If Watford’s current league position is a surprise, it is not the first that Marco Silva has pulled off in a young but incident-packed managerial career. There was his initial success in his native Portugal at Estoril, who in three seasons he guided to promotion and successive top-five finishes; the manner of his departure from Sporting Lisbon, which was officially put down to him wearing the wrong suit to a league game; and the abruptness of his departure from Olympiakos, after one successful season and one week into preparations for the next, because of personal reasons.
But to those who know the club well, the enthusiasm with which Silva has been embraced is anything but surprising. As one club insider puts it: “Whoever came in to replace Walter Mazzarri, so long as they had good people skills and could speak English, they were going to be an improvement in every way on what was happening last year. With the way Mazzarri came across to the public and the way he was on the training pitch, so long as you’ve got decent people skills people are going to think straight away that you’re good. It’s as simple as that.”
Silva himself does not accept that his task has been remotely simple. At least in public, he talks of hard work and individual sacrifice. So while he says the atmosphere has changed since he arrived, the transformation has not been wrought by anything as superficial as his cheerful demeanour and only slightly stilted English. “It’s different because, in football, results help,” he says. “But for them to come we needed to work really hard, and after to give good answers in the matches. Of course it’s different. I said to the players in our first meetings: ‘We need to build something inside the club, a commitment between us. One good dressing room.’ And until now what is my feeling? In some moments in matches, in some moments during the week, I think we were together. And in some matches this makes a difference.”
Last Saturday’s victory over Swansea City was a case in point. After Watford dominated the first half-hour the home side took back control, equalised and seemed the more likely to find a winner. But Silva’s side refused to submit, fought their way back into the game and stole a winner in the last minute. “Every time the wind changes, you react again,” Silva says. “In the last 15 minutes we believed again in our philosophy, in our game. I think it’s really important. It happened because everybody stayed together. It’s not only because we achieved good results until now, but because we started to build something important in our dressing room.”
The Watford defender Sebastian Prödl says: “He’s different to the last two coaches we had. I think he’s very clear in his opinion of how to play football. He’s very demanding: he wants a lot of discipline, not only on the pitch but also off the pitch, which means respecting the rules outside of the pitch, be on time, these kind of things. I think his philosophy is, if you’ve got discipline off the pitch it’s even more likely you have it on the pitch as well. On the pitch he’s got his opinion and he’s very focused. Every second in training sessions he’s preparing us well for the games and you can tell he loves his job because he’s so focused.”
It is not only Mazzarri’s character and communication skills that have assisted Silva’s start, but also his results. Watford finished their last campaign in a lowly 17th place after a dramatic late-season slump, helpfully reducing expectations (though the Italian’s fate had already been sealed and discussions with Silva’s agent had begun before that rotten run). Over the summer significant improvements were made to the squad, particularly in midfield and attack, and once the transfer window closed those in charge of player recruitment congratulated themselves on assembling a group worthy of a top-10 club.
Silva has not been fortunate with injuries, which have prevented him from selecting the same back four in any two games this season and have denied him the services of Nathaniel Chalobah for at least three months. “I have tried to bring more stability to our backline,” the manager says. “I hope we will have that for some games in a row because it’s really important to us.” Of Saturday’s game against West Bromwich Albion, Silva says: “It is important for us that we don’t change many things in our style, in our behaviour”.
Off the pitch, fortunately, Silva has become adept at dealing with change. After playing his way around much of Portugal Silva joined Estoril in the summer of 2005 and stayed for nine years, six as a player and then three as manager. It was a time of stability and of success, which has been followed by more success and less stability. And now Silva, a manager who changes club every year, has found Watford, a club that changes manager every year.
“I feel well. Normal,” he says of his new life on the outskirts of London. “I can adapt really fast in every situation. I came here to create something, to work really hard, to put my philosophy into the club. That’s what I’m here to do, to pass something to the players. And after, I’ll make sure everything is normal in my life. It’s OK. Everything is OK.”
