Last Saturday (4 October), I was at Gresty Road to watch Crewe Alexandra lose 3-1 at home to Northampton Town in Coca Cola League One. About 30 minutes before kick-off, the legendary Dario Gradi was standing near the area where the players come out onto the pitch. Dario was Crewe manager for 24 years, stepping down in 2007 to become the club's Technical Director. As manager of Crewe, he got the team punching above its weight, spending many years in the second tier of English football. He developed a fantastic reputation for developing young talent such as Nicky Maynard who recently went to Bristol City and Dean Ashton who now plays in the Premier League for West Ham. He also encouraged his team to play intelligent, technically sound football and instilled into his players excellent values such as not arguing with referees - for example, unlike so many managers, when one of his players conceded a penalty, he almost never criticised the referee's decision but instead preferred to concentrate on why one of his players had mistimed a tackle or dived in risking the possibility that the referee might give a penalty. I thought that I would take the opportunity to talk to Dario, as he is one of the men that I most admire in football. After signing my match programme, Dario told me the following -
- I asked him if he was going to produce an autobiography. He said that he wasn't because he didn't like autobiographies. I said that he should because he had such a fantastic story to tell and that unlike some of the nonsensical (and frankly unreadable) autobiographies that get produced by players just starting their lives and careers in their 20s, he had a genuine autobiography to write. He agreed with that, but sadly I got the impression that there is no autobiography in the offing.
- He did say however, that he was writing another type of book on The Pursuit of Excellence which will be a book about player development, coaching and performance - this is one to watch out for in all good book shops!
- I asked him how involved he was now with the first team at Crewe. He said that he still takes some of the coaching and that in the last few days, he had taken a session with the goalkeepers and a session with the forwards. He said that he was trying to give Crewe's newish signing from Leeds, Anthony Elding, "a trick" to make him less predictable for opposing defenders. He said he was also trying to do something similar with Calvin Zola who used to be a Newcastle player. I also asked him how he thought that Crewe's new goalkeeper, Steve Collis was doing following his signing from Yeovil Town and Dario said that he was doing fine and that he was probably on par with Ben Williams, Crewe's previous goalkeeper who moved on in the summer. Dario said that he goes to most of the away games but not all the Saturday ones which involve an overnight stay because he likes to take the Friday night training with the youth teams - you certainly get the impression that coaching and player development is Dario's main interest and passion. It's incredible really, that into his 60s, he still trains the youth teams on a Friday night. As Dario said to me, "I don't need to work any more, I do it because I love it".
- I then asked Dario how he thought that Crewe would fare this season. He said that it was a "team building year" and although they might get close to the play-off spots (a bit optimistic I think), it is very unlikely that they would be promoted. I followed up by asking Dario why Crewe were now apparently struggling to stay up in League One, when it was only a couple of seasons ago that they were a Championship team. Dario said that this was because the quality in the Championship and lower leagues had risen because so few British players now played in the Premier League which meant that they played in the lower leagues thus pushing the quality up in the leagues below the top flight. He asked me to think about the teams in the Championship now and to recognise that they were all strong teams - this contrasted to the years when Crewe survived in the Championship when there were other small clubs to compete with such as Gillingham, Rotherham, Grimsby and Stockport. Rather sadly, he predicted that Crewe would never be able to hold their own again in the Championship and that League One was probably the level that they would have to play at. I have heard Dario say this before and it is possibly the only thing that I don't particularly like about his approach - it may be realistic but does it send out the right signal to the players and others?
- He said that the business model for the club was sound and that it had no debt. It is worth noting that Crewe have some of the best training and academy facilities in the whole country (including the Premier League) and they also built a new multi-million pound stand in 1999 which offers excellent views of the pitch. He said that Crewe budget to lose £1million per year and that this shortfall is made up from the sale of players (such as the £2.25million sale of Maynard in July) and from cup matches like the recent one at Liverpool which he estimated would have generated £150,000. Interestingly, he said that because of the way that Crewe bring players up through the ranks, they often have great loyalty to the club and sometimes sign longer contracts than they might otherwise do which helps Crewe to maximise the transfer fee generated - such as the £3million that Norwich City paid for Ashton, a deal that generated a further £1.5million for Crewe when Norwich sold Ashton on to West Ham. Dario also said that there was no prospect of a rich benefactor buying Crewe because there would be nothing in it for them, "unless they wanted to run it down and sell the ground for housing!".
- I asked him what a typical player in League One would be paid. Dario said about £1,000 per week at Crewe, which was possibly a bit lower than the league average. Dario said that he still thought that this was a bit too much - it doesn't seem too much when you think about how many years a typical player would have in a career and I would think that for a lot of the players, they would not be in a position to earn more than this in the years after they hang their boots up.
- Finally and perhaps most intriguingly, I asked Dario if he had ever been tempted to take a manager's job in the Premier League or with a bigger club. He said, "yes, twice - both times with Wimbledon", where of course he was manager between 1978 and 1981, when they were in the third and fourth divisions. Dario said that once was when Dave Bassett was manager in the mid-1980s and the other time was in the latter part of the 1988/89 season when Bobby Gould was Wimbledon's manager but despite being well progressed in the discussions about taking over with Wimbledon's owner, Sam Hammam, it was scuppered because Crewe successfully got promoted from the then fourth division that year which caused Dario to hesitate and in the end Hammam decided to keep Gould as the manager.
It was a very enjoyable conversation with one of English football's legendary figures (no, not an exaggeration). As the Crewe fans used to sing, "Dario Gradi, Football Genius".
