My name is Matthew Williams, a 25 year old from Swansea and I am a football manager. My short playing career was ended when I took a scissor kick to the knee while playing for Neath AFC that caused serious cartilage damage from which I couldn’t recover. There wasn’t a club in England that would hire a young, inexperienced manager. I applied for various jobs around the lower leagues in Europe, but alas, no-one wanted to know. That was, until I came across SV Sandhausen of the German Third Division.
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Day 2 – Getting Down to Business
I arrived at the club this morning and set about arranging another meeting with my staff. We sat down at around 10:30 and spoke over a light breakfast. We started off by talking about the clubs ‘star player’ – Frank Löning. Frank is a 29-year old striker who is built like your standard English number 9 – like a brick shithouse. The coaches’ reports I read last night said that he is the best finisher we’ve got, but his first touch has always let him down. I instructed Thorsten (who is also our forwards coach) to put him on a regime to improve in this area.
The next order of business was looking at the areas of the squad which needed improving. The first thing to come up was the need for a central midfielder, and our scout, Hans-Jörg Ernst, was ready with a potential signing – the 34-year old free agent Jürgen Heinrichs. Heinrichs, Hans-Jörg told me, has spent his majority of his career in the German lower divisions until 3 years ago when he was signed to the Dutch second division side Fortuna Sittard where he did reasonably well. Hans-Jörg said that he really thought that Heinrichs would fit straight in and use his experience to help bring on some of the younger players. I told him that I would look over his scouting reports and make a decision later on today.
The only other player Hans-Jörg thought we should make a move on now was a 23-year old Goalkeeper called Robert Böhm. We already have 3 first team goalkeepers, one of whom, Phillip Kühn is very similar both in terms of scouting reports and physical attributes, so I decided not to make a move at this time.
The last thing we talked about at the morning meeting was the pre-season schedule that had already been drawn up before I arrived. We are to play the Swiss second league club SC Kriens the day after tomorrow, before heading off on a week-long tour of France, in which we were set to play two top division teams – Stade Malherbe Caen and AJ Auxerre. Our season opener is 3 days after the Auxerre match against Stuttgart’s ‘B’-team. I asked my staff if they would have any objections to me setting up another home friendly, there were none.
After we parted from the meeting, I went back to my office and looked up the number I had for Huw Jenkins, the chairman of Swansea City, my hometown team, and the team at which I had spent a few years as a youngster before moving on to Neath. I got through to Huw, explained who I was, and asked the all-important question – would Swansea like to come to Sandhausen to play against us sometime next week. Obviously, he couldn’t give me an answer straight away, but he said he would have a word with their manager, Brendan Rodgers, and get back to me tomorrow. Huw also added that he may have a couple of young players that the Swansea are looking to loan out, and said he would talk more about it tomorrow.
Thorsten popped his head round the door and said that the training session was about to begin. I told him that I would be out to join him in a few minutes; I had one more phone call to make. I dialled the number for Christian Maurer, the agent of Jürgen Heinrichs. I told him that we were interested in signing Jürgen and asked if he could come to the club later this afternoon to start contract talks. Maurer said he would do so, and rang off.
The training session went very well. I started off by meeting the players and then watched them as they played a practice match. The ‘star player’ Frank Löning had a particularly good game, scoring twice. The coaches then split up the squad to go through some more direct, skill-based exercises. This session was just another eye opener as to how important it will be to learn German, as only one of the players, the Portuguese right-winger Roberto Pinto can speak English. Thank goodness for my translator.
The contract negotiations between Heinrichs’ agent and myself were quite tense. I would never recommend having to do such a thing through a translator. Maurer wasn’t happy with the basic wage that we were offering, so I threw in a goal landmark clause knowing that Heinrichs is not known for his goal scoring prowess, and he accepted. I just now had to wait for Maurer to get back to me after speaking to his client.
