Constantine From Delhi to the Den

The Story of Football's Most Travelled Coach
1. Auflage 2017
ISBN: 978-1-909245-47-1
Verlag: deCoubertin Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 212 Seiten

From the Cypriot fourth division to the Indian national team, Stephen Constantine's career has taken the scenic route. Ever since leaving his home in Cyprus with nothing at the age of 16, Constantine has been used to life on the road; his sense of adventure dwarfed only by his appetite to improve and develop those he works with. That yearning for fresh experience has inevitably led Constantine into a host of unique situations. He has hugged a pitch- invading prince in Kathmandu. He has been threatened with kidnap in Khartoum. He has seen the Millwall chairman tip £10,000 onto the changing room floor, and he has watched his goalkeeping coach attack a pitch invader in Congo. Many in the game allege to have seen it all, but there is no one with a better claim to such a statement than Constantine, a veteran manager of six different national sides across four continents. But 'From Delhi to the Den' isn't simply a tale of one man planning his next coaching expedition in another far-flung corner of the world. Constantine explores the pressures of paying the mortgage when most jobs don't last 12 months, and the solitude of life on the road when your wife and children still reside thousands of miles away. We hear of how qualifications are trumped by reputations, and why dealing with Foot- ball Associations isn't exactly plain-sailing, especially with governmental interference. Constantine's journey - for the time being, anyway - ends up India, where he is looking to stir the passions and enhance the professionalism of Asia's sleeping giant. Progress has already been achieved, but nothing is finished yet. Anyone interested in football, travel, or adventure will love this book.

Stephen Constantine has managed five national teams, which is more than any other Englishman. His first national job was in Nepal in 1999; he has since managed India, Sudan, Malawi, and Rwanda. Born in London, and raised in England and Cyprus, Constantine also spent a year as Millwall's first team coach. He is now in charge of the Indian national team for the second me, and runs FIFA courses for coaches and players around the world.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Constantine, Stephen

Leseproben

1

GROWING UP

1962–82

NOMADIC. THAT’S WHAT PEOPLE CALL ME.

I’ve coached six national sides. Worked in four continents. I’ve taken my teams to Zimbabwe, North Korea, and most places in between.

I’ve lived in Khartoum and Kathmandu. New York and New Delhi. Brighton and Blantyre.

I’ve been on countless flights. Stayed in countless hotel rooms. Spent countless nights on my own, looking forward to seeing my wife and three children.

So yes, I’m a nomad. I go from place to place. But here’s what people don’t know: it’s always been like this.

I went to eight schools. Moved homes. Moved countries. Moved continents. At one point, I was a refugee, fleeing my home as bombs fell from the sky.

And when I was a teenager, I left home with nothing. I never went back.

I WAS SIXTEEN YEARS OLD. DAD AND I WERE ARGUING. THIS TIME, it was about football.

I’d just moved to Cyprus, where he lived with my brothers and sister. We lived in a village just outside Limassol, a city on the south coast.

I’d started training with the reserves of a first-division team, AEL. Two other teams in the city – Aris and Apollon – also wanted me to sign.

At the time, I was a striker. Quite quick. Aggressive. Good in the air. At AEL they called me Jordan, after the Scotland striker Joe Jordan. I used to get stuck in.

The problem was, Dad wanted me to move to the village team, Kolossi. They were non-league. Amateur. They trained twice a week and, if I signed for them, I would never have to leave the village. That suited Dad. He never thought I would amount to much.

‘You’ll never make a living playing football,’ he told me, over and over again.

Kolossi were small time. AEL were big time. Playing for them meant travelling to the city every day. It meant leaving the village behind. It meant my dream – playing professional football – was alive.

Dad wouldn’t have it.

‘It’s my house, my rules,’ he said. ‘When I say jump, you don’t ask why – you ask how high.’

I said no. I wanted to sign for AEL or Apollon. I wanted to play in the first division.

‘If you don’t like it,’ he told me, ‘there’s the door.’

I thought about the arguments. The years of yelling. The lack of any father-son relationship.

I thought about his boozing. His temper. And most of all, I thought about Mum. She died on 15 September 1975 – a month short of my thirteenth birthday.

Dad and I didn’t get on before she died. Afterwards, it was much worse. There was nothing, and no one, to stop the arguments.

So I looked at the door. I said bye to my brothers and sister, and left home for good.

IT WAS TEN-THIRTY AT NIGHT. ALL I HAD WERE THE CLOTHES ON my back. We lived six or seven miles outside Limassol, so I started walking.

The road was half-built. There were no streetlights. I stuck to the edge of the tarmac, so I didn’t get run over. The night seemed darker than normal.

Eventually, I reached a set of traffic lights. On the corner was a club called Traffic. I knew the owners, and I knew AEL players went there, so I went in. I had nowhere else to go.

I told the guys what happened. They let me sleep on a couch. The next day, I hung out: coffee shops, street corners, anywhere. Being on your own isn’t too bad in daylight. At night, it’s different.

I couldn’t go back to the club – my pride wouldn’t let me – so I went to my great-grandmother’s house. I didn’t knock on the door. I didn’t want my dad’s grandma to know I’d left home.

Instead, I went round the back. She had a shed, so I tried the door. It was locked, but somehow I forced it open. The next morning, she found me.

‘Why don’t you go back to your father?’ she asked me.

‘No,’ I replied.

‘You should make up,’ she said.

‘I’m not doing it,’ I replied. It wasn’t much of a discussion.

I said bye to my great-grandmother, left the shed, and spent most of the day walking round Limassol. When it was dark, I saw an abandoned car in a field.

I tried the door. Unlike my great-grandmother’s shed, it opened first time.

I climbed in, lay down, and slept on the back seat. It was the longest night of my life.

The next day was match day. AEL were playing in Larnaca, forty miles up the coast.

In those days, the reserve teams played immediately before the first team. If the punters turned up early, they got two games for the price of one. I wasn’t playing for the reserves – I hadn’t been in Cyprus long, and I wasn’t registered – but they wanted me to come and watch. I went to AEL’s clubhouse, as I’d been told, and waited.

The reserves coach was Costas Pambou, a former AEL player. He was affectionately known as Mavrokolos, which literally meant ‘black arse’. He was old-school. Sometimes, he’d pass me on his motorbike on his way to training. Instead of giving me a lift, he would whizz past.

‘Hurry up, you English bastard,’ he’d shout. ‘You’ll be late!’

If that wasn’t bad enough, his nickname for me was Kavlintiri. Loosely translated, it means ‘hard-on’.

Despite that, he took a shine to me. He liked my aggression. When I was waiting outside the clubhouse, he opened the door.

‘Faggot English boy – what are you doing outside?’

At the time, my Greek wasn’t great. Perhaps there’d been a mistake. Perhaps I wasn’t meant to travel with the team.

‘You told me to come,’ I replied, almost whispering.

‘I told you to come inside!’ he said. ‘Not hang around out here!’

I went inside and had steak and chips with the reserves. For a starving kid who’d spent the night in an abandoned car, it was heaven.

I went to Larnaca and watched the reserves, followed by the first team. On the way home, the team manager, Mr Fodis, asked where I wanted to be dropped off.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said. ‘Anywhere.’

I had nowhere to go. I probably would have tried Traffic again, or slept on the beach.

‘But you must have somewhere,’ Mr Fodis said.

‘Honestly,’ I repeated, ‘anywhere will do.’

He must have asked six times. Eventually he got pissed off.

‘I don’t have anywhere,’ I finally told him. ‘I left home three nights ago.’

Mr Fodis took me to his house and let me sleep in a shack in his back garden. Back then, a lot of houses in Cyprus had them: they were made from corrugated iron, usually with a bed, a hob and not much else.

The next day, he went to the house three doors down, where they had a spare shack. He spoke to the owners and gave them a month’s rent. It was basic, but it was better than staying with Dad. The shower was a hose that hung from a lemon tree. When I built my house in Cyprus in 2006, I stuck a lemon tree in the garden. It always reminds me of the shack on Mr Fodis’s street.

As well as the shack, AEL got me a job in a hotel: first as a doorman, then by the pool. I was sixteen years old, and football had saved me.

I WAS BORN IN MARYLEBONE, LONDON, ON 16 OCTOBER 1962. My mum, Paula, was a hairdresser with her own salon called Vogue. The customers loved her, apparently. I’ve still got her business card.

She met dad when he was selling dresses from a van. He was Cypriot, but moved to England when he was young. They went into business, running clothes shops around north London. We moved about the suburbs: Muswell Hill in the beginning, then Mill Hill and Hadley Wood.

Mum was English, but there was Irish there too. Her maiden name was Shine. She was a proper ginger, covered head to foot in freckles. When she lay in the sun they used to join up.

She was really smart, with a great sense of humour. But she was tough. I remember when I was eleven, I used the F-word. Mum was horrified.

‘If you need to use that word to express yourself, you’re not worth listening to,’ she said, before taking me upstairs to wash my mouth out with soap. Literally.

There were six of us: Mum, Dad, me, my two brothers and my sister. Costa is two years younger than me, Monica’s three years younger, and Anthony’s eight years younger.

From an early age, I was obsessed with football. I’d organise Subbuteo leagues on my dad’s snooker table. I’d listen to the scores on the radio. And I’d play in the garden, or the park, or – more dangerously – in the front room.

Once, I smashed the glass in Dad’s office door with a tennis ball. Another time, when playing in the garden with my Uncle Spyro, I hit a volley towards the top corner of the living-room window.

I fell to my knees. Not in recognition of the wonder strike, but because I was going to get a beating. As the ball hit the window, a crack raced from one side of the glass to the other. I went to bed at 6 p.m., before Mum and Dad got back from the shop, to delay the hiding. I got a proper telling-off the next day, but my life was spared.

When I wasn’t breaking windows, I’d watch the best...