Life as a British Coach Abroad by Greg de Carnys

Following our advertisement for an Academy Director, former West Ham Academy Coach/Ladies Head Coach and Technical Director at FC Kosice, Greg De Carnys was selected from our highly competitive shortlist to join ambitious Visakha FC in Cambodia, we caught up with Greg to find out how he is enjoying life as a British coach abroad.

My Career & Influences

I have always loved watching and playing football, but while lots of my friends growing up wanted to be players, I decided as early as I can remember that I wanted to be a coach.

My parents have always encouraged me to be inquisitive and over the years I’ve completely fallen in love with the learning aspect of being a coach. It is so satisfying for me to see a player develop their skills & grow as a player over the years.

I have been coaching now for 20 years and in that time I’ve got my UEFA A licence, a BSc in Coaching Science and an MSc in Sports Science, I’ve also been fortunate enough to work at some great clubs including Tottenham, Arsenal, Watford and West Ham.

I spent 8 years at West Ham as Head of Academy Performance and in that time I made friends for life, I also had the great pleasure of working with many talented players who came through the academy into the first team, including Josh Cullen, Declan Rice, Grady Diangana and Reece Oxford.

It’s a really rewarding thing to see a player you’ve coached & mentored come through and their success is definitely shared by the staff.

These are the things I look back on as my greatest achievements as a coach and each time it drives me to want to achieve more of the same in the future.

The Academy Director for the last 4 years that I was at West Ham was Terry Westley, he has probably had the biggest impact on me of all the coaches I have worked under. From working alongside him every day with the u23s I saw a different level of intensity than I had witnessed before.

He was always very demanding, although it didn’t always feel nice to be pushed every day, it definitely changed my perception of how hard everyone, players and staff, need to work to turn even a talented young player into a Premier League player. I also think this rubbed off on some of the players and was a big factor in getting players like Declan Rice to that level.

I was also very fortunate to be surrounded by an amazing group of staff at West Ham, we spent many evenings late into the night challenging what we believed and why we believed it and this played a key part in fashioning my philosophy today. In particular, Josh Ewens who is now the First Team Fitness Coach at West Ham shares my passion for learning about learning, and he has introduced me to 100s of scientific research papers on everything from dynamic systems theory and ecological dynamics to complexity theory & chaos theory.

All of these fields on their own may seem quite removed from the world of football but they all impact each other and play a big part in my philosophy of learning and development.

Having this basis of understanding has lead me to a holistic periodised training approach with an emphasis on goal-directed learning in specific practices (opposed practices and Small-Sided Games) with all the implicit benefits this brings.

Tactically I am fascinated by the Barcelona approach which lead to them and Spain dominating world football with a style that was so attractive to watch. Obviously, positional play was not invented by Johan Cruyff and Barcelona, but this happened at a key moment in my coaching journey and completely raised the bar for everyone for a good few years.

It was particularly impressive to me that it was achieved with so many players coming from one academy. I still watch Barcelona games from the 2009/10/11 years today, I’ll watch the whole 90 minutes, pausing and rewinding and although I’ve seen all of those games many times already, every time I watch them I see new things.

I do the same with all of Guardiola’s sides since then because he has managed to reproduce successful versions of that style everywhere he has been and I think it’s fascinating for a coach to analyse in detail. For example, what Man City achieved in the last few years is phenomenal, they’ve broken nearly every record there is!

Jobs4Football & Moving to Asia

In September last year I was contacted by Nick from Jobs4football about an academy role in Cambodia.

As a coach, I have long believed in the concept of nurture, the opportunity to start a new project with real ambition to produce players and potentially contribute to transforming the fortunes of club and country was really interesting.

Furthermore, my wife and I have always shared a passion for travelling and seeing the world, and as she works from home this represented a great opportunity for us to do that as well.

In the end, I was really impressed with the focus Jobs4football had on ensuring they did all the appropriate due diligence on the club and the role and after some efficient negotiations, less than 2 months later my wife and I were flown out to Cambodia with contract agreed and I started as Academy Manager for Visakha FC of the Cambodian Metfone League in November.

All About Visakha

Since arriving, the first 3 months at Visakha have been non stop!

So much is happening at the club, there are a brand new stadium and training facilities being built around us and the arrival of a new senior team manager this season in Column Curtis.

It’s been really good getting to know him and his staff, we share a similar approach and philosophy which is great and he comes with plenty of experience of Cambodian football, having joined from last year’s champions Sva Rieng FC so I’ve really enjoyed picking his brains.

The academy players and staff have been fantastic. From the off, there was an important job for us to do as the club’s u19s were to compete in a senior cup competition the 2019 UYFC Soccer League and doing well in this tournament would potentially give them the opportunity to enter the Provincial Hun Sen Cup.

Thankfully the players defied expectations and whilst concentrating on dominating the ball throughout the competition, they won the Soccer League in a final that went to extra time in front of a hostile crowd at the impressive national Olympic Stadium.

It was a great feeling for all the players and staff involved but the real reward came when we were given a place in the Provincial Hun Sen Cup which starts in February. It’s a great opportunity because if they can do well in this competition they will enter into the National Hon Sen Cup, which is the Cambodian version of the FA Cup with all of the top senior teams in Cambodia, including our own Visakha!

The most important thing for me as Academy Manager will always be the development of the players, often this means learning new skills and exposing weaknesses in a way that may lead to poor results in the short term, but it’s also important to recognise that at some stages it can be about recognising the greater good, and I know as a coach how important a competitive games program is to player development.