When you think of great managers in the beautiful game today, the obvious names come to mind. Pep Guardiola. José Mourinho. Jürgen Klopp. Diego Simeone. Brendan Rodgers. But after you read this, you will want to add another name: Stephen Constantine.
Constantine, whose career was chronicled in From Delhi to the Den: The Story of Football’s Most Travelled Coach, has an amazing story and an equally impressive resume. His Twitter profile says “I am Everywhere” and that has literally been the case. Born in England, Constantine went on to manage national teams in Nepal, Malawi, Sudan, Rwanda, and India. He also managed a number of professional clubs in England, Greece, and Cyprus.
He also can claim that he’s been involved with the game on four continents, thanks to spending time as a player with the Pennsylvania Stoners and NY Pancyprian Freedoms in the U.S. That’s a feat that can’t be matched by anyone in the game.
Constantine was quite modest about his time as a player.
“I was in the good old days, a kicker. I loved to tackle, loved getting stuck in. I was not gifted technically, but I worked hard to keep up with the guys that were better than me technically. My effort made up for my lack of technical ability.”
Yet Constantine was good enough to garner a trial from both Chelsea and the New York Cosmos. But his time as a player was limited by the Stoners going out of business and an ACL injury he suffered with the Freedoms. During this time of uncertainty, he found a passion for coaching.
“While at the Pennsylvania Stoners, they made me go and do the weekend camps with kids and some of the other players from the Stoners. No one really wanted to do this at the time and neither did I by the way. But going there and being able to show a young player how to do something, I thought it was great. Being able to influence somebody to play football and enjoy it was something that was always in the back of my mind. When I injured my ACL in ’89 playing with the Pancyprian Freedoms, I had already decided what I wanted to do.”
Constantine quickly showed his gift for coaching, earning all of his USSF licenses, all the way up to the prestigious “A” license.
“I just think being able to give somebody your knowledge and watch them progress is special. I have to say my best moments in football on and off the pitch was being able to give international debuts to national team players or giving a young player his first game for a club team. You can’t buy that feeling.”
He experienced that feeling often, giving 49 players their senior national team debuts. He would do the same at the club level, putting youngsters to the test among their older counterparts. It was a successful venture, one that would define his career. He would become known as a great developer of talent and one that would help maximize a player’s potential.
Constantine’s first experience coaching national teams came with Nepal in 1999.
“We were hosting the South Asian Games, which featured eight countries. My job was to prepare and lead the team for that. We made it to the final and lost 1-0. That was a fantastic experience. The players were humble and very hard-working. When you have that kind of attitude from players, the only way is up. I don’t care how good they are. My attitude is I can make you better if you want. I can’t make you better if you don’t want. That attitude in Asia is fantastic in that regard. Obviously, the highlight in Nepal was being knighted by the king.”
Constantine came back to England in 2000 and spent a year at AFC Bournemouth’s academy.
“I learned quite a lot there about developing young players. Dealing with 14 and 15-year-olds that are on the cusp of earning a professional contract is really something else.”
Given his success with Nepal, it came as no surprise that other national team jobs soon became available to him. From 2002 to 2005, Constantine would be at the helm for India as they prepared for a number of important competitions.
“We were preparing for the Asian Games in South Korea. Part of the preparation was another eight-nation tournament in Vietnam. I took an Under-23 team there and again we weren’t supposed to qualify out of the group. We ended up winning, beating the full Vietnam national side in the final.”
From 2005-2006, Constantine served as an assistant manager for Millwall FC in England.
“I went to Millwall in the Championship and that was a massive experience. Playing in the FA Cup and playing against Premier League teams was unbelievable. You can’t buy that experience.”
In 2007 Constantine hit the road again and headed to Africa for the first time after accepting the position of head coach for Malawi, a country that competed in the African Cup of Nations. In 2009 he moved to Sudan to lead their national team. When he arrived in Sudan, Constantine was told by the British government that he was to leave immediately as he couldn’t be protected. But he stayed.
“The Sudanese people were fantastic towards me and were fantastic people. I did not fear for my safety in Sudan.”
Constantine found Sudan to be a “really tough experience” because of the impending civil war and training temperatures of over 100 degrees. He helped modernize the national team setup in roughly ten months, but eventually the situation deteriorated and it became unsafe for him and others to remain there.
He would go on to serve as head coach for three Premier League teams in Cyprus from 2010-2013, joining Greek Super League side Apollon as an assistant manager from 2013-2014.
Constantine would go on to lead Rwanda’s national team from 2014-2015, leading the country to qualification in the African Cup of Nations. Some special moments quickly followed.
“Rwanda had a genocide 25 years ago, but it was one of the cleanest countries I had been to in Africa. Their love for the game surpasses anything, everything. I remember when we defeated Congo and qualified for the African Cup of Nations. We were in a minibus, about 28 of us. We saw people lining the streets like a 4th of July parade in Manhattan. The bus is swaying to and fro from people rocking it. One of the players began singing a traditional song and the atmosphere was unbelievable. You don’t get that in European countries. The meaning of what we achieved was incredible for them. If you see pictures of that game, there were people literally sitting in trees and hanging on branches to try and watch the game. You are in the game for these moments.”
After Rwanda, Constantine returned to India for his second stint as national team head coach, where he remained until 2019. He left behind quite a legacy of success and modernization, making incredible strides on and off the field. Constantine showed the Indian players how to win and improved the overall national team setup by growing the sports science and medical departments. He still believes in the potential of the game there, but is well aware that there is work left to do.
“The growth over the past four or five years has been tremendous. I think it is one of the few countries left with untapped talent. It is going to take some time, but they still need to focus on coach development. People always talk about how players aren’t good enough. It’s not the players. Players will do what you tell them to do if they think it will make them better. We need to go back and say the coaching is not good enough and that’s why we aren’t producing top players.”
That seems like a perfectly logical explanation. A country of over 1.3 billion should be producing players capable of playing in the world’s top leagues and competitions, but India simply is not doing that at the moment.
Today Constantine remains a FIFA instructor, a position that he has held for 20 years and one that he is very fond of.
“It’s like winning the lottery. I have been to most places in the world. Being able to impart knowledge and give other people the tools to improve their players is amazing.”
He’s become so synonymous with developing coaches for FIFA that the one and only Gianni Infantino provided a foreword for Constantine’s book.
Just remember the name Stephen Constantine. He’s accomplished so much and is still the next big thing in the world of football. He’s a special manager and a true developer of talent, someone who is so deserving of the world’s biggest stage.
