IN PARTNERSHIP WITH
EXTRA-TIME PROFILE GUS POYET SUNDERLAND
The 2014 relegation battle was one of the fiercest in years, but thanks to Gus Poyet’s mental resilience, unfailing belief in his methods and inspirational leadership, Sunderland not only made it out of the danger zone but slayed a few giants along the way. A few months on, Poyet can reflect on that battle, and the experiences of growing up.
feeding their passion for the game and hoping to import a sense of dedication and competitive spirit. Gus Poyet’s father, however, understood the value of these qualities better than most. As captain of the Uruguayan National Basketball Team he had set the bar high. “He was a very positive role model when I was growing up and I can still remember how young fans would look at him,” says Poyet. “I wondered whether I would ever achieve even half of what he had.” His dad, he says, taught
E
very weekend, parents the world over escort their children to football,
“It was very important that I emphasised to the players how marginal the difference between winning and losing had been in the previous four or five games. It had been down to just one action, one decision, one miss or one own goal. I needed them to share my confidence that our fortunes would change sooner rather than later.”
him everything. “From a very early age he instilled in me the importance of punctuality and never missing training; of being part of a group and understanding your role and knowing when you need to adjust,” says Poyet. “He taught me how to understand sport and he pushed me to the very limits because he wanted me to be the best at everything I did.” But, despite his own successful career
in sport, Poyet’s father was determined that his son should not put all his eggs in one basket. “As soon as I saw I had a chance to be a footballer I wanted to put my studies aside, but it was non- negotiable with my father and he was right,” says Poyet.
15 JANUARY 2015 When Poyet finished high school he
started a university engineering course in Uruguay, involving not only physics, but also elements of chemistry and mathematics. “I’ve always enjoyed the practical
side of maths, working with numbers and figuring out problems,” says Poyet. “I suppose I have an analytical mind and it is no doubt very useful to me as a manager. Numbers influence so many things, whether it’s working out co-ordinates or the mechanics of a situation or how to achieve the right balance. I love problem-solving and strategising and the challenge
of figuring out in the heat of the moment how a game is playing out tactically and how I need to be proactive or reactive.” His love of numbers doesn’t, however, mean he is a slave to statistics, he says. “But if a statistic repeats itself enough times that it gets your attention, you know you have either an advantage or a problem.”
Life-changing The young Uruguayan has lived and breathed football from an early age, playing in the streets with his friends and acquiring a taste and proficiency for strategising, making use of people’s talents and problem-solving. His first opportunity to apply
his skills on a professional stage came at French side Grenoble when he was 20. While he has since moved a number of times as a player and a manager, the first was, he says, by far the hardest. “As a young player, leaving
the familiarity of friends, family and my home country for a city in the middle of the Alps was tough,” he recalls. “It was cold - I had never seen snow before - I was on my own and suddenly
had to pay bills and fend for myself in ways I had never had to before. A move like that changes your life and you have to become an adult very quickly. I developed more as a person during those 18 months in France than I had in my 20 years in Uruguay.” Unfortunately, the scale of the upheaval affected Poyet’s football as much as it did his emotion and he failed to perform as well as he would have liked. “I effectively had to rebuild the reputation as a player that I had made for myself in Uruguay,” he says. Poyet’s next experience of playing
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