The former Manchester United and England defender Paul Parker was asked about his one-time team-mate Mark Hughes in the luxury of Tottenham Hotspur’s stadium on Saturday.
“He was the last of my team-mates who I expected to become a manager,” Parker tells The Athletic. “You’d have Bryan Robson, Mike Phelan and Steve Bruce there looking like managers to be as they went in the coaches’ room or spoke to the gaffer. Paul Ince, too, Brian McClair. Sparky (the affectionate nickname for striker Hughes) was straight home to his family after training. Never in a million years did I think he’d become a manager.
“He was private, not a big socialiser, quite shy. He knew who his close friends were and was deeply loyal to them. I always enjoyed talking to him about football; he was one of my favourites to listen to. And what a player he was.”
Four hours and 40 miles later, this point is put to Hughes in the far less salubrious environs of Roots Hall, Southend. Non-League Carlisle United, managed by Hughes, 62, have just defeated Southend United to go top of the National League in front of a near sell-out 8,847 crowd, higher than any in their division as well as the one above.
“A lot of people say that,” says Hughes, standing by the dugout after fulfilling his media duties for a game that was the first to be broadcast live on TikTok, where thousands more watched it.
“I didn’t anticipate that I’d go into management either, but I always watched a lot when I was a player. My personality is that I’m introverted, really. Deep down. There’s a spectrum and I’m probably at that end of introversion, but it doesn’t stop you from having a view, it doesn’t stop you from understanding the game, and you can empower that knowledge and help people.”
Hughes smiles.
“That’s the part I like and I’ll give referees bollockings on occasions when I get excited…”
For a quiet man, Hughes is an animated watcher as he stands on the edge of his area, distinguished grey hair, legs slightly bowed, hands in pockets. When a player goes down, he pats his head to indicate a possible head injury. He shouts, he contests decisions, he has banter with fans and officials.
Hughes is often animated during games, even if he is quiet away from them (Robbie Jay Barratt – AMA/Getty Images)
And he got excited as his team went 2-0 ahead. The man who played up front for United, Barcelona, Bayern Munich, Chelsea, Everton and Blackburn before managing his country, Wales, then Fulham, Blackburn, Manchester City, Stoke City, Southampton and Bradford City, is still going strong. But why?
“It’s for games like this that I still manage,” explains Hughes. “There was a great crowd tonight, more than most in the two divisions above. I’ve always said that the job of management is difficult, but it’s the next best thing to being a footballer because the same emotions are there. It’s different, you’re not the one scoring the goal, but emotions that you experience on the touchline get closest to what it’s like being a player.”
Saturday night in Southend was visceral. And that was just the high street. At Roots Hall, an old, cramped, piecemeal stadium in a working-class city bathed in the limited lux of four aged floodlights, there are chants about northern bastards, public houses with ‘home fans only’ on the front, the smell of fish and chips lingering on the narrow approaches. Players are booed and cheered, and the silence for Remembrance Sunday is held perfectly for the full minute without the referee needing to blow his whistle early.
Welcome to Southend, which hosted Hughes, a former Man Utd, Barcelona and Bayern Munich player (Carl Court/Getty Images)
There’s the clatter of wooden seats, 550 away fans, and home fans so close to Hughes that he can argue with them without raising his voice.
But he’s managing a team in a geographical outpost by the Scottish border that plays in a league where teams must travel more than any others in England and make those vast trips to Truro (900-mile round trip), Yeovil and Southend (both 650) while his peers are playing golf.
“Midweek, you’re doing the travelling or having meetings and whatever, and I can park that if I’m honest,” says Hughes. “It’s always about the game for me, always was. Training was a means to an end to keep me fit, so I could play at the weekend. It’s the same since I’ve been a manager.
“You must go through the stuff during the week leading into a game. It’s not something I particularly enjoy, but, again, it’s a means to an end. Come the weekend, come midweek when we’re playing games, that’s when I come alive. That’s why I do this.”
Everton manager David Moyes always maintains that his wife won’t have him around the house for too long being unemployed and disrupting her coffee mornings, so he must go out to work again.
“We didn’t get to that level, we were quite enjoying ourselves,” says Hughes of a four-year sabbatical after leaving Southampton, where he played golf and enjoyed being with family.
“I always felt I wanted to take a break then because I’d been doing this for a long time without any extended break (Hughes was involved in top-flight football in England, Germany and Spain for 37 years, from 1983 to 2019). I was going to do it after leaving Stoke, but then I jumped in at Southampton, so I didn’t get that opportunity. So I always felt, well, let’s see how far that goes. And then once that happened, I needed a break.
“So I had that break, but during that break, that time coincided with Covid, and I watched TV games in empty stadiums. It did nothing for me. I was thinking, ‘I don’t particularly want to get back in’. But when there’s a crowd, you get a bit of banter, you get a bit of dog’s abuse, that’s part and parcel. We had all these fans here today. That excites me, it always will. So I just think if I can do this for as long as I can, then that’s what I’ll try to do.”
Hughes celebrates winning the Cup Winners’ Cup with United (David Cannon/Allsport/Getty Images)
Hughes has managed for over 700 games. When it’s put to him that it’s almost as many as he played in, he picks up on one angle.
“I played 799 games,” he says. “I needed somebody to tell me it was 799 so I could get to 800. Nobody did, so I didn’t realise it until I looked on Wikipedia after I’d finished.”
He’s on 730 management games now. How long does he carry on for, hitting the tarmac and trains to provincial English towns and cities? Five more years?
“I’m not sure about that. But let’s see. Let’s see where this takes us. My family are fine with it. Wife is fine. Listen, we’ve been married 38 years, so she’s used to it. That’s been her life for a long time”.
And what of those who work with him?
“Mark is professional, level-headed, and in terms of football, he’s been there, seen it, done it, so he’s hugely respected,” says Carlisle United’s sports director, Marc Tierney. “He commands respect, he doesn’t demand it. You see it at every away game and fans wait to meet him when he gets off the bus. You can be in Yeovil or Southend and he’s just dead genuine with everybody.
“He’s still got the passion for it. He’s got so much to give to these younger players, and it’s just great that he still has that passion, even now, to win. He’s just a winner, he likes the feeling of winning, and proving that he’s still got it.
“His football is about creating lots of chances, not passing for passing’s sake, passing to get the ball up the pitch and create chances. We’re so excited that we’ve scored a lot of goals. And you see in training when the ball comes across that he’s still got his touch.”
“I don’t go around telling everybody how many medals I’ve got, but they find out eventually,” says Hughes of his players. “Everybody knows everybody now with Google, so they know their background and what they’ve done and what they’ve achieved and what they haven’t.”
Hughes was a star for the biggest clubs, yet he always seemed reluctant to talk about it. It’s understandable that when he was manager of Manchester City he didn’t want to talk about Manchester United, but he ploughed his own furrow, did his own thing, looked forward and not back. He was polite with those he played with, but kept in touch with very few, former Wales and United team-mate Clayton Blackmore being one. But he’s changing.
Hughes with Roy Keane, but he doesn’t keep in regular touch with his former team-mates (John Peters/Manchester United via Getty Images)
“I don’t need endless phone calls and I don’t like the phone anyway,” he says. “But if I meet an old team-mate, it’s like we saw each other yesterday. I look back on my career and I’m proud of it. I’ve worked with some special people, both as a player and as a manager, and I’m pleased about that. I’m working with great people now and that’s the key as well. I wouldn’t be doing this if I wasn’t surrounded by people that I like and like working with, that’s a massive thing for me.
“Loyalty is important to me. I always had the same guys (coaches) because I thought they were the best at what they did and we had good success, but I’ve gone away from that and other guys have come in and I’ve experienced different people. I think that’s helped me to get my enthusiasm and given me a different outlook. Sometimes you can be in a little silo and maybe you need to just open your mind to different ideas and different people. That’s what I’ve done.”
In Carlisle, he joined a struggling long-time Football League club earlier this year, charged with trying to keep them in the league. It was too late, but there was surprise when he said he’d stay to manage in England’s fifth tier — a non-League one, albeit one stuffed with well-supported former Football League clubs.
Carlisle have money, too, thanks to a family from Florida who are invested and popular with their fans, despite successive relegations and poor football recruitment when the owners first arrived.
“We said at the beginning of the season that we need to go up,” said Hughes. “A lot of teams found it very difficult to get out of this league because there’s only one automatic place and then a play-off spot. Some good teams will miss out again this year, so hopefully it won’t be us.”