Unbeatable Mind by Maya Yoshida

Author:Maya Yoshida
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2018-04-23T04:00:00+00:00

Christmas ‘working’ holidays

On 18 January 2013 in a snow-covered London, my mobile phone rang in the morning. It was a text message from the club at an unexpected time, as I was enjoying a rare two days off with my wife and my team-mate, Chung-kun (Tadanari Lee), in London. But the content of the message was even more unexpected. As I opened it, I learned that Nigel Adkins had been sacked by Southampton.

I could say nothing but ‘What?’ Looking at the view of London all in white, my mind went blank.

There had been rumours about his impending dismissal during the first half of the season. Southampton made a poor start in their first campaign back in the Premier League. The Arsenal game, my first as a Saints player, was a fourth defeat in the opening four league fixtures. We spent most of the first half of the season in the bottom three.

However, when the sacking of the manager became a reality, the team was showing signs of recovery. We were unbeaten in the league for five consecutive games. Only two days before his departure we took a point from Champions League holders Chelsea at their home in a 2–2 draw. We had come out of the relegation zone and were a respectable 15th in the league table by the time the club made the decision.

The fact that Adkins had overseen consecutive promotions, from League One to the Premier League, made the news even more shocking for me. But I had also heard that Mr Nicola Cortese, then the chairman of the club, was a very ambitious man, and maybe he thought he should start preparing for the following season rather than merely avoiding relegation. Digesting the news, I couldn’t help but feel how tough it is to survive at the top level, not only for a player but also for a manager.

I then replied to the message, asking who the successor was to be. The answer was, ‘Mauricio Pochettino.’ Again, I could only react with, ‘What?’ Nowadays everyone knows him as the manager who turned Tottenham into contenders for the Premier League title, but at that time not many in England had heard about this Argentine manager, who had been with Espanyol in the Spanish La Liga.

For a player, a change of manager means starting all over again to win his trust. Adkins’s sacking came only four months after my début at Southampton. There was nothing the players could do once the board had made the decision, but we felt a little uneasy on our return car journey from London, with Chung-kun at the steering wheel, as a potentially slippery road appeared to be ahead of us in more ways than one.

There was also the fact that Adkins, who had brought me to Southampton, was a very positive manager. He projected the air of an educator, reminding me to a certain extent of the first ever manager in my professional career, Sef at Grampus. More than anything, he was the manager who trusted me and played me.

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