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.”
Buckingham has absorbed different cultures. Having started coaching in Oxford United’s academy 22 years ago, he managed in Australia and New Zealand before going to Mumbai. Travel, Oxford’s new manager says, has made him a better person and “hopefully a more rounded coach”.
The mind goes back to joining Wellington Phoenix as Ernie Merrick’s assistant in 2015. Buckingham talks of Merrick as a mentor. But for the 38-year-old, whose successful time at Mumbai ended when he returned to Oxford two months ago, this is more than a coaching journey. It is about life.
“The first week in New Zealand I didn’t know anybody,” Buckingham says. “I went to a game and got talking to an English guy at half-time. He’d been there for 20 years and phoned me when I got back to the hotel. He said: ‘I’ve spoken to my wife, we don’t think it’s right you’re here by yourself. We’ve got three kids, they’ve all left, we’d like to offer you the room in our house.’ That would never have happened growing up in England. My instinct was: ‘I’m OK, thanks,’ as I didn’t feel comfortable. But there they see someone by themselves and it’s different.”
He says the challenge was adapting to the culture of the new country but “without losing who you are”. He had to be patient while building up Mumbai’s players. “We sat with the players, one on one, for 20 minutes, which is something they’d never had before. It was so awkward. But we had to have a starting point. We didn’t drop the playing style on them then. It would have been too much, too soon. It was about trying to put those building blocks in place where they could become comfortable having a conversation with you.”
The process took around six months. Everything took off. Mumbai developed a fearless brand of football, won the Indian Super League last year, and impressed in the Asian Champions League. Buckingham was happy at Mumbai, who are part of the City Football Group stable. He had been assistant manager at Melbourne City, another CFG club, and planned to stay in India until 2025 before Oxford approached him after Liam Manning’s departure to Bristol City.
The chance to go home appealed. Buckingham whips out his phone and shows a picture of his ticket from his first ever game, a 3-1 win for Oxford United over Bristol City in 1990. He keeps the memorabilia as a connection to home and a way of remembering the grandmother who took him to the Manor Ground.
Buckingham played in Oxford’s academy. Along the way, though, he was drawn to coaching. “There was no injury,” he says. “It got to a stage where Mickey Lewis, my youth team coach, got me involved. He was the reason I got into coaching. It was the way he engaged with people.” The journey under way, Buckingham joined Chris Wilder’s backroom staff on the first team. He observed Wilder’s honesty and smart man-management. But New Zealand beckoned. Buckingham’s eyes were open.
“I got taken to a high-performance Sport New Zealand course,” he says. “A three-year programme led by a guy called Christian Penny. He took us through a Maori process. On Indigenous land there’s a process you have to go through that for me was very uncomfortable as an English person
“Whenever you go on to Indigenous land, in the old days it was almost friend or foe. In the sporting context people often introduce themselves from a football point of view – ‘Hi, I’m Des, I’m head coach of Oxford United.’ It was: ‘We’re not interested in that side of it.’ It was: ‘Who are you?’ We had to say where we’re from and what home looks like.”
The programme stayed with Buckingham when he managed New Zealand’s under-20 and under‑23 teams. While he was also the assistant manager of the senior team, he focused on his work with the youngsters. New Zealand reached the last 16 of the Under-20 World Cup in Poland in 2019.
“We took the team further than ever with three pros and 18 amateurs,” says Buckingham, whose work with limited resources caught CFG’s attention. “We changed the playing style from what was in the Fifa technical reports, which was New Zealand teams are physically strong, try hard, but never anything about football. But it was more off pitch. We took Christian Penny into our camp before the World Cup. On the Indigenous land there’s almost a fenced-off complex that houses the families and the house you live in represents what you are.
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“We didn’t have an identity in terms of football. Could we create our own house? Could it be playing style or behaviours off the pitch? The players took real ownership of what they built. With the under-23s in Olympic qualifiers we had a player who hadn’t been part of the journey.”
“We played American Samoa, won 14-0 and this new player said something to the other team’s coach as they walked off,” he adds. “We found out after the game. We got to the hotel, I called the captain, he said: ‘Leave it with me.’”
Buckingham received an email from American Samoa’s coach a day later. “He said what a wonderful group of young men we had. The captain took the player into a room and explained how we’d tried to change perceptions. They took a 45-minute taxi to the opposition hotel. They waited for three hours as the American Samoa staff didn’t want to come down. They then sat with them for three-and-a-half hours, apologised and took them through the journey they’d been on. The players held each other accountable.”
Identity matters. Buckingham is committed to possession football and trusts the process. Oxford United’s results have been up and down since his appointment but he says a manager who suddenly changes a team’s style risks “losing everything”.
It can be frustrating. On Tuesday, Oxford lost 2-0 to AFC Wimbledon despite having most of the ball. But they are fifth in League One and remain in contention for automatic promotion before visiting Carlisle on Saturday. Buckingham points to injuries – he is missing eight starters – and talks about the training ground being flooded last week.
He is ready for the fight. There is a growing trend for clubs to turn to managers who never played professionally. Buckingham points out that coaching is a trade now. He has absorbed knowledge since he was a teenager and built himself up. “I’ve been coaching for 22 years,” he says. “But I’m still conscious of how much I don’t know. I’ll always seek out ways to learn.”