Ben Cahn has helped spark a revolution at one of Australia’s most storied clubs last year. Now, he has been appointed head coach of Brisbane Roar’s Isuzu UTE A-League side. He spoke to aleagues.com.au’s Nick D’Urbano about his football journey.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This article was originally published in September, ahead of Melbourne Knights’ clash with Brisbane Roar in the Australia Cup semi-final.
When you spoke about best coaches outside the A-Leagues system, the name Ben Cahn was almost always one of the first names mentioned.
Over the last decade, Cahn had established himself as one of the country’s brightest up-and-coming coaches, from his time in the Sunshine Coast, to Central Coast Mariners, to NPLM Queensland outfit Olympic FC – and in 2023, with Victorian juggernaut Melbourne Knights.
In his one season at Knights, the Englishman had revolutionised a sleeping giant of Australian football, taking them back to the NPLM Victoria finals for the first time in eight years and on a historic run to the Australia Cup semi-finals, where they faced Brisbane Roar but ultimately fell to a 1-0 defeat.
FULL DETAILS: Brisbane Roar appoint Ben Cahn as new head coach
His coaching efforts hadn’t gone unrecognised by the wider football public, as Cahn’s name was constantly floated as the next manager to possibly make the leap to the A-Leagues over the last few years.
Cahn finally made the leap on Monday, when he was announced as head coach of Brisbane’s Isuzu UTE A-League side on New Year’s Day as a replacement for Ross Aloisi, who departed for an opportunity abroad.
In September, Cahn spoke to aleagues.com.au about his rise through the coaching ranks.
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Making his way to Australia
Cahn’s journey started in London, where he was born into a football family of Chelsea supporters, who engrained him in the sport from a very young age.
“I was quite a typical young boy growing up in London,” Cahn recalled to aleagues.com.au.
“I loved football, had a family that had a season ticket at Chelsea. So from a young age I was exposed to watching Chelsea play and once you get that attachment to football and to the game, it’s very hard to move away from.”
As a youngster, Cahn had aspirations to go pro.
During his teenage years, he spent time playing in the academies of Crystal Palace and Fulham, where he most notably worked under Carlo Ancelotti’s former right-hand man Paul Clement, who was the head of The Cottagers’ academy.
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It was Clement that told a 15-year-old Cahn that he felt he would fall short in his push to play professionally.
“I loved playing and started playing when I was very young,” he said.
“It was very difficult to make anything or to make a career of being a footballer in London.
“But as a young boy and as a teenager, you spend some time in some professional academies and in some other strong youth programmes.
“Ultimately, as I got into my late teens, that was, like many young boys or young men that journey sort of came to an end.”
The Englishman recalled in 2019 to FTBL.com.au, that Clement’s parting words were almost like a double-edged sword, telling him that his football brain would make him an “outstanding coach” despite being left understandably devastated that the Englishman thought he wouldn’t make it as a player.
That was when everything changed, as Cahn started coaching in a summer holiday camp at Sutton United, before eventually moving to Australia, the nation where his mum was born.
“I was doing a bit of coaching in holiday camps and clinics and private academies and really enjoyed it,” Cahn said.
“Coming out to Australia at 21 which was a holiday that turned into a a life over here.
“I was just coaching with a a private academy on the Sunshine Coast, but within a year, I was coaching some teams in the Sunshine Coast Premier League, that progressed to taking the Sunshine Coast rep sides in what was the JPL, which is obviously now the NPL.
“From there that took me to working with Football Queensland within their state teams, and at 25 I had my first senior coaching job with Noosa Lions.
“I did that as a player-coach for two seasons, while doing the state team with football Queensland and the Academy at Sunshine Coast Fire.”
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And it was in Queensland where he truly rediscovered his love for football once more.
“It was always partly on my radar to one day potentially live out here,” he said.
“I actually ended up playing football at Noosa Lions and I really found my love for the game again, and a real connection with with the team and the people at the club at that time was something that I needed.
“I was able to able to really start enjoying life, enjoying football and regain that passion to go on and succeed.
“At that point, at 21 years old, you know the journey is over as a footballer, but lots of doors started to open for me and the football community on the Sunny Coast and in Queensland was fantastic.
“It wasn’t long before I had my competitive drive back and it’s in my nature that when I do something I need to be the best at it and I need to I need to push as hard as I can and go all the way.”
Two years in Terrigal
Under Cahn’s tutelage, Noosa Lions finished just short of a place in the Round of 32 of the 2015 Australia (then FFA) Cup and through a contact at an A-License coaching course, he was able to get an interview for a vacancy at the Central Coast Mariners.
Cahn’s interview was successful and in November 2015 he was appointed head coach of their NPL and National Youth League sides, along with being the academy’s Head of Performance.
It wasn’t before long he transitioned into a role as the club’s senior assistant coach – despite being younger than quite a few members of the Mariners’ senior squad.
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“I was lucky enough to get offered the opportunity at Central Coast Mariners to take the youth team and run their top three teams in the academy with Ken Schembri,” he said.
“Then Tony Wamsley was kind enough to bring me into the first team and I worked with him and John Hutchinson, then with Paul Okon once he came in.”
Cahn’s time at the club coincided with a difficult patch in the Mariners’ history. Between 2015 and 2017, the club only won a handful of games, finishing 10th and 8th in back-to-back seasons.
However, his experiences working in a senior environment at a young age taught him a plethora of valuable lessons that have helped serve him well in the years that followed.
“It was definitely a challenging time, but an unbelievable learning experience,” he said.
“I was 27 when I went there and the first session that I was part of… there was a small group that I took in a possession session that had Luis Garcia, Nick Montgomery, Roy O’Donovan and Josh Rose. Big, big senior players.
“It was great to learn how they operate and how they train and also to give myself confidence to know that I can get the respect of players like that.
“The youth team was another challenging experience. It was the first year that the Central Coast Mariners had their academy in the NPL under their control so we really had to build it from nothing.
“Ultimately, with some academy programmes and new programmes to this day there can be challenges in terms of resources and it can feel like you’re always up against it, but we all worked really hard.
“The young players at the time were fantastic and really bought in and gave everything and it’s been great to see some of them go on and do really well in their journeys.
“Obviously, I was able to learn a lot from Paul Okon and Ivan Jolic. Paolo had a particular way of playing, that really resonated with me and his history in football is almost unmatched in Australia.
“It was fantastic to be around someone of that stature and be around his his football ideas and his thoughts and watch them being put into practice.”
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Returning to Queensland
Cahn moved on from Gosford in 2017 and returned to head coaching, this time with NPL Queensland side Olympic FC, where his impact was immediate.
“It was an unbelievable experience,” he recalled.
“A challenging time on many levels, the club hadn’t made finals for two years previous to that.
“It was very rewarding to make the five grand finals, although it it goes without saying disappointment of not winning one lives on.”
Cahn was hailed for turning the club’s fortunes around in his five years at Olympic FC, where his stocks as one of the best coaches outside the A-Leagues system grew enormously.
But the constant thorn in his side was the fact Olympic were unable to get over that final hurdle on Grand Final day on five straight occasions.
In 2018, Olympic lost 2-1 to Lions FC in extra time, before losing again by the same scoreline the following year to Gold Coast Knights. Lions once again got the better of them in 2020 and 2021, before Scott McDonald’s led Knights beat Olympic once more in his last year at the helm.
Five straight Grand Final losses would be enough to crush anyone’s spirits, especially as the sharks began to circle, but in those darkest hours, Cahn’s resilience only grew.
“In those moments of difficulty, a lot of people in football that aren’t necessarily inside the game, have a lot to say,” he said.
“You have to be very thick skinned in those times, and you have to learn to not let those things get to you.
“In the age of social media, people seem quite free to to have an opinion and say some things that are less than complimentary so it was a good learning curve in working out the very few people in the world whose opinions I need to listen to and mean anything to me.
“You have to learn that the rest is just noise, and you have to be strong in trying to block it out.
“Then there’s the example that you have to set for your players. You have to come back and bounce back, and you have to dig deep and find belief to go again.
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“You have to find the energy and you have to try and find new ideas and it’s a process I like.
“The immediate days after those Grand Finals were terrible, terrible times, but it’s not long before that hunger kicks in and that competitive desire to come back again and try and go one step further.
“I always knew inside me at the time that what we were doing was good and I knew that there were some very, very strong clubs in Queensland that were operating on levels that were ahead of most of the NPL.
“We managed to try and keep up and match them and obviously get to those Grand Finals.”
Melbourne Knights revolution
After five years at Olympic, Cahn was looking for his next challenge.
That was when an opportunity came up at one of Australia’s proudest and most storied football clubs, Melbourne Knights. The local powerhouses had floundered in NPL Victoria for the best part of a decade, having only played finals once during that period, in 2015.
A club of their stature demanded more, as did a passionate fanbase, who had seen Knights compete among the country’s best in the halcyon days of the 1990s when they won two NSL Championships and produced the likes of Mark Viduka, Steve Horvat, Josip Simunic to name a few.
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The opportunity to restore the club to its former glory appealed to Cahn and on September 16 2022, he was announced as Knights’ senior head coach for the 2023 season.
“It’s a huge football club with a huge history, a very ambitious and passionate supporter base, along with the people driving the club,” he said.
“It was a project that really appealed to me to try and turn them around and bring some success to Somers Street.”
Similarly to his time at Olympic, Cahn worked wonders immediately, taking the club back to finals on the first time of asking, after securing fourth place on the standings.
“I’d be lying if I said I knew (this was coming) because I think we had 14 new players,” he said.
“I didn’t know NPL Victoria at all before coming here, so I really didn’t know the level. I mean, there were a lot of signs in preseason where I thought this team is very strong, we could do something special here, but also not knowing the league I was very cautious in my judgement.
“We got two points from our first three games and that’s when a lot of people were questioning what we were doing at that point and the daggers were out in corners.
“But there was enough in those performances in those first three games for me to know that we were on the right track and we’d be at least competing at the top end, to try and sneak into finals.”
Knights would go on and win their first final since 2008, when they beat Port Melbourne Sharks in the Elimination Final, before being bundled out to eventual champions Avondale in the semis.
His efforts in year one saw him take home the NPL Victoria Coach of the Year alongside Avondale coach Zoran Markovski.
Intertwined with their form in the league was the opportunity to do some damage in the Australia Cup, after securing the club’s fourth berth in the national stages.
Up first was old foes Lions FC, who they beat easily 4-1, before seeing off NPL South Australia side Campbelltown City and then, local rivals Heidelberg United in an enthralling 3-2 victory, where they scored two goals in second-half stoppage time to come from behind and book their place in the semi-finals.
“The Cup is really unpredictable, a lot depends on the draw,” he said.
“It’s very difficult to balance Australia Cup and NPL commitments. If you’re doing well in both, I think both us and Oakleigh suffered with that in the league, whereas other teams may have suffered in the Cup, but there were some strong teams in NPL Victoria that all went out quite early.
“It wasn’t an option for us to play weak teams in the Cup and not take it seriously. It’s an important competition for players, for coaches, for clubs and for the country in general.
“You can see with the the scenes from the Heidelberg game what it means for people to go on on a good Cup run and win games.
“Those last seven minutes were absolutely incredible and the type of moments that we all love this game for, and that we all keep coming back for.
“I would take a comfortable win any day of the week over that, but when that happens, you can’t explain that feeling to anybody, that’s not experienced it before.”
Up next was Knights’ most difficult task yet in this Cup run against a Brisbane side that had been in a rich vein of form under then, new coach Ross Aloisi.
A bumper crowd filled Knights Stadium in what was arguably their biggest match since the 1996 NSL Grand Final, where they beat Marconi-Fairfield.
Knights fell to a 1-0 defeat to Roar, falling just short of becoming only second member federation team to play in an Australia Cup final.
In the lead-up, Cahn hadn’t had much of an opportunity to really take in the spectacle just yet, as a result of some welcome family news and treating the upcoming semi as quite simply, any other game.
“On a very personal level, I haven’t had a minute,” he said at the time.
“My second son was born on Monday, and I spent the week travelling between Brisbane and Melbourne for training. So in terms of a chance for me to reflect, it really hasn’t happened!
“In terms of the playing group, we’ve gone about this week, business as usual.
“You have to remember that we’re over a month out of our regular season, and this is a long, long year for these boys and that the level of training has been fantastic but I don’t think the occasion is too much on the radar.
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“It’s another game. It’s a great opportunity against an A-Leagues team, and it’s a chance for some of our players to prove themselves on this stage, and I’m sure that the people of the club, the community, the supporters, the the committee are all very excited.
“I know they’re working tirelessly to to put on a good event that showcases the club in a positive light, so maybe when it’s done, everyone will have a chance to sit down and reflect, but for now, it’s business as usual.
“It’s another game. It’s a game, we believe we can win and we’ll do everything we can to get the result we want.”
What came next?
The by-product of solid form at NPL level – for players and coaches – is chatter about making the leap to the A-Leagues.
“I think it’s no secret that I’m ambitious and where I want my career to go,” he said in September.
“I’m very determined to push on, and be the best coach I can be at the best level.”
After their Cup success, Cahn’s name was thrown up as a candidate to take over as a head coach for multiple A-Leagues sides, most notably at his former club the Mariners who were seeking a replacement for a man he once coached, Nick Montgomery.
Instead, the Mariners opted to appoint Mark Jackson as their Football Manager.
However, Cahn would still depart Knights shortly after their semi-final defeat, taking on the role as Youth Technical Director at Brisbane.
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His time in this role would last a little under three months, as change was coming in the senior men’s side.
Aloisi departed the club shortly after Round 9 for an overseas opportunity, which led to Luciano Trani being appointed interim boss for the remainder of the season.
But a record 8-1 loss to Melbourne City saw the Roar hierarchy speed up the process to appoint a permanent successor, with Cahn being announced on New Year’s Day.
“I’m delighted to have been given this opportunity. I’m very grateful to management and the owners for backing me and trusting me to help them take the club forward,” Cahn said in a Roar statement.
“The new management have done a fantastic job in a short time in the face of a lot of adversity to stabilise the football club off the field and I’m very excited to work with them to help deliver their vision for taking the club in to the future.
“I’m well aware that it’s a challenging time, the players have had to deal with a lot of disruption but it’s a great time to set the standards for the journey forwards and for everyone to stand up and give everything.
His first game in charge comes this Saturday, when Brisbane take on Sydney FC at Suncorp Stadium.
