Carlos Corberán leans forward ever so slightly, pinches his thumb and index finger together and begins to make a rather compelling case. He is fielding a question about Huddersfield’s players being weighed before training and whether his meticulous ways were inspired by two years working alongside Marcelo Bielsa at Leeds. For Corberán, a perfectionist and almost obsessive head coach, there is no such thing as a marginal gain. “There aren’t any small details,” he says. “Every action can be the key one. We don’t know which one is going to be the key one. We have to place the same importance on every one.”
Corberán rattles off a few examples – “driving one more yard can be the difference between allowing the opponent to counterattack, because you lose the ball, or getting past a defender and passing to a teammate to score” – and cites Danny Ward’s hat-trick – and winning – goal at Reading last month when the striker won an aerial duel five seconds before blasting a shot into the top corner. Ward opened the scoring in victory at Championship leaders Fulham on Saturday and after 45 minutes in Corberán’s company it is easy to understand why Huddersfield are flying. They are fifth in the league and face Nottingham Forest for a place in the quarter-finals of the FA Cup. First, however, they will attempt to extend their unbeaten run to 16 matches at home to Cardiff on Wednesday.
It is 4.15pm and there is a moody sky at Huddersfield’s Canalside training base and though the pitches behind Corberán are empty, he is at his desk fine-tuning preparations. Corberán has been known to challenge his players, be it arranging meetings hours after training, not adhering to regular days off, or wanting them to be as lean as humanly possible. His approach appears to be working. “Training has to help us create habits,” he says. “For me, the moment of the game is maybe the moment where they have to think less but play more. But play the right way. And to play the right way, you need to process, you need to work, you need to analyse, and you need to understand the game situations that allow you when you’re on the pitch to just play.
“Everything that we want to watch on a pitch at the weekend, we need to see and watch on the pitch on the training ground every single day. For me, football is a question of habit.”
Corberán is as he is on the touchline – intense and animated – and training tends to be at full tilt too, especially during “Murderball”, a gruelling drill synonymous with Bielsa where fouls are allowed to run and the ball effectively never goes out of play. Corberán has a doctorate in football, completing a thesis on the philosophy of Juanma Lillo, an assistant to Pep Guardiola at Manchester City, and his hunger to improve often results in long days. “I don’t like to go home with work to do. I like to be at the training ground until I finish … it can be 7pm, 8pm. We think we have a big opportunity and we want to try to use it the best we can.”
Home remains in Leeds, where he was appointed Under-23s coach in July 2017 – after spells in Cyprus, Saudi Arabia and in his homeland, Spain, with Villarreal – and later first-team coach under Bielsa, who once said he valued Corberán’s opinion more than his own. “It is one of the few things – or maybe the only thing – that I don’t agree with him on. I cannot accept these types of words. It is not true.” They would agree on the importance of humility, though. “In life our ego can kill us more than help us,” Corberán says. “Football challenges you every single day. Every time you are facing a challenge, you have the opportunity to grow and to add new knowledge. So I hope that today I will be a worse coach than I am tomorrow,” he says, smiling.
Huddersfield’s head of football operations and former academy manager, Leigh Bromby, a former Leeds defender, was impressed with Corberán’s side in an Under-23s game between the teams and moved for him in July 2020 after sacking Danny Cowley. Almost five years in England is rubbing off on Corberán. “When I was in Spain I was having dinner around 10pm but now I am more British, around 8pm,” smiles the 38-year-old, who was born in Cheste, near Valencia. “This country is very cosmopolitan. You have Italian, Japanese, Spanish restaurants – everything. I found a place that has paella, which is typical of my city, so I’m not missing anything.”
The starting lineup at Fulham was assembled for little more than £1m, with the goalkeeper Lee Nicholls, Matty Pearson, who has been given the nickname “Keighley Cannavaro”, Ollie Turton and Tom Lees, all of whom joined on frees last summer, key to improving a team who finished 20th with the division’s worst defensive record last season. Sorba Thomas, for whom they paid a modest fee, is arguably the star of a team led by the midfielder Lewis O’Brien, who progressed through the academy. Huddersfield are not stacked with household names but shrewd recruits.
“They have created one culture,” Corberán says. “I remember in some of my speeches last year before the game I was talking a lot but this year I’m listening to my players before we all go to the pitch. They are ready to compete for their teammates every time.”
