rwanda explaining to people how we play, what our philosophy is, and we need scouts to start working for U15, U17 level and to play a certain way. These generic scouting positions, what are we looking for? Firstly, who are you looking for and what kind of philosophy does that coach have, and then try and identify players that can play in that system. We did a couple of scouting networks. I have an office that is about 10 minutes from my apartment and I go there every morning. I’m there by 9-9:15 even though the office doesn’t open until 9:30! I had a meeting the other day with a player that was in the country and had another with the head of finance, and another with another player on a different thing. If you go into the office, something is going to happen and someone is going to see you.

“I usually get home by 1 or 2. I haven’t been to the gym as much as I would like to. I need to do that. But I have meetings. Now I have Kinyarwanda lessons twice a week. I’m in the middle of an assignment with that and need to finish otherwise I’ll get a slap on the wrist! We have got all the football from England and Europe [on the television]. And there is this thing called pickleball, we go and play a bit of that over the weekend. I try to fill my days as much as I can but I’m not one of those guys that is going to sit around and do nothing. I can’t stand not doing something. I try to keep occupied.”

“Rwanda has to be the cleanest country I have ever been to. They have a thing called Umuganda, which is the last Saturday in every month. And people are required to pick up any rubbish that they find outside in their own neighborhood. And that means everybody. But the discipline of not throwing paper cups, plastic anywhere, there is honestly nothing to see. We drove the other day, three hours out of Kigali to one of the national parks. On the way there, on the highway or the roads, no rubbish. In the villages that you went through, no rubbish anywhere. It's just unbelievable.

“The city of Kigali is very pretty. It's called the city of a thousand hills. So you don't want to be walking too far because there's going to be a hill somewhere! But it's very nice. Generally, the people are very thoughtful, very sweet, polite. Obviously, not everyone is like that, but it's a nice place to live. It's my second stint here. I would say the average salary of a waitress or somebody like that is about $300 a month. So it's not great. But then the basic things that you need here are not very costly. It's not like it is back home. But Kigali, the way the city is built, really is quite nice. Some lovely views and some lovely scenery. And then obviously you go out of the main town and there are some beautiful spots.”

“The apartment that I have, it's $1,500 a month. You can get one for $200 a month. I don't find that expensive. I think food is a little bit cheaper here. They have all sorts of cuisine and you can go to a restaurant. If you went to a middle class restaurant in Nottingham, for example, that might cost around £80 for two people. Here, it would be about $40, $45. And that might be for three people, depending on where you go. It's not a bad place to be economically either, especially if you're making a good wage.”

“I think, unfortunately, in the last 20 years, we haven't done much in the region. When I was here in 2014, we had qualified for the Africa Cup of Nations and we were 64 in the world when I left. When I came back, we were 132. Now we're 119. But they're very big into basketball here, volleyball. But I would say football is by far the biggest sport. And obviously, the place went mad when the U17s qualified for the AFCON.

“We are four points away from qualifying for the AFCON proper. And that would be the first time that we've gone there in 22 or 23 years. Hopefully we can get there. But four very difficult games. We haven't done anything yet. I was being interviewed in Cape Verde after the game and some of the journalists from Rwanda were like, ‘coach, this is brilliant, we're going to go to AFCON’. And I went ‘doza’, which means relax in Kinyarwanda. That was the headline the next day! If we manage to get there, it's going to be absolutely huge for us. So, fingers crossed.”

“I would say you most definitely have to go and see the gorillas. They have some absolutely beautiful scenery in Kivu, where they have a big lake, and you can swim there. That's up near Congo. I think there's so many treks and hikes and opportunities to go and see the country. I would say sit down and have local cuisine. I think don't come here and not go and see the gorillas. Don't come here and not go to the national park. Compared to some places in the world, the experience here will be unbelievable. The people are unbelievable, very hospitable and very kind and warm.”

“I was instrumental in getting Hudl.com going. That is a platform where you can upload videos. It's a massive US company. Hudl bought Wyscout. So if you understand the platform of Wyscout, with Hudl you'll be able to upload medical reports, fitness reports, everything is on a platform, or a cloud, if you like. Plus, you have access to the Wyscout platform where you can look at players, teams, all the rest of it. Because I've known Wyscout and Hudl for some time, I helped them get connected with the BK League and our CEO Jules Karangwa, who heads that. They made a deal and now every single game in Rwanda, which is all of the first division team games, is televised and can be seen on Wyscout, which makes our players more visible.

“In the last seven months or so, we won the FIFA series. That was big in the sense that we had not won a trophy in over 40 years. So when a trophy comes, you take it. It might not be the biggest trophy in the world, but symbolically it is for us. And that was in front of our president, Mr. Paul Kagame. So that was massive. Then we go and get drawn against Mali, Cape Verde, and no one's giving us a chance. We might get a home-and-away win with Liberia, you're not sure, they're a decent side as well.

“Then we come out of the September-October window, we're top of the group - played two, won two. Then you add the two games we had in the FIFA series, we’ve played four, won four. We had a friendly game with Kenya, and I changed the entire team. The first 11 was one player that had played in the Cape Verde game. So we're trying to give kids possibilities. Our U23s have just qualified for the second round of the Olympic qualifiers. They play Cameroon. Will be a difficult game. We had a player that was playing in the U23s and he’s only 19. He looked quite decent, left-sided, nasty little guy, you know, aggressive, which I like. I pulled him out of the U23s, he played against Liberia, started. I gave him his debut against Liberia. He did okay. Took him out for the game with Cape Verde, we needed a bit more experience. Put him on, beginning of the second half. Who scores the winner? The 19-year-old. So now people are going, ‘oh, wait a minute’. We've got two U17s that I'm thinking, ‘good enough, old enough’.

“Everybody plays the same system. We're all 4-4-2, straight from top to bottom. Maybe a 3-5-2, depending on the game, but the philosophy is the same - the two banks of four, shut them down etc. Everything is the same because Nicholas is doing that at U17, U15 level. So we are trying to establish our own identity. I've been doing this for a long, long time. It works. I've been successful with this. But it depends where you are. It can take some time. If there's no youth development happening, which unfortunately we're trying to put that straight now, we're going to have players here that are going to be seen everywhere on Wyscout. Now the U15s are going to Azerbaijan, the U17s are going to go to the AFCON. The revolution is happening, is basically what I'm trying to say.”

“In the most personal way possible, I really don't care where I am as long as I'm doing football. So far, I've done 93 countries. I have never been to South America. My goalkeeping coach, Rogelio Ramos dal Solio - that's half his name! - is from Brazil. I really need to get down there. My sports science coach is Claudio Altieri, he's half Venezuelan, half Australian. Well, he lived in Australia for a bit. I've got quite an international group around me, and I love that, they keep me on my toes. You never know in this business what's going to happen, how long you're going to be in jobs. I would definitely like to take Rwanda to the AFCON. I quite fancy taking them to a World Cup. That may be a few years down the road.

“I had some interest from Tunisia about two months before the World Cup. They went with a French speaker. So you just don't know where you're going to be. I think people are taking interest in what's happening in Rwanda. That's only good for me. If and when you get an offer, then you have a decision to make. I do like projects. I would say that all eight of my national teams and 70% of the clubs have been projects. It's either ‘help us not get relegated or help us qualify’. I think I've done OK, generally speaking. I often get asked, would I want to work in England? Yeah, of course, I'm English. Why wouldn't I want to work in England? But I don't know if that ever happens. If it does, it does. If it doesn't, I'm not complaining.”

“When I was at Millwall, they sacked Colin Lee and I was the only pro-license holder in the building. They gave the job to Dave Tuttle - a lovely guy, great knowledge, wouldn't call him a coach, certainly not a manager. He did okay, but I wasn't the name. People don't appreciate what it takes to do some of the things that I have done. There are other coaches out there as well that would have similar stories, but I didn't get a job because I played in England or in Cyprus. I got a job because my previous job I'd done well. They didn't hire me in India because I was rubbish in Nepal. I was offered the job in India three months before I got this job here, for the third time.

“This is the second time I'm here in Rwanda. I've been three times in India, two as a national coach. I'm not saying I'm the best coach in the world, far from it, but I do think that I deserved an opportunity to coach in my own country. In Cyprus, whenever the national team job comes up, I'm shortlisted every single time, but they don't give me the job because I'm not a big enough name, or I'm not going to do certain things that they want. The reason why I brought up the Millwall thing is that I was a first-team coach, I headed up the reserves and went to see games. I was leaving my house at 6:30 from Brighton, driving up to The Den, and I was coming home about 11, 11:30. Didn't see the kids, didn't see the missus, and it was eat, sleep, get a cup of tea and a scone or crumpet, and off I went. You don't think about anything else except what you are doing, trust me, there is no time. So I get it, if you're in that football bubble in England, it's very difficult to think about other things, but I don't think people understand or give you the credit for what you're doing or what you've done.

“Les Reed wrote a testimonial for me, and I'm telling you it was out of this world. I've been knighted in Nepal, but I don't get any recognition in England. In Cyprus I was awarded the Stelios Kyriakidis Award. They consider me Cypriot when it's going well, but they awarded me this for the best performing coach abroad. And in England, it's like I'm not even a thing. To be fair, I haven't lived in England constantly, it’s been on and off, but I'm waiting for His Majesty to give me a shout. I might have a long wait!”

“It has been a case of ‘wherever life takes me’ since I became a coach. I don't have a big name. I don't consider that I have a big name. I'm not one of these names that they're going to get the job because of how many games they played for Arsenal. Those guys don't tend to last very long, by the way. It's a hard business. It's a lot of sacrifice. I'm not one of these coaches that are like, ‘I'm from England and we're going to play this way’. No, you've got to play the way they're playing in the local country. Your job is to try and change that way. But you've got to understand how people think in the country that you're in and what upsets them or what doesn't upset them and what they will tolerate and what they won't tolerate.

“I think I've done that quite well in all of the countries. I'm not 100% happy with how things have gone in some of the countries in terms of we could have done better if this or that happened, but you're never going to get everything you want 100%. I'm going to try to get there. So if you're working for me, I will push you!”

Weather: 9/10

Food: 7/10

People: 9/10

Things to do: 6/10

Cost of living: 8/10

Total: 39/50