A few weeks ago, hours after Wolverhampton Wanderers beat fellow Premier League relegation candidates Ipswich Town, Wolves head coach Vitor Pereira was photographed, wearing a leather jacket, rubbing shoulders with drinkers in The Giffard Arms, a “rock pub” in the West Midlands city.
Which got people wondering: is the Portuguese boss a secret metalhead? Is he more on the goth side of things? Slightly disappointingly, The Athletic has since been informed he was just being obliging and actually prefers calmer kinds of music.
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And calmer music is a trend for the men calling the shots across the Premier League. While the English top flight stands out globally for its elite level of football, the choice of listening material among its current managers is much more middle of the road, with Coldplay the band most cited during our writers’ research.
However, The Athletic did find some intriguing musical tastes, including A-ha, soothing Neapolitan jazz fusion and the absolute banger that is Er Hat Ein Knallrotes Gummiboot…
Ruben Amorim, Manchester United
Last November, during Amorim’s final weeks in charge of Sporting CP, Portugal’s Radio Renascenca asked listeners to suggest songs that would be a fitting soundtrack to his farewell game as head coach of the Lisbon club.
To their surprise, they received a voicenote from the man himself.
Amorim suggested A Minha Casinha — which translates as “My Little House” — by four-piece Portuguese rockers Xutos & Pontapes. He chose it, he said, “Because I think I’m going to miss it a lot. It’s a song that fits well with the departure.”
Since arriving in Manchester, he has taken a shine to the United fans’ adaptation of John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads”. The song has become more prominent at Old Trafford this season, being played directly before kick-off at the request of captain Bruno Fernandes.
Amorim’s a fan too: “Country Roads that they adapt. That is perfect,” he told TNT Sports. “I really dream to win a title and listen to that song in Old Trafford.”
Mark Critchley
Mikel Arteta, Arsenal
Mikel Arteta has been reluctant to discuss his own musical tastes publicly. He is, however, a confirmed believer in the motivating power of songs and was instrumental in the decision three years ago to introduce Louis Dunford’s “The Angel (North London Forever)” as Arsenal’s pre-match anthem at the Emirates Stadium.
The All or Nothing Amazon documentary also showed him making the players train as speakers blared out “You’ll Never Walk Alone” before a match against Liverpool at Anfield. Arteta regularly incorporates music into his training sessions. Before January’s Champions League game against Dinamo Zagreb, cameras captured a session involving samba tracks, including the iconic tune “Mais Que Nada (Mas Que Nada)” by Sergio Mendes.
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“That is something we’ve done for many years, it is part of training,” said Arteta. “We use music as another element of our sessions to build energy and change purposes that we want in the training session. The players enjoy it. Depending on the day, sometimes certain players pick certain songs, it’s the same as in the dressing room.”
James McNicholas
Nuno Espirito Santo, Nottingham Forest
When the club staged a press conference at which the questions were asked by players from Warriors United — a Nottinghamshire football club for young people with learning disabilities — we got to learn a few interesting things about Nuno Espirito Santo.
The first is that Nottingham Forest’s head coach likes plenty of tomato ketchup on his chips.
The second is he is a big fan of the pop-rock anthems produced by Coldplay. (Insert joke here about Forest being on the “Adventure of a Lifetime” this season as they push for Champions League qualification.)
Paul Taylor
Thomas Frank, Brentford
Brentford supporters have been singing “Hey Jude” by The Beatles, with the club’s name replacing the title in the chorus, before kick-off in their games since not long after it was first released over half a century ago, but head coach Thomas Frank’s association with the tune goes back further than when he joined the club as an assistant in 2016.
In an interview with UK broadcaster TNT Sports earlier this year, Frank revealed he performed it at a karaoke event back home in Copenhagen when he was younger, though the 51-year-old Dane’s favourite song when he is on the mic is Ben E King’s version of “Stand By Me”.
Jay Harris
Oliver Glasner, Crystal Palace
We do not know much about Oliver Glasner’s musical preferences, but the 50-year-old provided a hint of what he is not into last month after his Crystal Palace side secured an FA Cup semi-final at Wembley Stadium (they face Aston Villa next weekend) with a win over Fulham.
He had visited Wembley three times before, he said.
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“The second time, I was there with my daughter, who went to a Taylor Swift concert. But I just brought her; I didn’t want to hear it, so it was better for her and for her friends — it was a birthday gift. I saw all the young girls and I thought, ‘I’m too old for this’.”
Norwegian pop star Wencke Myhre’s 1970 song “Er Hat Ein Knallrotes Gummiboot” (“He Has A Bright Red Rubberboat”) has a history for Glasner, too, although it is unclear whether he actually likes the song. While a player with Austrian side SV Ried, he joined the squad in their preferred town-centre nightclub to celebrate a victory.
“The song came on, and they would all sit on the floor and do this (a rowing action),” Xandi Mitterhofer, SV Ried’s director of finance, told The Athletic last year. “When they partied and heard the song, they always did this.”
Matt Woosnam
Pep Guardiola, Manchester City
During his time at Barcelona, Pep Guardiola used to play “Human” by The Killers and “Viva La Vida” by Coldplay, one of his favourite bands, to motivate his players before games. He actually used the former on the soundtrack of a video montage at the end of the 2009-10 season, but it was “Viva La Vida” that was most closely identified with that golden generation of City players, and still is to this day.
Guardiola has used City-supporting local lads Oasis in a similar way during his time at the Etihad Stadium — much like Coldplay, he likes the music himself and feels that, at the right time, it is worth playing to his team. He has become good friends with the band’s Noel Gallagher over the years, too.
Guardiola is a big fan of the Catalan band Manel, and during a podcast recorded for the BBC in 2018 he named songs by Lluis Llach and Joan Manuel Serrat, who are also from his home region in Spain. He also highlighted Sir Elton John’s music as he linked it to his breakthrough to the Barcelona first team as a teenager. As fate would have it, he and the City squad bumped into Sir Elton on the way back to Manchester after winning the FA Cup final in May 2023, prompting the legendary singer to wish them well in their (successful) quest for the treble.
Sam Lee
Eddie Howe, Newcastle
Eddie Howe is a huge fan of A-ha, the Norwegian synth-pop band who rose to fame in the 1980s and has since sold more than 100million records.
If anything, “huge” is a gross understatement. This is more of an obsession for Howe, an obsessional kind of man, and it began when he was at school. “I didn’t hide it but it certainly didn’t do anything for my credibility,” he said in an interview with The Telegraph in 2015.
“I was very much alone in my love for A-ha.”
Back then, he reckoned he had already seen them play live 15 times.
What is it he likes so much about them?
“The risks they took and the bravery it took to make their dreams come true. Certainly that relates to me and the world of football,” he said.
George Caulkin
Fabian Hurzeler, Brighton
Fabian Hurzeler does not have a favourite type of music.
“I can listen to everything, I just have to feel the music,” he says. “But there is one band I really like to hear and that will be a concert I go to this summer in London.”
Winning no prizes for originality, the 32-year-old German is referring to Coldplay.
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“It’s the first time I have bought tickets for a concert,” Hurzeler told The Athletic. “I am really looking forward to it, because I have seen so many interesting videos on YouTube and he (Chris Martin) is one of my favourite singers.
“If you want to describe our season so far, you have to choose a song from Chris Martin’s (latest) album.”
As Brighton try to qualify for Europe over the campaign’s final weeks, “Good Feelings” might be what’s hoped for.
Andy Naylor
Enzo Maresca, Chelsea
He does not usually like to go off script and discuss things other than football, but Enzo Maresca’s face lit up when The Athletic asked about his musical preferences at the press conference before their Conference League quarter-final meeting with Legia Warsaw.
Perhaps it is not too much of a surprise to hear Maresca has a preference for music from his Italian homeland that keeps him calm, as things have been a bit tense during Chelsea matches lately.
It turns out that Pino Daniele, who passed away in 2015, is Maresca’s go-to. Born in Naples, his songs are described as a blend of Neapolitan, blues, jazz and world music. Considering how this first season has gone for Maresca at Chelsea, it’s rather appropriate that one of Daniele’s albums is titled Yes I Know My Way.
Asked to expand on why he likes it so much, Maresca explained: “It is from very close to where I was born, from my region. It is quite easy music, it is not heavy. It is relaxed music.
“Because sometimes I am away from my country, most of the time I try to play Italian music that brings me in a different environment.”
Simon Johnson
Kieran McKenna, Ipswich
In January, when asked about rival clubs coming knocking for Ipswich Town’s forward Liam Delap, their manager, Kieran McKenna, replied: “We don’t have a doorbell and the music’s on loud.”
But what is that music?
McKenna inevitably listens to an awful lot of Ed Sheeran, who is an enthusiastic Ipswich fan, the club’s minority owner, their front-of-shirt sponsor and a regular presence at matches.
In October 2023, Sheeran was in the dressing room after Ipswich beat Hull City 3-0 on their way to promotion from the Championship, where the players serenaded him with his own song, “Perfect”, and McKenna joined the fun.
Ed Sheeran pays a visit to the Ipswich Town dressing room 👀🎤 pic.twitter.com/VSh2CipoLC
— Sky Sports Football (@SkyFootball) October 4, 2023
Later that same year, Sheeran watched Ipswich beat Watford in the company of Sir Elton John, the latter’s former chairman. After the match, he gatecrashed McKenna’s press conference to congratulate him on the result.
McKenna said it is wonderful having the four-time Grammy award winner’s support.
Caoimhe O’Neill
David Moyes, Everton
One of the abiding images from West Ham’s dressing-room celebrations after winning the Europa Conference League final in May 2023 was of manager David Moyes, can of beer in hand, singing and dancing along to “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)” by fellow Scots The Proclaimers.
“If you go to Hampden and watch Scotland, The Proclaimers are all around it,” he told The Overlap last year. “One of the staff sang it on a trip to Portugal, so getting it back on in the dressing room afterwards was great. It’s a song we can all sing along to.
“I was giving it laldy (‘your all’ in Scottish slang), partly because it’s a Scottish song and we’re all proud of our own place.”
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In that same interview, Moyes admitted to being out of his comfort zone talking about music, but referenced American soul artists The Commodores and Donna Summer plus U.S. pianist and singer Billy Joel as other favourites.
Patrick Boyland
Ange Postecoglou, Tottenham
We don’t know what music Postecoglou does like, but we know it’s not what his players like.
During the first few months of his reign in 2023, he quipped that Tottenham Hotspur’s stadium was turning into a “nightclub”. Music was being blared around the ground, including Robbie Williams’ 1997 hit “Angels” after dramatic late victories against Sheffield United and Liverpool.
When Spurs beat Luton Town 1-0 away in the October, also not long into his tenure, it put them top of the table, prompting the players to celebrate in the dressing room by singing along to the Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers classic “Islands in the Stream”.
Postecoglou revealed a few months ago that his music tastes do not align with the squad’s.
The Australian tries to limit the amount of time he spends in the dressing room before matches because he “hates” the stuff they play and that “it drives (him) nuts”.
Jay Harris
Graham Potter, West Ham
It was during an interview with West Ham United’s in-house media that Graham Potter revealed his musical tastes (cued up below).
“I think the first album my dad bought was Queen’s Greatest Hits,” said Potter.
“’Bohemian Rhapsody’ was just getting played all the time. At some point, that would probably be one of them, but I’ve gone quite eclectic.
“I don’t know if I can even admit this but I’ve got into Taylor Swift. Sam Fender, I’m also into him. Yeah, I’m all over the place, musically.”
Roshane Thomas
Marco Silva, Fulham
We couldn’t pin down a favourite artist for Marco Silva, but we do know he’s not averse to novice performers, such as Alex Iwobi.
Away from the pitch, Fulham forward Iwobi likes to spend time in the studio making his own music. In October last year, the Nigeria international released a track called “What’s Luv?”.
When the song was played by Iwobi’s team-mate Calvin Bassey at the training ground, Silva heard a snippet of it.
“The first time he heard ‘What’s Luv?’ he was just vibing, like, ‘Is this Alex?’. And Calvin was like, ‘Yes, it’s Alex!’,” Iwobi told the Daily Mail. “He said it wasn’t bad. I know the first time he didn’t understand what was said but he enjoyed the beat. So it’s a win-win.”
Caoimhe O’Neill
Arne Slot, Liverpool
Arne Slot’s time at Liverpool felt like it began when Jurgen Klopp serenaded him at Anfield after his final game as the club’s manager in May last year. The news had not yet been made official, but from the middle of the pitch Klopp got the crowd to join in as he sang, “Arne Slot, na, na, na, na, na”, to the tune of “Live Is Life” by Opus, which had been used by fans to serenade the departing German since 2016.
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Klopp is not the only legend to sing from a stage at Anfield, which has in recent years been a venue for gigs by Taylor Swift and The Rolling Stones. This summer it will host Dua Lipa, Lana Del Rey, Billy Joel and Bruce Springsteen, who brings his tour to Liverpool in June.
Slot is known to have a musical soft spot for 20-time Grammy award winner Springsteen, who is, of course, nicknamed The Boss.
Caoimhe O’Neill
Ruud van Nistelrooy, Leicester
When Ruud van Nistelrooy was first appointed as Leicester manager in November, he did an in-house, 20-question interview, with one of the questions being: Which musical artist could you listen to on repeat? Coldplay were his answer.
And to further his Chris Martin credentials, the former Manchester United striker previously revealed in an interview with former team-mate Gary Neville that he once watched his favourite band at Bolton Wanderers’ stadium with team-mate Edwin van der Sar (the band’s video for “Fix You” was also filmed at that venue).
Rob Tanner
(Top photos: Chris Martin of Coldplay, left, Noel Gallagher of Oasis with City manager Pep Guardiola; Getty Images)
