Burnley’s manager may have a gruff exterior but he also has some unexpected views on football players, family and much else
One of the best things about taking your non‑sports‑fan daughter to interviews with sports stars is that you end up talking about so much more than sport. How else would I have ever seen Jamie Carragher blush as bright red as a Liverpool shirt when Grace asked him if he talked to his daughter about her periods? (No.) Yet also, what joy that it was a man, Maro Itoje, who, after explaining just how far it was permitted to go to hurt your opponent – very far, it sounded like to us – then gave what Grace admitted was as good a definition of feminism as we have heard while recording interviews for our podcast series, Football, Feminism and Everything in Between. “Feminism just means equality and freedom for women,” the England lock forward said.
Now we are in Sean Dyche’s home near Northampton, and the first thing thought you have is that if this was David Frost’s old show, Through the Keyhole, you would never guess that a former footballer and current manager lived here. “You won’t find any memorabilia in here,” he says, as he goes about making us a coffee. “No pictures, no old shirts, none of that. I’m not one of those football people who thinks and talks nothing but football. When I’m here, it’s not just my home, it’s the family home.” Neither his wife Jane, nor their daughter Alicia, are that keen on football, though son Max certainly is, and a good player to boot.
Written by Alastair Campbell
This news first appeared on https://www.theguardian.com/football/2019/jul/22/sean-dyche-interview-alastair-campbell under the title “
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