As Dwight Yorke’s teammate at Aston Villa and Manchester United, Mark Bosnich is convinced the striker is ready to be a top-class coach.
How well do I know Dwight Yorke? We first came across each other in 1991, in Portugal at the World Youth Championships when Australia played Trinidad. Six months later I walked into the Aston Villa dressing room and sat down next to him – and stayed in his orbit for the for the next six years.
We won two trophies together at Wembley, we were runners up in the inaugural Premier League season and were rarely out of the top four to six clubs in the country.
After a season’s break we were together again at Manchester United where I won with him the EPL and the World Club Championship. The season before, Sir Alex Ferguson had contacted me about him as a possible signing and my feedback was simple: Dwight will help you win the thing you most crave, the Champions League.
At the time he signed for United he was the most expensive player in Britain, 12.6m pounds I think it was. That brings huge pressure, but Dwight proved to be the final piece of the jigsaw – the main reason Manchester United won the treble that year.
Why is all this relevant now that he is stepping into coaching? Because I saw time and again that when he puts his mind to something, he will do it. Just like he did when he first came to England as a teenager from Trinidad, and just like he did throughout his career. Just like he will, in fact, when he gets the opportunity to manage.
From a character perspective, he wears his heart on his sleeve, but he’ll always have something in reserve so he’s not taken advantage of. His sense of what’s right, his incredible will and desire to succeed are as good as they come. He has a great passion for life in general and never forgets how lucky he is or where he came from.
Ultimately people will question his credentials as a manager but it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy – only once he gets a chance at the top level can he show people how well he can coach. Most of all though, playing under the types of managers he did, including one of the greatest of all time, gives him experience that others can only dream of, the sort that very few have ever experienced.
Great players do not automatically make great managers, of course – but you often have a sense of which ones will put in the effort and will realise what a different calling it is, managing to playing. Dwight has served an apprenticeship in the sense of working his way up through the qualification levels as high as it’s possible to go. And the managers he has learned from give you an unbelievable head start.
He has respect throughout the game, and a realistic attitude towards how he wants teams to play. His philosophy is proactive, attacking football, but built in a way that suits the players he has.
He’s lean, mean and hungry; just like he was when I walked into that Villa dressing room. That was the start of one amazing journey, and now he’s at the start of another.
