Ruben Selles interview: Southampton manager on how Scandinavian culture sculpted his house on the south coast | Football News

March 3, 2023 admin

“You will have to wait for the book!” Southampton manager Ruben Selles beams as he is asked about how his nomadic career has led to him cutting his teeth in management on the south coast of England.

From the orange trees and the cobbled calles of Valencia, via Greece, Russia, Azerbaijan and Copenhagen – the City of Spires – to the streets of Southampton, Selles has taken the scenic route to the sharp end of the Premier League.

The 39-year-old has a degree in Sports & Physiology, and graduated from UEFA’s Pro Licence programme in the same cohort as West Bromwich Albion manager Carlos Corberan.

“I started as a player, you know?” Selles points out to Sky Sports. “OK, not at the best level! I played with Carlos and we were five years at university together. But having started to coach when I was 16, I knew by 18 that this was the path I wanted to take.

“I went to university and liked it so much that I stayed on and did a Masters for two years in Barcelona with Paco Seirul-lo, who remains one of the biggest minds in the field of Sports & Physiology in Spain.”

Seirul-lo is renowned within the game, having worked as a fitness coach with Pep Guardiola at Barcelona. The Manchester City manager described him as “the best physical trainer I have ever worked with” – and it is clear to see some of Seirul-lo’s influence imprinted on Selles’ Southampton.

There are nor too many Premier League managers who can point to a Masters degree, but it is in keeping with the new age. This is not your typical footballing mind. Selles shook hands with every member of the media to have assembled this Friday lunchtime at the club’s Staplewood Campus. Small touches which smells like team spirit.

Premier League clubs are slowly thinking outside the box in the same way Selles always has.

“For me, the road was different to anybody else,” he says as he reflects on the journey to his first managerial role. “It was clear to me that if I was to make it to the top, I needed to have everything in place.

“I knew I had to go to places that maybe nobody else had been before. I had to make sacrifices. I was doing my PhD at university while every second weekend I would be going to Barcelona for a day to do my MBA. I was coaching so it was 24-hours-a-day fully dedicated to football.

“I knew from that moment that I needed to start building relations. One day, the opportunity came for me to join a professional team. It took me to Greece with Aris Thessaloniki in 2008 as a fitness coach. It wasn’t simple due to my personal life.

“My girlfriend at the time, who is now my wife, was pregnant. It’s never that simple just to go and do it but every step that I’ve made has led to the next one. I learned the most from that one year in Greece as it was my first time around a professional football club, learning from a great manager in Quique Hernandez.

“It taught me a lot about how to behave in professional football, how to behave with the media and how to set high standards wherever I’ve been. It was a tough environment – we’re talking about 15 years ago – but it showed people that I wasn’t someone happy to just be comfortable in my own hometown.

“I’ve always shown I’m willing to move in search of opportunity.”

That is putting it succinctly. Selles would turn to Russia for his next role at Shinnik Yaroslavl, then onto Neftchi Baku in Azerbaijan – both as assistant managers. Stromsgodset Toppfotball in Norway were next as chief data analyst before returning to Azerbaijan with Qarabag to assist manager Gurban Gurbanov.

Five positions, all in the space of seven years. Aarhus GF in Denmark came calling in July 2018 under the stewardship of David Nielsen across two seasons where the club won their first trophy in over 20 years. A return to Valencia as U18s manager was deemed too good to turn down but in January 2021, being No 2 at FC Copenhagen felt the next natural step.

The lure of returning to the Scandinavian culture appealed to Selles. “I think the way I did things in Scandinavia led me to the Premier League. Southampton have historically had strong connections with Denmark, and thankfully for me those connections I met with four years ago at AGF.

“It is a club with a lot of ups and downs but we managed to oversee their best season in 25 years. My contract expired at the end of that season and I felt it was the right time to move on. When I went to FC Copenhagen some months later, the club was not in their best moment. They had a change of management after eight years.

“Jess Thorup and director of football Peter Christiansen gave me the opportunity and we bounced back to win the league in our first full season. I then got the call about the possibility of coming to Southampton.

“Unfortunately for the club, situations have led to me now being the manager, but I am relishing the chance to turn things around.”

How Frank’s vision inspired Selles

Victory over Chelsea at Stamford Bridge in Selles’ first game fully signalled his arrival in England, and now there is no doubt over the man in charge, who confidently described himself as ‘already the manager’ having emerged in front of the media 30 minutes after the full-time whistle in west London.

It was the most emphatic of auditions to be Nathan Jones’ successor, a week after 10-man Wolves had put the final nail in the Welshman’s coffin. Southampton were going down, and sinking without a trace.

But Selles has breathed confidence back in the camp – the youngest average starting XI in the division – and has kept things simple. It is the only way he knows, and the way he was taught during his months in Copenhagen.

“There’s already one very good example at Brentford, in Thomas Frank,” Selles makes reference to when asked about the identify he is looking to foster at St Mary’s.

“He’s a great leader and he also comes from Scandinavian culture. What Scandinavian people understand is who you are and the environment you need in which to work.

“It is part of their culture to understand relations and how people work most effectively. There is a strong understanding of there needing to be private life that is respected, but also it is about having the support of those around you.

“I come from Spain, and my experience of that different culture is that it is more focused on spending 24 hours on work. For me, what I learned in Scandinavia is that it’s more about giving more freedom to people to develop their work.

“You need to give instructions – but not too much – to allow people to grow. I feel that’s the culture you need to bring into a big organisation like Southampton.

“When you study the big leaders and the big companies, you learn from how they lead and allow their staff to come forward with suggestions. When you think of when Nike were first being formed, for example, projects were given to people who probably didn’t have the expertise to do it, but they were thinking out of the box to find different solutions.

“To create a culture that is natural for everybody to come and express themselves, to be able to do things which is perhaps out of their usual comfort zone, combining them with personal relations and the personal life. This is what I mean when I say Scandinavian culture.

“It is very important that players, coaches and members of the technical and administrative staff, whoever it is, everyone needs to be respected the same and we need to pay attention to everybody.

“By creating this environment, everyone will feel comfortable to grow in the house.”

Selles remains confident Southampton have enough to stave off relegation despite the humiliating midweek FA Cup exit to Grimsby laying their issues bare.

From managerial decisions to questionable signings, a catalogue of bad calls leaves Saints rock bottom and staring down the barrel of relegation after 11 years in the Premier League.

Selles worked under predecessors Ralph Hasenhuttl and renewed hope injected by that win at Chelsea has quickly faded as relegation rivals Leeds punished a meek performance before Wednesday’s embarrassing 2-1 home loss to League Two side Grimsby in the FA Cup.

“For me, you always need a platform,” Selles defiantly says. “The platform is your principles – of how you play and of how you want to play. When you have these principles in place, it is much easier to evaluate situations like the defeat to Grimsby.

“If you have nothing, then this changes from game to game. We have set these principles, and so it is now on the players to carry out our idea of how we want to play.

“Sometimes, the adjustments we make as technical staff may not work as we wish and that is then on us to further adjust. At other times, the principles work but what we need to change is the personnel just to work on the details.

“With the game in the FA Cup on Wednesday, it was very obvious that we weren’t at our best. We conceded those two goals because we made mistakes but I would never raise my voice. In this case, the mistakes were that obvious that I didn’t need to mention them.

“That’s part of the culture I want to create, but also part of that culture is for the players to learn from those mistakes. Of course, it is difficult and horrendous to go out of the Cup in that way, but if we don’t do something with this result, then we’re not helping ourselves.”

‘Ward-Prowse is my captain with capital letters’

If only Southampton had a team of James Ward-Prowses – the heart and soul who is perhaps singularly more integral to his side’s fortunes than any other player in the Premier League.

With their backs against the wall, Ward-Prowse’s trademark free-kicks have already earned two away wins in 2023, the victory at Chelsea coming a month after Jones’ only win at Everton.

Amid so much commotion, it is Ward-Prowse who has shone through as the common thread.

“James is the captain of the team and he is the captain with capital letters,” Selles says with a sense of pride. “There is no doubt about that. When we talk about him, it is about the person but it is also about the player.

“He’s been living in the club and its culture since a young boy, growing to the point of representing the national team. He’s a player who has learned from big personalities in the dressing room who have been able to share their experiences. He is respected by everyone.

“In moments of uncertainty, you need someone of James’ quality. He has always been the reference for us in hard times this season. He has been a big support for every manager that he’s worked under as I’ve been here to see it. He’s also been a big support for me and leads by example from his diet off the pitch to the practice he puts in on the training ground.

“He is a role model to the rest of the players and indeed for any young player starting out as a professional. If you have a person like James, you will always pick him to represent you and to believe in you.

“I couldn’t possibly expect any more from him. Hopefully we can make a good enough platform for him to lead the team onto the next level.”

So how can Southampton optimise Ward-Prowse’s ability? Jones used the England midfielder in a more advanced role, but Selles has reverted back to a 4-2-2-2 system used frequently by Hasenhuttl, which has allowed their talisman to have a greater chance of influencing both boxes.

“I feel when James was playing as the No 10 as the playmaker in the 4-2-3-1 formation, it benefitted the team at one point,” adds Selles. “It’s definitely a position I feel he can play, and it’s something that we can use, but if you analyse how we’re playing now – I feel he has a key role to play as part of the double No 6.

“Playing deeper as the No 6, he can connect better with the back four as well as the front players. I feel he can lead the pressure on our opponents from the centre of the pitch. I see him as a better player in this position but occasionally he can play further forward as he has some of the attributes needed depending on the game.”

An all-in mentality and forgetting the ego

Leicester are the visitors to St Mary’s on Saturday evening, with Brendan Rodgers’ side entering the weekend in 14th and six points better off than bottom-placed Saints.

Che Adams, who is back in contention Saturday, scored twice as Southampton secured a 2-1 comeback victory at the King Power Stadium in August – one of their four away league wins this campaign.

But Saints have been atrocious at home, winning just once at St Mary’s in the league back in August and looking to avoid six straight home defeats for the first time in their history.

There is nothing to be gained from dwelling on the most recent setback, and Selles outlined how management has evolved over the past 15 years.

“This is a completely different generation that need to be managed in a different way to how it was before,” he says.

“My daughter is 14, some of my players are 17 or 18 – and so there’s not a big gap between them and my daughter. They need to show spirit more than before. The relations they create nowadays are very different to those that we did growing up in the game at their age.

“99 per cent of the population don’t understand what it means nowadays to be a teenager or an early adult with the pressure of having to play in the Premier League.

“It’s something that’s very difficult to understand. With the boys, you have to understand the individual and their background and then try to help them in the best way possible with the aim of taking their talent and putting it at the next level.

“What do I mean by the next level? First of all, it is about forgetting the ego and turning that talent into the team dynamic. Sometimes with young players, they come with the wrong idea that it is about themselves. But it’s about themselves within the environment of the team – and that’s the hardest part.

“It is not about me – it’s about we. Once you can break that, then it all becomes much easier. Then they can see the habits and the conduct that you want on a daily basis both on and off the pitch.

“It is only then that they can truly become better and achieve their goals as individuals. It is an all-in mentality. It is what I heard Jesse Marsch say once and it is very true. It is about putting all into the group and then the group will give it back to you even bigger.

“Coming from a culture that is more and more about the individual and less focused about building relations, football needs to be a platform for them to do the complete opposite – that’s the challenge.

“Since I arrived here last June, I could see that within this ‘house’ the principles were already here. There has been a really good programme in place regarding how we expect our players to behave. It is now my job to transfer those principles and that vision into results.

“We want to be compact as much as an organisation as we are on the pitch. We want to be as brave on the pitch as we are at the training ground, taking decisions which are a bit out of the box.

“We want to be together and we want to work as a unit. This is mandatory and if you play just 30 minutes, 60 minutes or 90 minutes, we want people who are all-in. We want people who are ready to work those extra couple of hours as that’s what is needed right now for this organisation.

“With these principles in place, the slight tactical adjustments can then make a difference. There needs to be an endless determination in everything we do.”

Only once in Premier League history have a club stayed up having made two managerial sackings in the same season – Swansea in 2017. Southampton prop up the division, but this tale is far from told. Against Leicester on Saturday, Selles is ready to write his next chapter.