Tony Adams on the managerial lessons learned from Jose Mourinho

The former Arsenal and England skipper moved to the dugout after hanging up his boots

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During his quarter-of-a-century career as a footballer, Tony Adams won a string of trophies, capained his country and has even seen himself immortalised with a statue outside of Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium.

After hanging up his boots in 2002, the former centre-back saw his future as a manager, but he quickly discovered that success on the pitch does not necessarily translate to success off it.

One man who was quick to point this out to Adams was Jose Mourinho, whose managerial success came after he spent years studying the profession, with the Portuguese handing the former Gunners skipper a blunt assessment that has remained with him to this day.

Mourinho’s message to Adams was a simple one: being a world-class footballer does not automatically make you a world-class coach.

“He always called me Simon,” Adams somewhat bizarrely recalls to FourFourTwo. “He said ‘Simon, you’ve been a footballer for 25 years, I’ve been studying for 25 years, you’ve got a lot of catching up to do’.

“I thought ‘Yeah, he’s right’. I had to learn coaching, I had to learn management.”

Adams would soon take this advice on board when it came to his managerial career. While most would look at a manager’s CV and remember the clubs, Adams would rather remember the lessons.

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“Holland, Spain, China, Azerbaijan – they all taught me something,” he continues before recalling what went down during his spell in charge of Azerbaijan Premier League side Gabala.

“In Azerbaijan, the owner said to me, ‘I want the best academy in Azerbaijan, I want the best facilities in the former Soviet Union, if we qualify for Europe that’ll be unbelievable’. I said ‘Well, you need an international airport’.”

While the owner laughed at this suggestion, Adams’ wider vision would soon be realised.

“He laughed too, but he built one. We laid seven top-grade grass pitches, the very best facilities.

“We brought Dutch coaches over because, for me, they were the best youth developers in Europe. We wanted to build something that would still be there years later – 85 per cent of the Azerbaijan national team now come through that academy.”

For Adams, that early lesson from Mourinho hit home, as he would quickly realise that being a great footballer was only the beginning of the journey to becoming a coach.

Adams’ book 1996: Reflections On The Year That Changed My Life is available now

For more than a decade, Joe Mewis has worked in football journalism as a reporter and editor. Mewis has had stints at Mirror Football and LeedsLive among others and worked at FourFourTwo throughout Euro 2024, reporting on the tournament. In addition to his journalist work, Mewis is also the author of four football history books that include times on Leeds United and the England national team. Now working as a digital marketing coordinator at Harrogate Town, too, Mewis counts some of his best career moments as being in the iconic Spygate press conference under Marcelo Bielsa and seeing his beloved Leeds lift the Championship trophy during lockdown.