Jose Gomes: “Reading’s hope and ambition was completely destroyed before I arrived.”

On paper, Jose Gomes’s record at Reading wasn’t particularly good. But he left a popular man, and the affection is very much mutual…

“When I arrived at Reading, the club was completely destroyed, regarding ambition and hope.”

Jose Gomes’s description of what state Reading were in when he became their manager is pretty startling. Gomes replaced Paul Clement not long before Christmas 2018, and walked into a club that hadn’t really recovered from losing the 2017 playoff final to Huddersfield on penalties.

In the intervening 18 months they had gone from promotion challengers to relegation candidates, Jaap Stam departing before a pretty calamitous few months in charge for Clement saw them win only seven of 30 games, that day at Wembley and dreams of the Premier League so far away they might as well have been from another age. With that hope so far away, t’s no wonder the mood was low.

On paper, Gomes’s record wasn’t actually that much better than Clement’s (nine wins in 38 games), but he departed in October with rather more goodwill than his predecessor. That’s what playing good football does for your popularity. As new Barcelona coach Quique Setien told the Independent in 2018: “If you play badly and lose, you’re left with nothing. If you lose but play well, you still have something. You have something to build on.”

“The way that we started working, the way that we started to organize the team – step-by-step the hope level grows, the fans start coming more and more and more to the stadium,” Gomes tells the Totally Football Show, when asked about his relationship with the fans. “We cannot forget that if the club exists, it’s because in the past the fans organized themselves and they create the club.

“Things happen like they happen and now I just want to look for my present and future. I have very, very good relations with all the players in Reading, and with all the fans. I really enjoy the time that I spend in England. Definitely it’s the football country, no doubt about it. We can find in South America some games in Germany and some games in Italy, in Spain.

“You feel the people, the families, full families organize their lives around when their team plays and how they must travel to follow their team. We cannot find this anywhere else.”

Gomes loves English football. A lot. He brings how much he loves English football unprompted. He loves the fans, he loves the style of play, he even loves the insane number games played here, compared to other countries. You can tell how much he loves English football because he even loves the English football media.

“I had a very, very good relationship [with the media]. When I take the bad decisions, they just said the truth and I must accept. But they treat me very, very well. I cannot complain about anything. The media in England around the football, I felt very serious and professional work from them. They knew they knew how the club was when I arrived.

“In the beginning, maybe they they said, ‘This guy is crazy, because he’s saying that he wants to play good football and that club when the team is a disaster right now. What is he saying?’ And and after week by week – ‘Well, he’s trying to do what he promised.’ So they respect me. Because they know I’ve tried to do what I promised when I arrived.

“For me was a fantastic experience. I really believe that that I will be in the future in the English football. I feel it. Maybe not not next season, but very soon I will be there again and I will be there even stronger.”

Gomes arrived in England as a relative unknown, but came with a pick ’n’ mix of a CV, having managed in seven countries and coached in a couple more. His experiences ranged from replacing and then being replaced by Christian Gross at Al-Taawoun in Saudi Arabia, to ‘enjoying’ coffee with keen football fan Victor Orban when in charge of Videoton in Hungary. A “very serious and interesting man”, apparently.

He’s now back home in Portugal, taking over the struggling Maritimo just before Christmas, who he’s stabilised with four games unbeaten after they had won only two from 11 prior to his arrival.

“The first conversation I had with my players, I told them that they were completely forbidden to to say any word against the previous manager, because if I’m there it means that they didn’t give the maximum that they they should…Usually if the players give the maximum that they can, since the beginning of the season, these kind of things doesn’t happen. I don’t care what he said, what he did, the way that he worked – I just talk about what I want. No, I don’t want to lose time saying don’t do this, don’t do that. I just want to say, do this, do that.”

But all roads seem to lead back to England. It’s fascinating that even ostensibly less than desirable jobs like at Reading are so attractive to managers like Gomes. The money and status help with that appeal of course, but there’s almost a sense of awe in Gomes’s voice when he discusses life here, particularly the number of fans that show up to each game.

“Even in Championship it’s really amazing,” he says. “For example, when a player shoots trying to score and just misses, you feel that the sounds from the stands.” At this stage Gomes makes a noise best written down as ‘wooooooow’. “It’s incredible. It was my dream to work there. I want to go on I want to go on working to be there again. So like I said, in the future, I will be there again.”

Just to clarify, in case the message hasn’t come across: he wants to manage in England again. Perhaps next time, he’ll start with a slightly easier job.

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