'I'm so competitive people think I'm an a***hole!': Brighton's fiery 31-year-old coaching prodigy Fabian Hurzeler reveals what makes him tick after flying start to life in the Premier League
- Fabian Hurzeler has lost just one of his first nine matches at Brighton
- He has opened up on what makes him tick after his strong start in England
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One of Fabian Hurzeler’s earliest football memories is of watching Manchester United’s 1999 Champions League final defeat of Bayern Munich from his bed. He was six years old.
‘My father thought I was sleeping, but of course I had a little bit of my eyes open,’ recalled the Brighton manager.
Hurzeler, now 31, was later to be coached by current United boss Erik ten Hag in Bayern’s second team. In August, Hurzeler and Ten Hag stood side by side on the touchline in the Premier League and Brighton won. Just last season, meanwhile, Hurzeler — then in charge of St Pauli in Germany’s second tier — visited Ange Postecoglou at Tottenham to pick his brains.
‘He asked a helluva lot of questions and I gave him too many answers,’ said Postecoglou with a smile recently.
Earlier this month, Hurzeler and Postecoglou faced off in the Premier League too and, again, Brighton prevailed. Suffice to say, Hurzeler’s star has been on an upward trajectory for a while and has been travelling fast.
Brighton's fiery young manager Fabian Hurzeler has started strongly on the south coast
Brighton have already picked up wins over Manchester United and Tottenham this season
Hurzeler got the better of Erik ten Hag in August after previously being coached by him
‘So when I was there I just focused on the games, honestly,’ says Hurzeler. ‘Of course, before the game you think: “Yeah, okay, six months ago before you and I were sitting talking. I was just a coach in the second division. I never expected to be your opponent”.
‘I was not a player long under Erik ten Hag, but of course you experience a little bit of his ideas and the same was like with Ange. But that’s life and you can’t plan your life. I always say God gives us two ears and one mouth so best to listen more than just to talk.’
On this occasion, sitting round a table at Brighton’s training ground, it is Hurzeler’s time to talk and he does so expansively about his road from a failed Bundesliga midfielder to one of Europe’s brightest young coaches.
He is the youngest permanent manager in the Premier League’s history. Of the 11 players who started the 3-2 win against Spurs just before the international break, three are older than their new boss.
‘I can speak the language of the players,’ he replies when asked about the advantages of his relative youth. ‘I understand them more. I’m at their age, so we have the same needs sometimes. We are in the same situations.
Ange Postecoglou revealed Hurzeler asked a lot of questions when he visited Tottenham, and then got the better of the Aussie and his side earlier this month
Hurzeler is working with a team that has several players, including James Milner, who are older than him, but feels his humour has helped him build a relationship with his players
‘I have learned one sentence here already from (owner) Tony Bloom. If you enjoy what you are doing, the luck will come. So if you have similarities in the sense of humour, it helps to build a relationship with the players.’
Brighton are sixth in the Premier League ahead of Saturday's game at Newcastle. Hurzeler’s football has so far shown itself to be easy on the eye but also comes with risk attached.
Along with those two noticeable wins against United and Tottenham, there was a 4-2 humbling at Chelsea on a day when Hurzeler’s players were punished for playing a high defensive line and were repeatedly caught playing out from the back.
Indeed, had Brighton not turned the Tottenham game around after being 2-0 down, this may have been a slightly different interview and conversation. Those are the narrow lines that Premier League managers tread.
‘I’m not surprised about what my team is able to do, because they have the potential to beat everyone,’ Hurzeler reflects.
‘We played nine games, we lost one. When we look at the performances, for me there was one bad game, and it was Chelsea.
‘In general, the style of play is Brighton & Hove Albion and we will always try to play out from the back because it’s the identity.
Hurzeler often cuts an animated figure on the touchline but his approach is working so far
Hurzeler's team have only had one setback when they lost to a Cole Palmer-inspired Chelsea
‘It’s finding a balance. Like when we get pressed two times and the opponent wins the ball, then I have to say, “Alright next time we play a long ball and go for the second ball”.
‘The same is like if you get smashed with the high line, you have to adapt. We have to drop and defend in a low block. It’s the balance, yeh? I didn’t expect the Premier League to be this intense. Everyone can beat everyone and everything is possible because every team has this individual quality where they can change a game with one action.
‘And I don’t watch the football shows on TV, no. There are so many experts. If I was to listen to every expert talking about our club, I would destroy myself.’
Hurzeler was born in Texas in the United States. His parents are both dentists and the family moved to Munich when he was two years old. A talented midfielder, he joined the Bayern academy at the age of 11 and played for Germany at age-group level between his 15th and 19th years. Then, at 23, he decided to stop playing and become a coach.
‘It was always my dream to become a professional,’ he says. ‘All the people would say, “Oh he has such a good life. He gets everything from his parents and he doesn’t have to work for anything”.
‘But I really worked hard. I made a lot of sacrifices to become a professional player and I made it to Bayern’s second team.
‘I was close to getting to the first team but something was missing. And then I moved to Hoffenheim to do the first team but also after two, three weeks, after the pre-season, the coach said he wasn’t planning with me.
Hurzeler trained with the Bayern Munich first team when they were managed by Jupp Heynckes before he opted to turn his hand to coaching
‘Something was missing. I was a clever player but I was not the fastest player. I couldn’t defend my own box and I couldn’t score. So I was really honest to myself and said: “You won’t make it to be one of the really, really high talented players”.
‘I had to make a decision on my own, to stop this career. From then I fully focused on my other passion, being a coach.
‘A lot of people don’t understand it. They said I could easily play maybe second or third division. But they will never understand the feeling inside of me, what I really want to achieve in life. It’s my vision and sometimes it’s important to keep some visions for yourself.
‘In these moments I have a gut feeling. Maybe it’s not rational, just a stomach feeling. It was the same when I got the call from Brighton. Of course there were rational arguments to stay at my former club in my comfort zone. But you follow your gut’.
Hurzeler made his reputation in Germany by taking Hamburg-based St Pauli into the Bundesliga last season. Prior to that he had coached with the Germany U18 and U20 teams after cutting his teeth at FC Pipinsried, a Bavarian amateur side playing much further down the domestic pyramid. It was there that he worked at an art dealership to supplement his income.
‘I didn’t earn a lot of money at Pipinsried and I needed to pay the rent,’ he says. ‘But if I sold one painting in a month it was like I was done. If I’m honest now I just watched a lot of football games when I was at work.
‘That was why I got fired! The owner was very polite but one day she recognised I was watching more football instead of working.
‘But it was an interesting thing about selling these paintings, because if you want to sell something to a person, you really had to try to convince them.
‘You can’t go there and just say, “It’s an amazing painting and it’s from Roy Lichtenstein or Damien Hirst. What an amazing artist he was, blah, blah, blah”.
Hurzeler has prioritised building foundational relationships with his players at Brighton
This has helped new signings such as Newcastle transplant Yankuba Minteh settle in quickly
‘No. It was a little bit similar to being a coach. You had to understand the needs of the clients. You have to go there and ask, “What are you looking for? What are your interests in life? What are your wishes?”
‘Then afterwards you say, “Oh, OK, maybe this fits to him or this fits”. And it’s similar to the players. The most important thing is to understand the person behind the player.
‘What are his needs? What are his values? How is he educated? How was his past? How is the culture, for example, in Gambia with Yankuba Minteh or Simon Kofi Adingra in Cote d’Ivoire?
‘In comparison, for example, with James Milner? It’s completely different. So you have to understand the person, build a relationship with him and then give him the right advice.’
Hurzeler is enjoying his new life in Brighton, with racket sport padel his latest passion. He hopes Brighton may build a court at the training ground. He is, he says, ultra-competitive. He admits he could come across ‘like an a**hole’ when he was a player and has already been sent off once as Brighton manager, in the 2-2 draw with Nottingham Forest.
He laughs as he reflects on a competitive childhood, falling out with his parents and siblings over card and board games.
‘When I’m sitting with my family, let’s say at Christmas, and we played games and I lost, the night was over for me,’ he said. ‘My family are made of the same blood so for one person the night was brilliant and for the others, there was competition. That’s how I grew up and that’s why I’m very competitive.
‘When you talk to some guys I played against, they’d say, “What an a**hole”. But I loved taking responsibility and being there for my team-mates and I always protected them. If a referee made a bad decision, I went hard on him. It was always about winning. That’s something that was deep in the DNA at Bayern. No matter if you were 12, 14 or 16 years old.
‘Off the pitch, I can have fun. I love to hang around with friends, but when we were on the pitch, it was like winning, winning, winning. It’s authentic. I don’t have to be an actor. It’s just how I am.
‘Honestly, when I see myself on the sideline now, I’m thinking, “Are you crazy? That’s unbelievable. What are you doing there?” But it’s just myself, that’s my personality. I’m very happy that I don’t have to be an actor.’
Hurzeler was a fan of United pair Nemanja Vidic and Rio Ferdinand when he was growing up
He also admired Arsenal's Invincibles, and is now trying to turn Brighton into a formidable side
Despite his bad memories of their slaying of Bayern in 1999, Hurzeler grew up intrigued by Sir Alex Ferguson’s United. He talks enthusiastically about their defending. ‘Vidic and Ferdinand were like warriors,’ he says. He also has strong memories of Arsene Wenger’s Arsenal Invincibles of 2003-04.
With Hurzeler, it is not just about open and expansive football, and he bemoans the number of goals Brighton have conceded this season. No team in the top half has let in as many as their 10.
Hurzeler came from nowhere to join English football’s eclectic group of managers and has already made an impression. There will, he suspects, be a few bumps in the road yet.
‘I’m far away from being perfect, especially in the last two games,’ he says. ‘Conceding six goals in two games is not good enough.
‘There’s a lot of things we can improve. But my past already helps me now as a coach and it’ll be the same maybe in 10 years when I’m hopefully still a coach.
‘Hopefully I will look back and say this time here helped me a lot to be better at this thing I love.’
