OpinionGus Poyet interview: peripatetic football manager on the highs and lows of coaching in China, France, Spain and Greece
Uruguayan coach discusses his various stints around the world and reveals how he’d like to manage in England again
Gus Poyet spent the international break at his family home in London, helping unpack the contents of the home which he’d moved to Bordeaux only two months previously.
“No, my wife is not happy if that’s what you’re going to ask,” says the former Chelsea player. “She has suffered more than anyone as I’ve travelled around the world in recent years.”
Manchester United boss Jose Mourinho chose to keep his family in London after his kids spent their childhood following him around, thinking it would be only fair for them to have a permanent home.
Poyet approves of Mourinho’s decision. “He’s right, a family deserves their life too. The kids are not babies, they have jobs and friends. We can’t expect them to follow us.”
“I spent 20 days at home,” explains the Uruguayan, who has lived and managed in the port cities of Sunderland, Seville and Shanghai, Athens and Bordeaux in the last three years. Each had their cultural nuances.
“First time in China, I got in a lift and pressed the floor,” he explains. “When the lift opened, people flooded in and I couldn’t get out. At first I thought ‘this is crazy’, but then I was the outsider who had to adjust. If you don’t move quickly around the lifts in China, you don’t get in the lift. From then on, I waited for lifts poised. Shanghai was a great experience for me. I would go on the underground to feel the energy of so many people. Hardly anyone recognised me.” Relative anonymity was not afforded to him in his previous jobs.