When Quique Sánchez Flores, the effortlessly composed new manager of Watford, compares matchday to the spectacle of the theatre, he speaks from rich experience. His upbringing exposed him to two strong strands of performance. On his maternal side are the arts – his mother, Carmen, sang and acted in the movies and his aunt, Lola, was revered in the world of flamenco music and dance. On his paternal side there is football. His father, Isidro, played for Real Madrid, and at the Bernabéu befriended the maestro Alfredo Di Stéfano, who became Quique Flores’s godfather.
Few in football’s history are as distinguished as the late Di Stéfano, the Argentinian-born giant of Spanish football. To young Quique, the influence was deeply personal. “I have luck to share with Alfredo a lot of things,” he says fondly. “Di Stéfano for me is like a second father.” When his parents separated, the Di Stéfano family stepped in to offer unstinting support. “Amazing, they helped my family so much to try to handle a difficult situation,” Flores adds. That was very meaningful considering the esteem of the man. “My father, who was playing for five years with Alfredo in Real Madrid, said: ‘He was the best player I saw in my life’. Later on, when Flores crossed paths with Eusébio at Benfica, the Portuguese marvel echoed that sentiment.
When Flores began his professional career as a youngster with Valencia, his coach was none other than Di Stéfano. “I was really afraid because I respected him too much,” he recalls. “I said maybe this is a big problem because if I play maybe they are going to think I play because he is my godfather.”
And how was he as coach? The reaction reveals something about the kind of coach Flores himself wishes to be, the kind of impression he likes. “Personality. Experience. The smell of football.”
Flores has not shared this connection with a footballing icon with his Watford players. “For a lot of them you have to go and look at some clips of World Cups from 1966 or 1962. It’s difficult. They are interested in now. It is so long ago,” he says.
The now is very demanding. Flores is enthusiastic – albeit in a cool and controlled way as he does not seem the type for grand gestures – about the opportunity at Vicarage Road. The extent of change, with an 11th new summer signing on the cards in Alessandro Diamanti and the mission to forge a collective identity set against a ticking Premier League clock, is radical.
“We have only worked for six weeks together and we are incorporating new players every week,” he says. “We are still a long way from the performance we could produce. In football you don’t have time. The most interesting idea is that when you are training you are progressing. I get this feeling during the week. The players have a lot of hunger. It is very difficult what they are doing because we have changed, we have 10 new players. They have adapted very quickly, they are trying to understand the philosophy of the team and the system. We are creating a good atmosphere and we have the tools to do something good.”
After a creditable opening day draw at Goodison Park, Watford have their eye on making an even bigger statement in their first home game against West Brom this weekend. Flores hearkens back to the family roots again as he stresses how he wants his players to spark the imagination of the crowd, to put on a show.
“For me it is very important to entertain fans who come to the match: I compare this kind of profession with theatre artists. When we are preparing a performance, it is important to create emotion in the stands. Sometimes, when we are training and working on a specific task, we try to understand that we are preparing something special that normal guys want to see.
“I’ve seen a lot of things in my life – I have been many times in theatres and amazing places, watching some of the most brilliant dancers, artists and performers in Spain. Some of those experiences from earlier in my life help me to try and be a better manager. You have to draw on other experiences to understand footballers and be close to them, so when I participate with players now, I make a lot of time to organise, to analyse – everything to help make the team better. It’s an amazing experience to be in a position where you can influence a team.”
Many of his cousins in Spain followed one side of the family tree to become singers and stage performers. That was not quite Flores’s style. After a successful playing career as a defender, he slipped naturally into management. “It’s not for me to be a protagonist, it’s for the players. The coach should be behind the stage, on the side thinking about the performance. I am the director,” he says grinning. “I have the final cut.”