Jobs4Football meets Greg de Carnys

Jobs4Football has seen the influence of former manager Colum Curtis and goalkeeper coach Johann Noetzel at Cambodian club Visakha FC, but now it’s time to look away from the first team and speak to the academy manager at the club.

Greg de Carnys has been head of the academy for Visakha FC for two years after over 20 years of experience in coaching and academy football at clubs such as Arsenal, Tottenham and West Ham where he worked with players such as Declan Rice, Tony Martinez and Josh Cullen.

The British born relocated to the Cambodian capital after a brief spell in Slovakia with FC Kosice. Before this de Carnys had been located in London working for West Ham for eight years as head of academy performance.

But what made the 37-year-old want to swap East London for Eastern Europe before then moving on to Southeast Asia in just the space of two years? He said: “Terry Westley was academy manager at West Ham at the time and he mentioned he had a link with a club in Slovakia who were keen to implement a West Ham type philosophy, so it was something Terry spoke to me about. I decided to go out there to help them set up because it was an old club that had been brought back from the ashes and they wanted to start building their academy and add some structure to it.”

“That was really the first chance I had to put my philosophy into practice at academy level, so it was a really good experience first time out of the country in a professional sense. There were many aspects to the role that were challenging but on the whole a good learning experience.”

De Carnys’ first professional job abroad started in 2018 and one year later he would be setting off for his second role abroad, this time over 6,000 miles away from where his career started at Tottenham as a football in the community coach.

“Nick Mccreery at Jobs4football reached out to me that he had a club that was looking to implement a professional approach to their academy, so I got speaking to him about it and it was something that sounded really interesting and seemed like a good challenge at the time. Again, it was in a different part of the world, and it was another opportunity to put together my philosophy and see if I was able to help develop players in Cambodia.”

“The first year I was here was probably one of the most inspiring years I’ve had as a coach, it was a really amazing year with the U18s, and we achieved some fantastic things in that season, they started off that campaign with some of them playing in the U15s and quickly I brought them up age groups when I saw the potential they had.”

In his first season with the U18s, the team ended up coming third in the countries biggest cup eventually only losing to the senior team in the semi-final. To add to this, out of the 27 players he worked with at U18s, 22 of them are already playing in the top league in Cambodia with eight of those having already been called up for the national team.

“They were an unbelievable group of players, they pushed themselves so hard and challenged themselves every day and they approached football with a smile on their face all the time which is all you can ask for as a coach.”

In December last year, covid meant that there was no academy games for a prolonged period of time in Cambodia and so de Carnys helped out with the first team, under the management of Colum Curtis, for five months where in that time the Visakha FC senior team reached the top of the Cambodian league.

De Carnys, who has completed a bachelors degree in coaching science and a masters in sports science, has developed players for over 20 years in three different countries and it’s what he prioritises and wants to continue to do successfully in the future.

“I’m very development focussed, I really want to see the players challenged and develop. Sometimes in the first team environment, and rightly so, the focus can be on results and less on development and for me I would put development as the first thing.”

He went on to say: “It’s not that I don’t want to win games like I say the team I took in the first year out here pretty much won everything in their path, but they were also challenged and that’s the main thing for me. That sort of challenge and development first mentality tends to be more prevalent in academy football so I’m probably going to stay in academy football in the future.”

During his career in coaching, the 37-year-old has had a number of people who have helped him obtain the knowledge and understanding of the role and get to the position he is in today.

“At Arsenal’s academy as a young boy the academy manager there at the time was a big influence on me, Roy Massey, and he is the one who inspired me to go on and get my degree and education to make myself the most well rounded coach I could be. At West Ham, Terry Westley pioneered the individual development plan process at the club and that was kind of a light bulb moment for me in terms of understanding that individual plan and how it ties everything else together.”

“I also remember people like Josh Ewens, Adam Crossley and Myles Smith staying at the training ground at West Ham late into the night just talking about player development and they taught me so much about the sports science side of things. Liam Manning who was also there at the time as the head of coaching and is now the manager of MK Dons, was someone I looked up to a lot and learned a lot off.”

De Carnys is in the last 12 months of his contract at Visakha FC, but whatever the future holds after his final year in Cambodia, there will certainly be no shortage of offers.