When Des Buckingham took over as Mumbai City’s manager in 2021 he soon noticed that his players were painfully shy. The Englishman worried that he had caused offence when they avoided making eye contact with him at the training ground.
The actual reason, though, was that Indian footballers were too respectful of the natural hierarchy to speak to the coaches. “Players were almost trying to avoid staff,” Buckingham says. “The biggest thing I’ve seen outside India is players want as much time with the coach as they can get. I’m sure the players in India wanted the same thing but never knew how to do it. We tried to change that.”
