If he is not fired, I will leave the Stoke City head coach, as he has a misunderstanding with his player.

If he is not fired, I will leave the Stoke City head coach, as he has a misunderstanding with his player.

He and his player have a misunderstanding; hence, if he is not fired, I will leave the Stoke City head coach.

Still, why Scandinavia? “Probably because I was ignorant of the severity of the weather,” he says to Sky Sports. “I’ve been inquisitive all my life. I wanted to discover something that could further improve me after playing in the third division of Spanish football for a number of years.”
It was genuinely accidental. The summer months saw football played only in Sweden and Norway. He established contacts and set off on a fact-finding trip. Speaking English, it made sense. The plan called for a year there. That was seven years ago.”

On July 27, 2023, in Enschede, Netherlands, FC Twente and Hammarby IF played in the UEFA Europa League Second Qualifying Round First Leg at De Grolsch Veste Stadium. Marti Cifuentes Corvillo of Hammarby IF watches.
Play Video: Cifuentes: A lot of things influence my football style.
Marti Cifuentes talks about the constituents of his football philosophy.
Working in the academy at AIK in Sweden was his first stop before taking over as head coach of Sandefjord in Norway. He chose to sever his successful time with Aalborg in Denmark in order to take advantage of the chance with Hammarby back in Sweden.

There, in front of thirty thousand supporters, he helped the Stockholm side resurrect and return to Europe. He was enjoying himself greatly. “That was what drew me to Hammarby,” Cifuentes explains. “I am a person that needs that kind of pressure.”

Growing up in Catalunya, 41-year-old Cifuentes’ football playing style is influenced by the Johan Cruyff school. His 26-year-old coaching placement at Ajax came about through the Cruyff Institute. I fell in love with football because of him, he says.

Nevertheless, considering his odd background, his reference points are wide. It would be easy to lump together those coaching experiences in Sweden, Denmark, and Norway, but Cifuentes writes skillfully and eloquently on the minute distinctions between each nation.

“The majority of the clubs in Sweden were still influenced by Roy Hodgson and Bob Houghton from the 1970s when I first came. It was long balls and high pressure in a 4-4-2. Quite unlike what I was familiar with. For me nonetheless, it was a useful learning curve.

Norway is not subject to the same British influence. Numerous clubs there, perhaps eighty percent of them, played 4-3-3 with runners in midfield, a distinctively Norwegian style, mostly influenced by the great former Rosenborg head coach Nils Arne Eggen.

Denmark was an entirely different country. Growing up with Michael Laudrup, I had assumed it would be technical, but it turned out to be the most physical of the three. I became well informed. It was intensely physical, with a lot of man-marking and individual battles.

Today, Sweden is a strategically very wealthy country. Remarkably so. It was already igniting when I arrived here in 2016. There are many young coaches these days. From the coaching standpoint, it has developed into a very intriguing league.”

“I don’t think this will ever alter. Being really honest with oneself as a coach is essential to the players’ trust. Football players are supposedly not very intelligent. I don’t concur. They have excellent judgment on whether you are telling them the truth or not.”

So, even if he admires Diego Simeone’s work, he declares, “I do not share at all his view of football.” From Ajax to Barcelona to Manchester City, he makes reference to the great teams. The ball is first held by them all. All the major teams share that tendency, he says.

“People tend to overlook that positional games are highly dynamic forms of play. Sometimes location is the complete opposite of what we associate with something absolutely static. Players have a great deal of freedom and play in a proactive manner.”

Head coach Marti Cifuentes of Hammarby during a May 14, 2023, Allsvenskan game between Hammarby IF and Djurgardens IF at Tele2 Arena in Stockholm, Sweden.
Picture: At Hammarby, Marti Cifuentes had to become adept at managing large crowds.
He thinks of the doubters about Pep Guardiola. “I seem to recall folks saying, ‘This is England. I’m not going to work. We don’t play that way. Fascinatingly, his own English football exploits actually preceded the City manager. Cifuentes worked for Millwall for a spell.

After his time with Ajax ended, that is. He stayed a week with Arsenal before deciding it was not practical to commute to north London. In Millwall, a gap appeared. Kenny Jackett has the team competing in League One. Quite different from Amsterdam.

Cifuentes quips, “You can imagine going from watching Ajax versus Feyenoord to watching Millwall versus Leyton Orient.” That vibe, though, he recalls. “Millwall had 10,000 or more supporters in League One. To me, that was startling.

“I just wanted to grasp new ways of thinking and of playing football,” he continues. “I don’t pretend to be correct all the time. Sometimes I just don’t like it, and other times I enjoy what I see and can take this notion here or there. That was a great opportunity in that regard.”