When Oliver Glasner was growing up in the small Austrian town of Riedau, the Bavarian border was only 32 km (20 miles) to the north. It meant that three of the five channels available to him on television were German.
“I could see a bit more than the regular Austrian,” said the Crystal Palace manager, 50 The Athletics ahead of his team’s draw with Leicester City last weekend.
Glasner admitted that he didn’t realize it at the time, but his geographic location in the world opened his eyes and by extension his mind to wider possibilities. He was also exposed to wider European football in a way that many other Austrians were not – the country’s domestic teams were not as successful as those of neighboring Germany, and therefore there were fewer matches on television to watch. It certainly increased his understanding of the game he loved. “I’ve always been crazy about football…” he finished.
Glasner is not an outlier in this season’s Premier League: nine of the division’s 20 managers were either born or raised within 50 kilometers of a national border, with Erik ten Hag, Arne Slot, Unai Emery, Mikel Arteta, Andoni Iraola, Thomas Frank, Kieran McKenna and Julen Lopetegui completing the list.
Another, Pep Guardiola, is from Catalonia, a region that has long sought autonomy from Spain, while one more – Nuno Espirito Santo – comes from Sao Tome and Principe, an island nation on the Atlantic coast of Africa that has been independent for less than 50 years. .
Everything suggests that this is the season of the border manager, four of whom meet in games this weekend.
At Selhurst Park, Glasner leads Palace against a Manchester United team under Ten Hag, who was born in the Dutch town of Haaksbergen, just 10km from Germany; at Anfield, Liverpool’s Slot (raised in Bergentheim, a city in the Netherlands separated from German soil by 12 km), faces Bournemouth and Iraola, who comes from Usurbil, in Spain but 34 km from France.
But is this just a geographical quirk, or a trend that reveals something about the characters of those in charge of many of England’s elite clubs?
Of the four managers in this season’s Premier League originating from the Basque Country, in northern Spain, near the French border, Unai Emery is perhaps the most essential coach.
He grew up in the border town of Hondarribia, separated from France by the Bidasoa river, and his career is good to think about for all managers with connections to borders, he has managed the most clubs in the most countries. , held nine positions in Spain, Russia, France and England. By modern standards, certainly at the elite levels, that qualifies him as a traveling coach.
“I left home at 24 – Hondarribia, San Sebastian, Real Sociedad – and opened myself to the world of football: carrying my suitcase, facing many difficult moments, leaving my comfort zone,” Emery told British newspaper The Guardian in 2022, shortly . before he moved again, leaving Villarreal in his homeland for Aston Villa.
Emery played just five games for Real Sociedad, his boyhood club, and would spend the majority of his playing career in Spain’s second tier. Perhaps his path was necessary: he had to live, and he wanted it to be in football. However, perhaps the journey involved in this process was made a little easier by the fact that as a child, somewhere else was never that far away.
Although he would see planes swooping over the Bidasoa estuary just west of San Sebastian, landing at Donostia airport (another reminder that there was a world waiting to be explored), the details of the geography certainly matter: Hondarribio blurs into another Basque city called . Irun just to the south, which then merges into Hendaye – also Basque, but in France. The area was one of the busiest crossing points between the two countries, and travelers could sometimes make the journey by train without showing their passports.
It is tempting to think that this made Emery more intellectually curious, and made it easier for him to work with people from other cultures, but psychologists suggest that this type of education had the potential to send him in a different direction, which may explain other aspects of his management.
Emery grew up in Spain, but within a long goal of France (Justin Tallis/AFP via Getty Images)
“Proximity to several cultures, including languages and different traditions, can help adapt to new environments, resolve conflicts and be sensitive to differences,” says sports psychologist Marc Sagal, who has worked with several Premier League clubs. “Perhaps from a less obvious perspective, this could contribute to some strengthening and consolidation of a person’s identity. In other words, there could be times when, due to so many other influences, there is a desire to protect and preserve one’s way of doing things.
“Border regions often have unique identities that are very distinct from the countries they belong to, which can lead individuals to cling tightly to their local culture. The desire to preserve one’s unique cultural heritage may manifest itself in football managers as an exceptionally tight attachment to a style of play, football philosophy or identity .
“The Basque identity is powerful and culturally distinct from Spain and France. It’s easy to see how this could result in a more insular approach, a desire to promote local talent or stick firmly to a specific tactical philosophy. From the outside, it appears that Emery is a bit more rigid about applying his philosophy and Basque-influenced methodology than (San Sebastian-born Arsenal manager) Arteta, for example, who seems quite keen on creating an environment that best suits the players. Both approaches can be very effective, and both are likely to be affected in part by geography and experience.”
Emery’s relationship with France would certainly have been different to Ten Hag and Slot’s relationship with Germany. While to Emery, Spain and France met in urban sprawl, with a border that was clear, for the two Dutch their experience of border territory was rural.
Drive around Haaksbergen and Bergentheim, and you might not even realize you’ve crossed from the Netherlands to Germany and back again. However, how The Athletics discovered when visiting both cities in May, residents in those Bible-belt cities felt very Dutch and would just jump across the border to buy cheaper fuel for their cars.
Arne Slot grew up in the quiet town of Bergentheim (Simon Hughes/The Athletics)
Slot, however, is far from closed-minded. Dan Abrahams, a sports psychologist who worked with him for two seasons when he was manager of Rotterdam club Feyenoord before this summer’s move to Liverpool, describes his former colleague to The Athletics as “very open-minded” and a coach who is willing to “challenge perceived notions of Dutch football”.
Bergentheim is conservative, religious and sober, yet Slot developed more of a Burgundian lifestyle as he pursued a playing career that drew him closer to the other end of the country, and its border with Belgium, during a five-year spell with NAC Breda.
Abrahams refers to the “biopsychosocial model” first conceptualized by American psychiatrist George Engel in 1977, who suggested that to understand a person’s illness, biological factors should not be the only consideration, but also psychological and social ones. “What people experience is the product of a complex interaction,” Abrahams says. “Our social environment is an important mediator of who we become.”
He identifies Slot as a “critical thinker”. The coach gave Abraham permission to be direct with him, however he would check and challenge what he had to say, stretching his limits. How much of that was due to his experiences in Bergentheim was hard to gauge (his conversations with Slot didn’t extend to his background) but ultimately, Abrahams believes living close to another country with an identity as strong as his own must have had an impact. “Such closeness has the potential to make a person more inward looking, or outward looking,” Abrahams concludes.
It seems obvious that the location of any place could affect its industry and subsequently the job opportunities that exist there.
Big business gravitates to big cities, but very few of the current crop of Premier League managers have had a metropolitan education. Only four were raised in major cities – Marco Silva from Fuham (Lisbon), Gary O’Neil from Wolves (London), Ange Postecoglou from Tottenham (Melbourne, after being born in Athens) and Fabian Hurzeler from Brighton (Munich, via Houston in the United States).
Large cities, although they sometimes exist on borders, tend not to be built near other countries for the simple reason that rulers were afraid of losing them to invasion. Beyond the no-man’s land on either side of any border, smaller settlements therefore have a habit of stimulating manual labor, and as such, a demand among the inhabitants for grafting.
Neither Slot nor Ten Hag had manual labor in their blood. While Slot’s parents were teachers and considered lower middle class, the Ten Hags had a property empire, and were certainly not short of cash. However, a strong work ethic continued to be fundamental to their ethos, and informed the way each manager worked.
Evidence of the Ten Hag property empire in Haaksbergen (Simon Hughes/The Athletics)
Although the geography around Guardiola was different, he shares attributes with obsessive figures like Ten Hag and Slot if you listen to those who know him best.
Catalonia and the Basque Country are not poor regions, but demands for independence are related to their economies and how people think they should benefit from local resources.
Guardiola grew up in Santpedor, 70 km north of Barcelona. According to the writer and film director Dave Trueba, when he spoke to the BBC in 2018, what defines the Manchester City manager is his willingness to get his hands dirty rather than any alternative mentality that sometimes manifests itself in his football teams.
“When it comes to analyzing or judging Guardiola, you have to consider that under the smart suit, the cashmere sweater and the tie, is a bricklayer’s son,” Trueba said. “Inside those expensive Italian shoes, there is a heart in espadrilles.”
Those feet have also covered some ground, with Guardiola having succeeded in Catalonia, Germany and now the north west of England on his way to becoming the most famous coach of his generation.
He, like many of his peers, learned to appreciate the value of looking beyond his horizon to the wider world beyond.
(Top photos: Getty Images; design: John Bradford)
