Quiet life

Forget throwing teacups and the hairdryer treatment – some managers have found it’s silence that gets results

HARRY PEARSON

I’d seen the balding bloke in an olive gilet many times at grounds around the region and on one of them had nodded to him in recognition. This was a mistake, like pulling a thorn from a lion’s paw. It proved an unwitting commitment to a lifetime of unnerving friendship. With a lift of his head he came and sat next to me. “I’m just back from the north-west,” he announced. “Fitted in seven games in three days.” He began to name the places he’d been, counting them off on his fingers.

The final ground he mentioned was in the middle of a notorious estate. “Oh,” I said. “It’s supposed to be a bit rough there. A friend of mine went a few years back for a Vase tie. He said the crowd was 50 per cent pit bulls. He said, ‘I’m not saying it was unsettling but the ice cream vans played Helter Skelter ’.”

In the blizzard of banter, the chirp, the chatter and the eternal wind-ups, I imagine that silence could be a powerful and unsettling weapon

The man did not respond. He was set to broadcast rather than receive. “I’d flown in from Norway,” he continued, “nine matches in six days…” The game we were watching kicked off and we had already had the first bellowed “How many more times, referee?” from the away dugout by the time the man had finished his recitation of the grounds he had ticked off and the teams he had seen.

After a pause to allow the magnitude of his achievement to settle in, he said: “In my hotel I met Jan Age Fjortoft.” “He always seems an interesting bloke,” I said. There was no interrupting the man’s flow and he embarked on listing all the clubs the Norwegian striker had played for, starting with Hodd and concluding with Lillestrom. He did it in such a way it was impossible not to envisage the parentheses at either end.

“He told me an arresting story about Felix Magath, his coach at the Waldstadion, Frankfurt,” the man said. I waited for him to start “FC Saarbrücken, Hamburger SV…” and wondered why I hadn’t had the sense to go to the gents before I sat down, but for some reason the fearsome German did not merit the same treatment as the Norwegian. “Eintracht had suffered a heavy defeat,” the man continued. “The players sat in the dressing room petrifiedat the thought of the tirade from Magath that was sure to follow. The door opened. A caretaker came in and plonked down a table. A minute later he was back with a chair. Then he came in with a cream cake and put it on the table. Soon after, in walks Magath. He sits down without a word and eats the entire cake. When he’s finished he wipes his mouth and walks out. Doesn’t say a thing. Can you fathom that out?” In a way, I thought I could. In the blizzard of banter that surrounds professional footballers, the chirp, the chatter and the eternal wind-ups, I imagine that silence, with or without confectionery, could be a powerful and unsettling weapon. After a defeat to Portsmouth in the FA Cup, Sir Alex Ferguson did not speak to his players for a fortnight, simply pinning up the team sheet before matches and walking past them without a word. His team found his cold shoulder more frightening than the hairdryer. José Mourinho too would react to poor displays by freezing his players out. “Worse than when he shouted at us,” reflected Nemanja Matic. Magath made use of silence less quirkily most of the time, calling those who had transgressed into his office and then simply staring at them for several minutes before gesturing for them to leave. And then there was Alf Ramsey, a true master of the tortured silence and the pause so pregnant it felt like the onset of quins to those on the receiving end. This was shown to best effect in a now celebrated incident involving Bobby Moore, Bobby Charlton and several other senior England players breaking the curfew in London before an away trip. Arriving back in the hotel in the early hours they expected to be greeted by a massive rant from a fuming Ramsey. Instead they found peace and quiet and their passports placed neatly on their pillows.

To be honest I could have done with a bit of silence myself at that moment because the man in the olive gilet had started outlining details of his forthcoming trip to Devon and Cornwall. If you should see him there, whatever you do, don’t say “Hello”.