Former Leeds United manager Simon Grayson has opened up on the "fantastic experience" he has had managing Bengaluru FC ahead of their Indian Super League final on Saturday.
Grayson took over at the Indian Super League club in June earlier this year after leaving Fleetwood Town in November 2021. After a poor start to the season, Bengaluru now find themselves in the ISL final against ATK Mohun Bagan following a superb run of form over the last 11 matches.
And now the former Leeds boss has lifted the lid on his experience so far of managing in India as he looks to lead his side to victory in his first season in charge with the club.
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"It’s been a fantastic experience both professionally and personally," Grayson told Sky Sports News. "Part of the experience was coming with the life experience to be out here in India and obviously, to manage out here is completely out of my comfort zone.
"Completely different environment, different managing skills, coaching skills and thoroughly enjoying it. It obviously helps when you're winning football matches wasn't as easy in the first part of the season where we weren’t winning, but thoroughly enjoyed it and certainly not regretted it.
“It was one of them that sort of three years ago in between jobs, Martin Bain, the CEO of the Indian Super League, was my CEO at Sunderland said, ‘Look, why don't you come out to India, see what's happening? Come for a holiday, sample the country and then there's the ISL final at the end of it.’
"So I went out and three years later I never thought that I would be out here managing a team in that competition. But I got a call in the summer. In fact, I got two calls in the summer from two different teams decided that this was a great experience for me and sometimes you don't want to look back with any regrets.
"I've managed a lot of football matches in England, but this was certainly something brand new and I thought well why not? It's something that I may regret and may not and it's full of no regret at this moment in time and everything that comes with it.
“For the last eight months since I've been out here it's been a tee-shirt and shorts training session," Grayson added. "Every day there's been no snow or no rain too often, so the temperature for most of time has been 25 to 30 degrees, which has been very pleasant.
"You get to get to visit many, many different cities because every game is a flight away. So we've been to Calcutta. We've been to Delhi, to Mumbai, went to the Taj Mahal when. I had a few days off to go and sample that. So it's something that I thought I could experience as well as testing myself as a football manager.
"I think when you look back at the ISL over the years, they've got some really big name players that tried to start the competition off with a real bang.
"People like Nicolas Anelka, Zico's managed out here, Roberto Carlos, David James many, many other players have been here. So it’s trying to lift off. It's obviously been competing against the cricket, which is the number one sport, but there is a lot of hunger and desire to improve the players, the grassroots football.
"And that's what we're here for, not just here to manage the first team. I'm here to manage the B team and the youth team and give my years of wisdom, hopefully of playing and managing to the next generation of Indian footballers and coaches.
"It's been a learning curve for me, without a shadow of a doubt, because you step into a different continent that often I'm very rarely managing out of Yorkshire or Lancashire to be fair!"
Grayson has the chance to write his name into the history books in the ISL final on Saturday, something he would rank very highly within his managerial career should Bengaluru win the competition.
He said: "Well, it will be up there because, as I said many times, it's out of my comfort zone and have not been sort of being. You have to develop your fortune, theories, your methods.
"It's 30 degrees, the humidity is really high for the players. You have to adapt everything…we had three wins in the first 12 of the league season and everybody was ruling us out.
"Then all of a sudden we've won 10 games on the trot, 11 if you count the second leg of the playoffs where we went through one on penalties to get to the final and we are now one win away from getting into the record books with this football club."
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