Entertainer Coyle wins friends in high places
“This is good football,” Ferguson told Turf Moor regular Campbell as Burnley led 2-0. “He’s playing Arsenal the way they don’t like it: high tempo, in their faces, don’t let them settle.”
Within a few months of that, of course, Coyle was doing the same to Ferguson’s team. On their first meeting as opposing managers, Burnley momentously beat United 1-0. And Coyle has already followed that at Bolton, with a daring 2-2 back in October. Despite such effrontery, Ferguson has seemingly brought Coyle into his stable of managerial protégés. The United boss invited him out to dinner with a group of them in Manchester recently and they regularly text — to which Coyle apparently responds with smiley faces.
Nevertheless, there is one group with which Coyle doesn’t so readily identify. As he takes his seat on the Old Trafford bench today, we’re likely to hear a lot of commentary about yet another clash between Scottish managers. Specifically, Glaswegian managers. Coyle, however, would point out that he’s very much an Irish manager. And the feeling goes a lot deeper than the one cap he earned during Jack Charlton’s period of exploiting FIFA’s eligibility rules.
“I had the choice, at U21 level, for both Scotland and Ireland. But my parents are both Donegal-born. My dad is dead now, God rest him, and choosing Ireland was a big thing for my parents. And for me. I went all the way through the levels, 21s, 23s, the B team, to finally get that elusive cap. I feel privileged.
“Equally, you can’t take away from the fact that I’m born and bred in Glasgow in Scotland. But where we lived in the Gorbals was called ‘Little Donegal’ because it was very much an Irish community.”
Indeed, Bolton probably have the original Donegal to thank for some of their progress. Coyle’s mother still owns a house there and he visits at least once a year. Those trips should, strictly, be about unwinding but he admits he can’t stop himself planning for the next match or move. “My phone is on silent but I check it every few minutes.” A few of his managerial decisions have been made while looking out over the Atlantic.
“I absolutely love it,” he enthuses. “My dad was from Bloodforeland, which is the last point to look out to America. And my mum is from Glasserchoo which is part of Gweedore. It’s a special part of the world.”
Coyle is speaking in his office the Tuesday after the Irish general election, and his voice regularly goes hoarse. Not because he’s sick, but because he talks so often and so effusively. The night before, on Sky to work as a pundit. After this interview, another media gig. Before it, a morning spent driving on his players and telling the grumpiest to “shut up and smile!”
Coyle is most definitely flavour of the month and was on the shortlist for the Liverpool job in January. Supporters clearly enjoy watching Coyle’s football as much as celebrating the success it brought at various clubs (see panel).
In previously summing up his philosophy, Coyle has stated his admiration for Arsene Wenger’s Arsenal. “That is the kind of team I always liked to play in because, as a striker, I believe that the best sight in football is the ball hitting the back of the net. Second to that, I believe one of the classic sights is a winger taking on a full-back because it’s exciting. That’s what we’re here for, to excite fans. To do that, I believe you have to pass and move the ball.”
That’s not quite what Ireland were doing when Coyle finally got to join up with the squad in the spring before USA 94. Not that he would have declared any disagreement with Charlton’s play at the time.
“Jack got the very best out of his players. He was such a great manager when you see what he did.”
Charlton’s notorious pressing game did, of course, make Ireland one of the top-ranked teams in the world at the time. It also brought a 1-0 win away to Holland in Coyle’s only full cap. The then-Bolton striker came on in the 83rd minute for his best friend, match-winner Tommy Coyne.
“I feel very privileged and humble to have been part of that group. I think Jack had a fondness for me because he knew how hard I worked. And he got my name right too! It was one of the easier ones to remember to be fair.”
In effect, Coyle has repeatedly managed the same sort of extraordinary feat that Charlton did: he got a lower-profile team to immediately play well above their assumed level. But the two managers’ contrasting styles do raise wider questions about the best route to success for lesser-resourced teams. In recent football history, the smallest sides to have made the largest leaps — Charlton’s Ireland, Wimbledon’s 1988 FA Cup winners, FC Porto and Greece of 2004 — have all done so through pragmatism. By contrast, purer football generally requires slower, more organic growth.
Not for Coyle, though.
After only 14 months at Bolton, his team are on the brink of European qualification as well as an FA Cup final. And that has come through steady rather than stellar players like Stuart Holden, Lee Chung-Young and Fabrice Muamba, as well as a core who suffered through much more turgid football under former manager Gary Megson.
Coyle graciously insists that Megson was unfairly maligned but the players’ confidence still had to be significantly lifted. How, then, did Coyle manage it in such an expressive fashion?
“Well, players might not have the same reputation, as you say, but I have the belief in them that they’re capable of that. It’s about confidence. I like to think I’m bubbly and that we train with a smile on our faces. And that is what I ask of my group.
“Our strength, as good individual players as we have, is a happy group. And that for me is very, very important in football. At their maximum, my players have shown we’re capable of going toe to toe with the very best.
“Now, we won’t be able to match them consistently over the course of the season but on any given day we can.”
The natural question here is whether he would consider managing his country. Coyle insists that, as with leaving Burnley, “when big decisions come, I’m prepared to make them”, and that it would be “very difficult” to turn down Ireland. For the moment though, with life at Bolton going so well and Giovanni Trapattoni still in command, he offers two interesting future alternatives.
“I see a lot of Irish domestic football and Pat Fenlon and Michael O’Neill are very good pals of mine. But I know how capable they are as managers. Why not? There is a snobbery in football in the sense of giving opportunities.”
Does that mean he believes that basic managerial skills are transferable whatever the level? That there should be no such phenomenon as a manager being ‘out of his depth’?
“Football, in essence, is the same game. In terms of management, it’s not just about one single thing. It’s about looking after a club as a whole. You do need, without getting away from it, to be multi-talented. You need all the skills to cope with whatever comes your way.”
Coyle clearly has an awful lot. And they could mean Ferguson won’t be so happy to see him excelling today.
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