'Your legs have gone mate - you are not playing.' What is it like managing players older than you? (2024)

Jurgen Klopp may have left Liverpool, but there will still be a German managing a Premier League team when the new season starts in August.

That is because Brighton & Hove Albion have appointed Fabian Hurzeler from St Pauli as their new head coach. At just 31 years of age, he will become the youngest permanent manager in the competition’s history.

Brighton are not bothered about Hurzeler’s birth certificate or inexperience (he was in charge for just 18 months at St Pauli). Their data-led recruitment process identified him as the outstanding candidate to succeed Marseille-bound Roberto De Zerbi, who left by mutual consent at the end of the 2023-24 campaign.

But what is it like being a young manager? How do you deal with players who are older than you? And how does it feel for those being managed by an inexperienced coach? The Athletic takes a look at all this and more as Hurzeler prepares to make a splash in the English top flight.

Hurzeler has overtaken Chris Coleman as the youngest permanent Premier League manager ever. Coleman was 32 when he replaced sacked Frenchman Jean Tigana as relegation-threatened Fulham’s manager in 2003, initially as caretaker, after his playing career at the club had been ended by injuries sustained in a car accident.

The appointment shocked then-30-year-old Fulham midfielder Lee Clark, but Coleman stayed true to himself in making the move from player to manager.

Clark says: “When I signed (in 1999), he was the captain. We became close. I never got the impression he was looking to go into coaching and management, so when Jean was sacked and they gave the job to Chris, it was a bit of a shock.

“Chris was the life and soul of the dressing room as a player, one of the big jokers with an unbelievable sense of humour. He was so popular. The lads had a huge amount of respect for him as a team-mate and captain and that just continued when he became the manager. He made the transition really smoothly.

“Because he became the manager, he couldn’t be so close to us in the dressing room all the time, but he still kept that fun side of him. We knew there was a serious side to him as well and we had to get down to work.

“He got the blend absolutely right. It could have been difficult, taking over a dressing room where most of the players were your team-mates and having to then make decisions about leaving some of them out. I can imagine that was quite difficult for him, but he never looked flustered.

“He kept it simple and kept it calm so we knew what we were doing in terms of tactics and being introduced to his own style of play and system. I wasn’t surprised he did so well.”

Fulham finished ninth, 12th and 13th in the table in Coleman’s three full seasons in charge. The Welshman went on to manage Coventry, Sunderland and Real Sociedad in the second tiers in England and Spain, but his biggest achievement was at international level when he led Wales to the semi-finals of the European Championship in 2016. It had been the first tournament the country had qualified for since the 1958 World Cup.

Three of the five youngest permanent managers in Premier League history were given a chance by Chelsea. Ruud Gullit and Gianluca Vialli both made the step up at the age of 33 from playing for the club.

Reserve goalkeeper Kevin Hitchco*ck was also 33 when Gullit took charge in 1996. The Dutch midfielder was replaced two years later by Vialli, who also lasted for two years.

“They had totally different styles of management,” says Hitchco*ck. “Ruudy was a fantastic player, a great team-mate. Was he a good man-to-man manager? He lacked a bit of (an) idea on that one. I think he expected everyone to be as good as him.

“Ruud would pick his team to win a game, but he did not say why somebody wasn’t playing. He still had the same banter, especially with the senior players. Vialli’s man-management skills were fantastic and everybody wanted to do even better because he was such a nice person and a straight shooter.”

Vialli’s relaxed approach meant young players felt able to pull pranks without fear of recrimination. “John Terry and Paul Nicholls were apprentices under Luca (Vialli),” Hitchco*ck says. “The (former) training ground (Harlington) was not fantastic back then.

“Luca would walk down the long corridor from his office to the showers at the opposite end. Nicholls would hide in one of the kit boxes and shout his name out. Luca would be looking around. It was so funny.”

Chelsea won trophies under both of the contrasting characters, but Vialli was more successful. Gullit’s team lifted the FA Cup, whereas Vialli’s side won the FA Cup, Cup Winners’ Cup and the League Cup.

Chelsea appointed another 33-year-old, Andre Villas-Boas, in 2011 from Porto. However, the Portuguese tactician only lasted nine months at Stamford Bridge.

Senior players such as Terry and Mikel John Obi have spoken since about how it backfired for Villas-Boas when he tried to stamp his authority on the senior players.

Mikel, speaking to The Athletic about player power at football clubs in 2021, said: “In every club, you have the backbone, you have the ‘mafias’ if you want to call them that. You have players who, when things are not going their way, it will be a tough time for the club. That’s how you get these mafias.

“Player power is in every club, trust me. At Chelsea, we had that. There was player power because the players had served the club and done so for a long time. It’s their right to look after the club and make sure when things are not going well, that they look to get it back to the way it should be.”

Paul Jewell faced an early test of his authority when he went from player to coach and then manager of Bradford City at the age of 33 in 1998. “I was always pretty vocal in the dressing room as a player, always had an opinion, but players test you,” he says.

“I can remember vividly when (manager) Chris Kamara made me coach. The first day of training in pre-season, I was doing a drill and one of the players came and booted the ball away. I thought ‘I cannot turn a blind eye to that’. He was certainly testing me, even if he didn’t realise it.”

Jewell, who won promotion to the Premier League in his first full season in 1998-99 and in doing so ended Bradford’s 77-year absence from the top flight, added: “I called the group in, told him to go and get the ball. He looked at me, I looked at him. I told the players it was disrespectful and I wouldn’t accept that type of behaviour. The player apologised and I never had another problem. I often wonder if I hadn’t done that, what would have happened.”

Lee Johnson became the youngest permanent manager in the English football’s top four leagues in 2013 when he was appointed by Oldham Athletic (then in League One) at the age of 31. He immediately faced an awkward situation with 34-year-old Scottish striker Chris Iwelumo.

“Chris actually wanted the job as well when I went to Oldham, so we were having discussions about the job and the club,” Johnson says. “One of my first conversations with Chris — remembering he was my friend and helped me get the job — was literally to say ‘Listen mate, I think your legs have gone, I’m not going to play you’.

“He was saying, ‘This guy has got a bit of b******s to tell me that’. I asked him to effectively be one of my assistants, still come on, still make a difference. He did that fantastically well. That was important. I had to get him onside. Not disingenuously, but by being honest.”

Hurzeler, like Johnson, will be dealing with players older than him at the Amex Stadium next season.

Seven of the players used by Brighton in the Premier League last season are older than Hurzeler, headed by James Milner (38).

Back at Bradford in the late 1990s, Jewell was not afraid of increasing the pool of experience by recruiting players older than him, such as Stuart McCall (three months older).

“I was never frightened of signing players who I thought would improve our team,” Jewell says. “I wasn’t going to shy away from signing good players because they had bigger names than me. Most players had bigger names than me. I wasn’t a household name as a player.”

After matches in the Premier League, visiting managers routinely join the home boss in his office for informal conversations away from the high-pressure environment on the touchline.

Hurzeler will be up against seasoned campaigners in the Premier League such as 58-year-old Ange Postecoglou (Tottenham), Erik ten Hag (54, Manchester United) and Pep Guardiola (53, Manchester City) and will have the chance to pick their brains as a result.

Clark, who went on to manage Huddersfield in League One aged 36, seized that opportunity under Coleman at Fulham. He says: “Chris knew I had the ambition to go into coaching and management.

“He allowed me to help with taking (training) sessions for the reserves and managing during some games, but what was massive for me was (him) allowing me into his office after games to speak to staff members of the other teams.

“I was in conversation with people like Arsene Wenger and Sir Alex Ferguson. It was unbelievable for somebody like me, a player coming towards the end of his career and wanting to get into coaching, being able to listen to those guys talking about football and their anecdotes.”

One of the early tests for Hurzeler will be his first team talk. Alex Neil made his mark immediately at Norwich City when the 33-year-old Scot was a surprise mid-season choice as manager in 2015 at the expense of Neil Adams, after 21 months as player-manager of Hamilton Academical in his homeland.

Midfielder Bradley Johnson says: “Not many knew who he was when he came in, but he set out his stall and said what he wants us to do and it was black or white — you were onboard with him or not here at all.”

Johnson was confident in his own ability when he stepped into management, but he was not prepared for addressing the players. “A young manager is a good idea in certain circ*mstances because they are not tarnished by the rat race that is football management,” he says. “I remember when I went into Oldham. I was so set on my principles. I didn’t have any fear.

“I had done all of my coaching, then I thought ‘Oh, I’ve never given a team talk before’. That was the one thing I wasn’t really prepared for. I winged it a bit. I had been a captain at some of the teams I played for, so I had experience speaking in front of lads, but it was a different mentality. I needed to inspire people.”

Neil’s no-nonsense way of introducing himself worked at Norwich. They won nine of their first 12 matches under him on the way to promotion back to the Premier League via the play-offs.

Like Neil, it will be important for Hurzeler to make a good early impression at his new club.

Johnson, who went on to manage Bristol City in the Championship at the age of 34, says: “Any young manager that comes in, the players are going to be thinking ‘What has he got?’. So you have to impress very quickly. That is absolutely key because you need the players on board.

“There are always troublesome players. It’s only because they want to play. It’s worse now with social media. Everybody has an opinion, the agents can go directly to the owners. Dealing with those issues is probably up there now as one of the top three skills of being a modern manager. That is the bit which, in a new country, will be interesting to see how he (Hurzeler) gets on, but it is good to see young managers get a chance.”

(Top photos: Getty Images)