LONDON: Harry Kewell tells Luke Brown how playing for the great managers prepared him for his first coaching role
For many, Harry Kewell will always remain the prodigiously talented youngster who shot to prominence playing in the white of Leeds United, in the team of the late 1990s whose star burnt brightly, if all too briefly.
This bottom-heavy perception of a 17-year career ignores that, although he did struggle with injuries, he continued to play at the highest level until the age of 34, winning a Champions League and FA Cup with Liverpool. He played under some of the most decorated managers in the game, learning along the way, and now the boy wonder is taking baby steps in management with Watford's under-21 team.
Kewell featured for George Graham, David O'Leary, Gerard Houllier, Rafael Benitez, Frank Rijkaard and Guus Hiddink - six different characters and styles, all of which solicit a typically forthright opinion from Kewell.
But there is one he reserves special praise for above all others.
"Rijkaard - the number one person I ever worked with was Frank Rijkaard," Kewell says of his coach at Galatasaray, the club he chose - to the enduring anger of Leeds fans who saw two of their own stabbed to death at the hands of a Galatasaray fan in Istanbul in 2000 - after Liverpool decided not to renew his contract following a string of muscular injuries.
"The way he saw football just blew my mind away. I always thought I could see things in football, but he used to stop the game in training and point all these different things out, so that even I had to step back and go, 'Wow'. The way he sees it, trains and sets everything up: for me it made him the best."
Kewell said he "had the privilege of playing under some other great managers, too", before identifying two figures with notably different styles to the affable Rijkaard.
The imperious George Graham, his first manager at Leeds was, "like a general, with so much stature".
"He would walk into a dressing room and people would shut up."
In stark contrast was the personable and approachable Guus Hiddink, who was, according to Kewell, "the best international manager I ever played under, who immediately understood the Australian mentality - full-on attack".
Kewell was entranced by Houllier's deep knowledge of the game. "The way he talked about football was amazing. If you hear the way a Frenchman talks about football it makes you want to fall in love with them - it must be the accent.
"And then there was Rafa Benitez at Liverpool, who was a very tactical man with a structure which he stuck too, and if you fell out with that, he did not like it. Ninety per cent of the time you had to do exactly what he wanted, but look, it got us wins."
Kewell's flow is interrupted when he is asked why he has not yet mentioned David O'Leary, his former Leeds United manager, who infamously declared the winger a "bighead".
"O'Leary? No comment," he says, lip curled, before tantalisingly resuming, "The thing with David was ... Ah, no. No comment." Diplomacy is evidently a managerial quality Kewell has acquired quickly.
The Watford board will be hoping that he has picked up other such skills with equal adeptness. The club moved quickly to recruit him as their under-21 manager ahead of the new season, with their swift approach catching Kewell unawares.
"When I first got that phone call [from Watford], I thought it was somebody lying," he laughs.
"I have wanted to get into coaching, and I run an academy for young players back in Australia. So to come to Watford was a no-brainer, as if you want to be the best you have to challenge the best, and so if you can make your name in the Premier League the world is your oyster.
"I feel like I am an apprentice. You can forget about my playing career, this is a fresh start and I know it will be tough. If I do a job I do it properly.
"After football I wanted to see if I still had that fire in my belly, and that fire is there."
The chance to work for Quique Flores, the manager, also influenced his decision to swap Melbourne for the M25. Flores has over a decade's worth of experience in management, and built the Atletico Madrid team which Diego Simeone inherited to such great success. "From the first moment I met him I knew that he was solid, and a very confident character," Kewell says.
"I have seen how other managers treat their under-21 coaches, and some are not bothered. They have their first-team squad and that is it, but [Flores] wants to know. He wants young players to push the first team, and he wants me to ask questions."
The potential of a move to London also makes sense for his young family, and in particular his wife Sheree Murphy, famous for roles in soaps such as Emmerdale and Neighbours. She is participating in this season's Celebrity MasterChef, and the family have moved back to Islington, near to where she was raised.
"My wife is a Londoner and so the move has made her really happy," Kewell admits, "and now she has been able to go back into work as well. So it is a great fit in that respect.
"It is similar to when I was a player with Leeds, I had a great chance and I was never going to let it go."
Kewell insists on similar levels of commitment from his players, and despite having been in his new job for only a matter of days, he is already critical of the training regulations imposed on young British players, which he feels curtail the desire to succeed and kill their love of the game.
He struggles to contain his bemusement upon recounting how he found out that young trainees are discouraged from playing football outside of the confines of a club. For example, street football, the schooling ground of countless greats of the game, is off limits unless, laughably, a coach is present.
"In other countries they play football for five or six hours a day," he says.
"But here there is a rule which says that you can only train for a certain amount of hours during the week. I know that kids have to have fun, but you can still have fun by playing football.
"It is ridiculous that kids cannot play on the street, and all goes back to how much do you want it?"