Jack Ross subscribes to Pep Guardiola’s theory that the best coaches steal ideas from elsewhere and revealed he has long-held obsession with Spanish football.
The Hibs boss will take his team into Europe next season, although in what competition and at what stage is yet to be determined and will depend on how they finish their Premiership and Scottish Cup campaigns.
However, if he could pick, Ross would love to test himself and his players against Spanish opposition after catching the bug for their style of coaching on a previous fact finding trip.
He said: “Guardiola talks about being an ideas thief and that’s what the best coaches are. I love watching other people coach, irrespective of the level of the game. I can go and watch someone coach a Juniors team and pick something up. I could go and watching someone coaching an Under 14 girls team and pick something up.
“I love watching football and people coach. I spend a lot of time trawling YouTube for coaches and there’s some weird and wonderful stuff you can pick up.
“There’s a guy in Turkey called Hikmet Karaman who’s stuff is really good and it’s great for me because it's my passion to go and do that.
“I’ve had a real fascination with Spanish football for a while now. Not necessarily in terms of playing but in terms of the coaching side of it.
“I was lucky enough to visit Valencia a few years ago and spent two or three days there watching them train. I would like to go that part of the world and play against one of their teams and see the challenges it would bring because from a coaching point of view, it would definitely be something new.”
With the club’s Under 18s making a strong start to their league season that finally got underway in the last few weeks, there’s been a chance to watch Hibs’ up and coming prospects and try and decide who has first team potential.
A number do, and Ross revealed that one or two will be in and around the first team squad over the last couple of weeks of this campaign.
He told Hibs.pod: “We’re starting to see them play now which is good and we’ve managed to see them and have them train.
“Jacob Blaney’s trained with the first team a few times, Ethan Laidlaw’s been involved in the matchday squad but it's been frustrating for us having less contact time.
“Josh Doig was one that grabbed the opportunity last pre-season. Steven Bradley you probably forget because he's been around the first team squad all season, but he’s the other one that’s grabbed his opportunity. He’s trained well all season and made massive progress. He’s one that we believe has the necessary attributes to break through. There’s no guarantees but he has the opportunity.
“We’ll use the remaining couple of weeks of the season to involve Jack Brydon, the young centre half in amongst the first team group.
“It helps us to prep for games because we’re light in that area so when we’re prepping for games and using players as the opposition, he’ll be involved in that.
“He’s enjoyed some time at Stenhousemuir over the last couple of months as well.
“So we want to say for definite who we think will come through because you can be surprised, but there’s enough within our system that we can have another Josh Doig emerge, hopefully over the coming months.
