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Having both played under, and worked alongside, a variety of successful and highly regarded coaches and managers, who has been the biggest influence on you in your career?
As a player you take a little bit from all your coaches: the good bits and the bad bits. I had a little spell working with Don Howe. I think most people who know Don know how enthusiastic and infectious he is and his attention to detail is good.
When Glenn Hoddle first came into Chelsea, he’d been out of the country working in France, and he came back in with good ideas, both on your general lifestyle, your well- being and fitness work. When he came in, I was getting older, towards my thirties, and you start to think about how you can prolong your career and Glenn gave some good insight to that.
Also his technical content was, as you would expect, excellent. He introduced some interesting ideas in training; including the three centre-backs with wing-backs, which he’d done at his previous club, Swindon, and had been successful. It was a great system for passing the ball.
As a coach, I’ve got to go for the obvious one: Jose [Mourinho]. When I got the chance to go and work with Jose, all he did was really reinforce the ideas I already had; but he did it in a way I hadn’t seen before. Everybody speaks about his attention to detail, and it’s true. His attention to detail is on another level to anything i’d ever seen before. I’m sure there are other coaches in the world who have it, but it’s the first time I’d ever seen it. Everything in the session was geared around being organised: one drill moved into the next drill, with minimum time in between and I think the players appreciate that.
His variety on exercise was great. He tried never to repeat [a session] – I say never repeat, obviously you have to repeat themes, and when you do possession every day you’re repeating yourself, but he did it with a different slant, a different emphasis. He tried to vary the training as much as he could.
I think it’s well documented that Mourinho’s philosophy is that football training should be ‘global’: your technical, physical and tactical work should all be incorporated into your training sessions and not separated out. You get some coaches who like to work on the technical and the tactical [elements] in separate and with the physical element separated as well. Mourinho’s philosophy was to bring all that together; normally always with the ball. I took a lot of ideas from his drills and his practices.
Steve Clarke profile
Steve Clarke has enjoyed success both on and off the field. As a
player he amassed 530 league appearances both north and south of the border, playing for St Mirren and then Chelsea. Whilst at Stamford Bridge the defender won three major trophies including The FA Cup, League Cup and the UEFA Cup Winners’ Cup. He also received international recognition making 6 appearances for Scotland.
Following his retirement as a player in 1998, Clarke moved into coaching.
Clarke joined Newcastle United as assistant manager to Ruud Gullit in 1998 before returning to Chelsea, firstly as Youth Team coach and then as assistant manager to Jose Mourinho. Clarke was an integral part part of the
backroom staff which captured two Premier League titles, an FA Cup and two League Cups in a period of unprecedented success for the club.
Clarke went on to work with Avram Grant and Luis Felipe Scolari at Stamford Bridge, until September 2008 when he joined ex-teammate, Gianfranco Zola, as part of the West Ham United backroom staff. Following the dismissal of Zola as manager in June 2010, Clarke left West Ham by mutual consent.
Having worked with some of the games most revered coaches and managers he has developed a wealth of experience and knowledge that is the envy of many working at the highest level of the game.
Clarke is currently assistant manager at Liverpool FC working alongside, Kenny Dalglish.
He’s also got an unbelievable desire to win and he’s very good at transmitting that to the group of players that he’s working with at any particular time. He’s proved it at Porto, Chelsea, Inter Milan and Madrid. He’s shown he’s a great communicator, he can transmit that desire to win and that’s why he’s been as successful as he’s been.
“ I think it’s well documented, that Mourinho’s philosophy is that football training should be ‘global’: your technical, physical and tactical work should all be incorporated into your training sessions and not be separated out.”
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