Brighton’s Competitive Coaching Prodigy: Fabian Hurzeler’s Fiery Drive to Succeed

One of Fabian Hurzeler’s earliest football memories is of watching Manchester United’s 1999 Champions League final defeat of Bayern Munich from his bed. He was six years old.

‘My father thought I was sleeping, but of course I had a little bit of my eyes open,’ recalled the Brighton manager.

Hurzeler, now 31, was later to be coached by current United manager Erik ten Hag in Bayern Munich’s second team. In August, Hurzeler and Ten Hag stood side by side on the touchline in the Premier League and Brighton won.

Just last season, meanwhile, Hurzeler – then manager of St Pauli in Germany’s second tier – visited Ange Postecoglou at Tottenham to pick his brains.

‘He asked a helluva lot of questions and I gave him too many answers,’ smiled Postecoglou recently.

Earlier this month, Hurzeler and Postecoglou faced off in the Premier League too and, once again, Brighton prevailed. Suffice to say, Hurzeler’s star has been on an upward trajectory for a while and has been travelling fast.

‘So when I was there I just focused on the games, honestly,’ says Hurzeler.

‘Of course, before the game you think: “Yeah, okay, six months ago before you and I were sitting talking. I was just a coach in the second division. I never expected to be your opponent.

‘I was not a player long under Erik ten Hag, but of course you experience a little bit of his ideas and the same was like with Ange. But that’s life and you can’t plan your life. I always say God gives us two ears and one mouth so best to listen more than just to talk.’

On this occasion, sitting round a table at Brighton’s training ground, it’s Hurzeler’s time to talk and he does so expansively for the first time and in detail about his road from a failed Bundesliga midfielder to one of Europe’s brightest young coaches.

He is the youngest permanent manager in the Premier League’s history. Of the eleven players who started the game that saw Brighton turn a 2-0 half-time deficit into a thrilling 3-2 win against Spurs just before the international break, three are older than their new boss – and James Milner, 38, didn’t even play.

‘I can speak the language of the players,’ he replies when asked about the advantages of his relative youth.

‘I understand them more. I’m at their age, so I think we have the same needs sometimes. We are in the same situations. Maybe we lose a girlfriend.

‘Or when they are late because they made this or this wrong, I understand them more.

‘I have learned one sentence here already from [owner] Tony Bloom. If you enjoy what you are doing, the luck will come.

‘So if you have similarities in the sense of humour, I think it also helps to build a relationship with the players.’

Brighton are sixth in the Premier League ahead of Saturday’s visit to Newcastle. Hurzeler’s football has so far shown itself to be easy on the eye but also comes with risk attached.

Along with those two noticeable wins against United and Tottenham, there was a 4-2 humbling at Chelsea on a day when Hurzeler’s players were punished for playing a high defensive line and were repeatedly caught playing out from the back.

Indeed, had Brighton not turned the Tottenham game around, this may have been a slightly different kind of interview and conversation. Those are the narrow lines that managers tread in the Premier League.

‘I’m not surprised about what my team is able to do, because I think they have the potential to beat everyone,’ Hurzeler reflects.

‘We played nine games, we lost one. That’s the general situation. When we look at the performances, for me there was one bad game, and it was Chelsea.

‘I think in general, the style of play is Brighton & Hove Albion and we will always try to play out from the back because in the end it’s the identity.

‘It’s finding a balance. Like when we get pressed two times and the opponent wins the ball, then I have to say: “Alright next time we play a long ball and go for the second ball”.

‘The same is like if you get smashed with the high line, you have to adapt. We have to drop and defend in a low block. It’s the balance yeh?

‘To be honest I didn’t expect the Premier League to be this intense and I didn’t expect it to be this demanding. Everyone can beat everyone and everything is possible because every team has this individual quality where they can change a game with one action.

‘And I don’t watch the football shows on TV, no. I think there are so many experts and everyone has an opinion about everything.

‘If I was to listen to every expert talking about our club, I think I would destroy myself.’

Hurzeler was born in Texas in the United States. His parents are both dentists and the family moved to Munich when Hurzeler was two-years-old. A talented midfielder, he joined the Bayern youth academy at the age of 11 and played for Germany at age group level between his 15th and 19th years. Then, at 23, he took the decision to stop playing and become a coach.

‘It was always my dream to become a professional,’ he says.

‘All the people would say: “Oh he has such a good life. He gets everything from his parents and he doesn’t have to work for anything”.

‘But I really worked hard. I made a lot of sacrifices in my life to become a professional football player and I made it to the second team in Bayern.

‘I had the chance to train with the first team. Jupp Heynckes was a great coach. I had the possibility to train a little bit with him. I experienced Erik Ten Hag also.

‘I was close to getting to the first team but something was missing. And then I moved Hoffenheim to do the first team, but also there after two, three weeks, after the pre-season, the coach said he wasn’t planning with me.

‘Something was missing. I was a clever player, but I was not the fastest player. I couldn’t defend my own box and I couldn’t score.

‘So I was really honest to myself and said: “You won’t make it to be one of the really, really high talented players”.

‘I had to make a decision on my own, to stop this career. From then I fully focused on my other passion, being a coach.

‘A lot of people don’t understand it. They said I could easily play maybe second or third division. But they will never understand the feeling inside of me, what I really want to achieve in life. It’s my vision and sometimes it’s important to keep some visions for yourself.

‘In these moments I have a gut feeling. Maybe it’s not rational, just a stomach feeling. It was the same when I got the call from Brighton in summer. Of course there were rational arguments to stay at my former club in my comfort zone. But you follow your gut’.

Hurzeler made his reputation in Germany by taking Hamburg-based St Pauli into the Bundesliga last season. Prior to that he had coached with the Germany U18 and U20 teams after cutting his teeth at FC Pipinsried, a Bavarian amateur side playing much further down the domestic pyramid. It was there that he worked at an art dealership to supplement his income.

‘I didn’t earn a lot of money at Pipinsried and I needed to pay the rent,’ he nods.

‘But if I sold one painting in a month it was like I was done. If I’m honest now I just watched a lot of football games when I was at work.

‘That was why I get fired! The owner was very polite but one day she recognised that I was watching more football during working time instead of really working because we weren’t selling any paintings anymore.

‘But it was an interesting thing about selling these paintings, because if you want to sell something to a person, you really had to try to convince them.

‘You can’t go there and just say: ”It’s an amazing painting and it’s from Roy Lichtenstein or Damien Hirst. What an amazing artist he was, blah, blah, blah”.

‘No. It was a little bit similar to being a coach. You had to understand the needs and the wishes of the clients. You have to go there and ask: “What are you looking for? What are your needs? What are your interests in life? What are your wishes?”

‘Then afterwards you say: “Oh, okay, maybe this fits to him or this fits to him”. And it’s a little bit similar to the players. The most important thing is to understand the person behind the player.

‘What are his needs? What are his values? How is he educated? How was his past? How is the culture, for example, in Gambia with Yankuba Minteh or Simon Kofi Adingra in Côte d’Ivoire?

‘In comparison, for example, with James Milner? It’s completely different. So you have to understand the person, build a relationship with him and then give him the right advice.’

Hurzeler is enjoying his new life in Brighton with the vogue racket sport padel his latest passion. He hopes Brighton may build a court at the training ground. He is, he says, ultra-competitive. He admits he could come across ‘like an asshole’ when he was a player and has already been sent off once as Brighton manager, late on in the 2-2 home draw with Nottingham Forest.

He laughs as he reflects on a competitive childhood, falling out with his parents and siblings over the card game UNO or the popular German board game Catan.

‘When I’m sitting with my family, let’s say at Christmas time, and we played games and I lost the game, the night was over for me,’ he said.

‘My family are all made of the same blood so for one person the night was brilliant and for the others, there was competition. That’s how I grew up and that’s why I’m very competitive.

‘Honestly, when you talk to some guys who I played against, they would say: “What an asshole”.

‘But I loved taking responsibility and I loved being there for my team-mates and I always protected them. If a referee made a bad decision, I went hard on him.

‘It was always about winning the game. That’s something that was deep in the DNA at Bayern Munich. No matter if you were 12, 14 or 16 years old. You have to go there and win the game.

‘Off the pitch, I can have fun. I love to hang around with some friends, but when we were on the pitch, it was like winning, winning, winning.

‘It’s authentic. I don’t have to be an actor. It’s just how I am.

‘Honestly, when I see myself on the sideline now, I’m thinking: “Are you crazy? That’s unbelievable. What are you doing there?”

‘But it’s just myself, that’s my personality. I’m very happy that I don’t have to be an actor.’

Despite his bad memories of their slaying of Bayern in 1999, Hurzeler grew up intrigued by Sir Alex Ferguson’s United. He talks enthusiastically about their defending.

‘Vidic and Ferdinand were like warriors,’ he says.

He also has strong memories of Arsene Wenger’s Arsenal invincibles of 2003/2004.

With Hurzeler, it’s not just about open and expansive football and he bemoans the number of goals his Brighton team have conceded so far this season. They sit sixth in the Premier League but nobody in the top half has conceded as many as their ten.

Hurzeler came from nowhere to join English football’s eclectic group of managers and has already made an impression. There will, he suspects, be a few bumps in the road yet.

‘I’m far away from being perfect, especially in the last two games,’ he smiles.

‘We have to improve, especially against the ball. Conceding six goals in two games is not good enough. You won’t achieve good things doing that.

‘So I think there’s still a lot of things where we can improve. But my past already helps me now as a coach and it will be the same maybe in 10 years when I’m hopefully still a coach.

‘Hopefully I will look back and say that this time here helped me a lot to be better at this thing I love.’