Western United’s midfielder has an illustrious list of former coaches – but his take on his Australian boss is remarkable, writes Tom Smithies.
The names trip off Rene Krhin’s tongue like glittering football confetti: Mourinho, Ranieri, Benitez, Eto’o, Vieira.
Former coaches and former team-mates in a career where he was marked out as a special talent by Jose Mourinho in his teens, and went on to play more than 150 games across three of Europe’s biggest leagues.
Krhin never quite hit the heights thanks to a succession of injuries that stymied him time and again, but Western United’s Slovenian midfielder can reflect now on some of the things he saw: the motivational genius of Mourinho, the warmth and care of Claudio Ranieri – and he can add a remarkable tribute to the human qualities of United boss John Aloisi too.
If it took Krhin a while to achieve full fitness in Australia when he arrived last year, he’s poised now for a big role in Saturday night’s elimination final with Wellington, and has the pedigree – and experience – to have a significant influence on United’s bid to get through to the semi-finals.
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These past few weeks we have seen the awareness and positioning honed in the 13 years since Jose Mourinho brought three players up from the Inter Milan youth team to play with the first team squad – first on a tour of the US in pre-season (playing with Zlatan Ibrahimovic among others before his move to Barcelona) and then intermittently in Serie A and even the Champions League.
At 19 – and despite the fact that Mourinho awarded him a five-year contract at that stage – Krhin was in awe of the talent in a squad that won not only the Italian League that season but also the Champions League itself, the likes of Samuel Eto’o, Patrick Vieira, Wesley Sneijder and Dejan Stankovic setting the world alight every morning at the Angelo Moratti Sports Centre some 35km north of Milan.
“Watching these players every day – [Mario] Balotelli, Cambiaso, Stankovic, Vieria, for a 19 year old it’s hard,” Krhin says now with a rueful smile. “In training, the things they do are hard for you sometimes – the shooting, the long passes.
“When you come there and see the best players from all over Europe I had to really work hard to push through that period.”
What Krhin did see close up was the personal style that makes so many players want to die on the pitch for Mourinho, and has brought him silverware in multiple countries.
“He’s very funny with the players, you feel at home – a warm feeling, you know? Of course when you have to work he demands 110% at training.
“In his head he’s (tactically) two or three steps in front of everyone. Small details, everything. So he might seem different in a press conference but with his players he’s really top. That’s why every player, when they go on the field, they want to do everything for him.”
Krhin draws a fascinating contrast between Mourinho and Ranieri, who sought out the midfielder to bolster his squad at Nantes in France’s League 1 five years ago. It was only a year after Ranieri had guided Leicester City to the most unlikely EPL title of all, and Krhin can understand just how that could have come about.
“Mourinho was the manager who put me on the big stage so I will be forever thankful – but I didn’t feel like an important player in this team,” he says. “That’s normal (at that age) and it was still a beautiful experience.
“But when I was in Grenada (in La Liga) and I hear that Ranieri wants me, I said yes right away – I think the best coach I had. Outside the field, in the field, tactically very good – my favourite manager. Even after when he went to Sampdoria and I was without a club, he contacted me to see how I was going, talked about me going to Sampdoria. I was really happy with that because it meant he was happy with how I had been, my professionalism. Even now I still talk with him. For what he has achieved he is very humble.”
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Krhin is candid that injuries have haunted his career; his ankles in particular a recurring issue, but a ruptured ACL in 2012 hurting him at the point he was establishing himself at Bologna in Serie A. “Every time I start to play, and play good, injuries…” he shrugs.
There have been other malign influences: in 2017, before the move to Nantes, he was widely expected to complete a move to Birmingham City in the English Championship. Gianfranco Zola – there’s clearly something about Krhin and ex-Chelsea legends – had targeted Krhin for a senior role in midfield, and the deal went as far as the player completing a medical, but still fell through.
“I went to Birmingham and spoke to Zola after he called me,” Krhin says now. “I saw everything, he really wanted me to come, but then there was some problem with the agent, he wanted to do a dirty job behind my back so it didn’t go through.”
He shrugs again, with the admirable detachment of someone used to dealing with setbacks. And this is the irony – more than a decade after he was awarded winners medals for Serie A and the Champions League for campaigns where he was an occasional foot soldier, and plyed more than 50 games for Slovenia, the A-League finals give him the chance to win something where he can be front and centre.
To do so would reward Aloisi’s faith in him; built on what is clearly a mutual respect, after a campaign that has been satisfyingly demanding.
“I didn’t expect the league to be so good; technically it’s good, you have to work hard,” he says. “I spoke to players who had played here and they all said it’s not easy. If you don’t work hard, be completely focused, you won’t get near the ball.
“We mentioned Mourinho and Ranieri before, but John and Foxy [assistant Hayden Foxe] are an amazing team.
“How they help me when sometimes I have some problems… very, very good coaches and very, very good humans. I think I never had a coach who I felt so, like, father and son. It’s amazing, he’s a good man.”
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