A lover of mathematics, Poyet is eager his season concludes with the positive result of Cup glory and Premier League survival
Until Gus Poyet was 18 years old and realised a career in professional football beckoned, he intended to read engineering at university in Montevideo. Excellent at maths, the young Uruguayan imagined that becoming an engineer would be the best way of putting his obsession with geometry and abstract equations to practical use.
Football pitches have suited his analytical yet highly creative mind even better. For almost three decades now Poyet's job – whether as an elegant goal-scoring midfielder or technical area choreographer – has been all about geometrical passing angles, correctly calibrated deliveries and tactical equations spiced by the human factor.
"I like maths and trying to work out crazy problems," says the 46-year-old Sunderland manager who has experienced plenty of the latter since arriving on Wearside last October. With his team facing Manchester City in Sunday's Capital One Cup final at Wembley and having reached the FA Cup quarter-finals while embroiled in an enduring relegation battle, Poyet's season is perched precariously on the margins of glory and disaster.
He reiterates that survival is infinitely more important than cup success and yet the runs towards Wembley have proved an invaluable means of instilling his patient, possession-based, passing game and its constantly varying angles of attack into a squad that initially struggled to comprehend his purist philosophy. "The ball is priceless," says the man who holds several principles in common with his one-time fellow Real Zaragoza midfielder, Everton's Roberto Martínez. "I like to say I want the ball to be happy with us. If the ball talks, I want it to want to be on our side."
Despite his late father Washington's status as a basketball star in Uruguay, Poyet always preferred football, eventually accepting an offer from Nice to turn professional. No sooner had he arrived in Europe, however, than Nice discovered they had already used up their allocation of foreign players, leaving Poyet to head for an unhappy stint at Grenoble.
In some ways the slow beginning to his playing career – a brief return to South America was followed by high-profile stints with Zaragoza, Chelsea and Tottenham – has been reprised during a lengthy managerial induction.
On hanging up his boots, Poyet, his wife Madelon and sons Matias – now reading economics at Leeds University – and Diego – currently playing for Charlton – returned to Uruguay. But, much as they loved the climate, the pace of life was too slow and it was not long before the family were back in England with Poyet in a new role as Dennis Wise's assistant at first Swindon, then Leeds.
The pair had become firm friends as Chelsea midfielders, a rather unlikely bond emerging when the newly arrived Poyet defended Wise's initially unpopular dressing-room edict that everyone must speak English, all the time.
Dubbed "The Radio" by team-mates because of his constant chatter, Poyet's willingness to play the barrack-room lawyer when required appealed to Wise and the pair made a convincing double act in Wiltshire and West Yorkshire. "Gus was top drawer," says a senior Leeds source. "If he'd become manager I'm convinced we'd be doing well in the Premier League now."
Instead the Uruguayan returned to Spurs for an ill-fated stint as Juande Ramos's No2, even if their joint sacking in 2008 changed his life. "It was the right decision but it hurt," says Poyet. "I was devastated. I decided I didn't want to be an assistant any more. I wanted to be in charge, making the decisions."
Not that there was exactly a stampede for his services. "I started to worry when the summer of 2009 went by and I still couldn't find a team," he acknowledges. "I thought, 'I'm going to have to take a risk and accept a challenge.'"
Lying 20th in League One in November 2009, Brighton met both criteria. By the time Poyet left them, amid considerable acrimony, nearly four years later, the south coast side had narrowly missed out on promotion to the Premier League. The former Tottenham manager turned pundit David Pleat was not surprised. "I watched Brighton in League One and I was so impressed," recalls Poyet's old Spurs boss. "Gus was one of the first coaches to use the style so many English teams use now: patient football, build from the back. A goalkeeper who plays the ball out short, full-backs pushing on outside three midfielders. It was courageous because managers at that level are under pressure to get the ball forward quickly."
The shame is that things ended so badly with Poyet sacked for gross misconduct before taking legal action – subsequently withdrawn – against Brighton. If the flashpoint was a scathing but hardly controversial email he sent to club staff demanding that those responsible for leaving excrement in the Amex Stadium's away dressing room before Crystal Palace's visit for last year's play-off semi-final be dismissed, relationships with Brighton's board had already become strained over what some perceived as his vaulting ambition.
After completing extensive due diligence before appointing him as Paolo Di Canio's successor, Sunderland were left satisfied he had done nothing wrong.
Not that he lacks a certain edge. After all, Roberto De Fanti did not survive long after Poyet hinted that he might quit were Sunderland's former director of football to have the final say on transfers. Otherwise few ripples have been created by a character whose skill in re-integrating Lee Cattermole and Phil Bardsley while restraining their powerful locker-room influence has contrasted markedly with Di Canio's self-destructively volatile man-management.
Poyet swiftly assembled Sunderland's scouts and gave them a PowerPoint presentation explaining his preferred 4-1-4-1 system and precisely the type of players he needed to make it work. Backroom staff who had become accustomed to managers taking much more of a broad brush approach were impressed by such meticulous devotion to detail.
On a human level club employees tend to warm to Poyet, with one describing him as "a very kind person". Such sentiments are echoed by the midfielder Ki Sung-yueng. "Tactically Gus is very organised and smart," says Ki. "But personally he's very kind and honest. If there's a problem he talks to you as a person and does not cheat or lie. I like that."
Poyet's decision to make his home in the heart of an unglamorous city shunned by predecessors who preferred to live in Newcastle, North Yorkshire or Durham has also gone down well. "Gus is a pretty normal guy," says a club source. "He's easy to deal with and you can have a normal conversation with him."
Even so, the lack of "normality" and weight of responsibility occasioned by a Premier League predicament inherited from Di Canio sporadically depresses a manager who laments a new-found inability to relax and lose himself in the novels he once adored. "The words don't go in any more," he says. "I won't be able to switch off until we're safe."
Wembley represents a welcome respite from the daily grind but cup glory plus impending Championship football would not satisfy Poyet's definition of a balanced equation. "My mission is Premier League survival," he says. "Staying up is the most important thing." Reported by guardian.co.uk 8 hours ago.
Until Gus Poyet was 18 years old and realised a career in professional football beckoned, he intended to read engineering at university in Montevideo. Excellent at maths, the young Uruguayan imagined that becoming an engineer would be the best way of putting his obsession with geometry and abstract equations to practical use.
Football pitches have suited his analytical yet highly creative mind even better. For almost three decades now Poyet's job – whether as an elegant goal-scoring midfielder or technical area choreographer – has been all about geometrical passing angles, correctly calibrated deliveries and tactical equations spiced by the human factor.
"I like maths and trying to work out crazy problems," says the 46-year-old Sunderland manager who has experienced plenty of the latter since arriving on Wearside last October. With his team facing Manchester City in Sunday's Capital One Cup final at Wembley and having reached the FA Cup quarter-finals while embroiled in an enduring relegation battle, Poyet's season is perched precariously on the margins of glory and disaster.
He reiterates that survival is infinitely more important than cup success and yet the runs towards Wembley have proved an invaluable means of instilling his patient, possession-based, passing game and its constantly varying angles of attack into a squad that initially struggled to comprehend his purist philosophy. "The ball is priceless," says the man who holds several principles in common with his one-time fellow Real Zaragoza midfielder, Everton's Roberto Martínez. "I like to say I want the ball to be happy with us. If the ball talks, I want it to want to be on our side."
Despite his late father Washington's status as a basketball star in Uruguay, Poyet always preferred football, eventually accepting an offer from Nice to turn professional. No sooner had he arrived in Europe, however, than Nice discovered they had already used up their allocation of foreign players, leaving Poyet to head for an unhappy stint at Grenoble.
In some ways the slow beginning to his playing career – a brief return to South America was followed by high-profile stints with Zaragoza, Chelsea and Tottenham – has been reprised during a lengthy managerial induction.
On hanging up his boots, Poyet, his wife Madelon and sons Matias – now reading economics at Leeds University – and Diego – currently playing for Charlton – returned to Uruguay. But, much as they loved the climate, the pace of life was too slow and it was not long before the family were back in England with Poyet in a new role as Dennis Wise's assistant at first Swindon, then Leeds.
The pair had become firm friends as Chelsea midfielders, a rather unlikely bond emerging when the newly arrived Poyet defended Wise's initially unpopular dressing-room edict that everyone must speak English, all the time.
Dubbed "The Radio" by team-mates because of his constant chatter, Poyet's willingness to play the barrack-room lawyer when required appealed to Wise and the pair made a convincing double act in Wiltshire and West Yorkshire. "Gus was top drawer," says a senior Leeds source. "If he'd become manager I'm convinced we'd be doing well in the Premier League now."
Instead the Uruguayan returned to Spurs for an ill-fated stint as Juande Ramos's No2, even if their joint sacking in 2008 changed his life. "It was the right decision but it hurt," says Poyet. "I was devastated. I decided I didn't want to be an assistant any more. I wanted to be in charge, making the decisions."
Not that there was exactly a stampede for his services. "I started to worry when the summer of 2009 went by and I still couldn't find a team," he acknowledges. "I thought, 'I'm going to have to take a risk and accept a challenge.'"
Lying 20th in League One in November 2009, Brighton met both criteria. By the time Poyet left them, amid considerable acrimony, nearly four years later, the south coast side had narrowly missed out on promotion to the Premier League. The former Tottenham manager turned pundit David Pleat was not surprised. "I watched Brighton in League One and I was so impressed," recalls Poyet's old Spurs boss. "Gus was one of the first coaches to use the style so many English teams use now: patient football, build from the back. A goalkeeper who plays the ball out short, full-backs pushing on outside three midfielders. It was courageous because managers at that level are under pressure to get the ball forward quickly."
The shame is that things ended so badly with Poyet sacked for gross misconduct before taking legal action – subsequently withdrawn – against Brighton. If the flashpoint was a scathing but hardly controversial email he sent to club staff demanding that those responsible for leaving excrement in the Amex Stadium's away dressing room before Crystal Palace's visit for last year's play-off semi-final be dismissed, relationships with Brighton's board had already become strained over what some perceived as his vaulting ambition.
After completing extensive due diligence before appointing him as Paolo Di Canio's successor, Sunderland were left satisfied he had done nothing wrong.
Not that he lacks a certain edge. After all, Roberto De Fanti did not survive long after Poyet hinted that he might quit were Sunderland's former director of football to have the final say on transfers. Otherwise few ripples have been created by a character whose skill in re-integrating Lee Cattermole and Phil Bardsley while restraining their powerful locker-room influence has contrasted markedly with Di Canio's self-destructively volatile man-management.
Poyet swiftly assembled Sunderland's scouts and gave them a PowerPoint presentation explaining his preferred 4-1-4-1 system and precisely the type of players he needed to make it work. Backroom staff who had become accustomed to managers taking much more of a broad brush approach were impressed by such meticulous devotion to detail.
On a human level club employees tend to warm to Poyet, with one describing him as "a very kind person". Such sentiments are echoed by the midfielder Ki Sung-yueng. "Tactically Gus is very organised and smart," says Ki. "But personally he's very kind and honest. If there's a problem he talks to you as a person and does not cheat or lie. I like that."
Poyet's decision to make his home in the heart of an unglamorous city shunned by predecessors who preferred to live in Newcastle, North Yorkshire or Durham has also gone down well. "Gus is a pretty normal guy," says a club source. "He's easy to deal with and you can have a normal conversation with him."
Even so, the lack of "normality" and weight of responsibility occasioned by a Premier League predicament inherited from Di Canio sporadically depresses a manager who laments a new-found inability to relax and lose himself in the novels he once adored. "The words don't go in any more," he says. "I won't be able to switch off until we're safe."
Wembley represents a welcome respite from the daily grind but cup glory plus impending Championship football would not satisfy Poyet's definition of a balanced equation. "My mission is Premier League survival," he says. "Staying up is the most important thing." Reported by guardian.co.uk 8 hours ago.