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      Dietmar Hamman - New Stockport County Manager

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      TKIDLLTK
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      Re: Dietmar Hamman - New Stockport County Manager
      Reply #23: Jul 08, 2011 12:28:50 am
      Best of luck Didi.  Great player. 

      I am still F***ing GUTTED Gerard took you off against Bayer shitting Leverkusen... at 1-1 on the night we were going through... then you, our defensive midfielder, were taken off...  :f_wah:
      HUYTON RED
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      Re: Dietmar Hamman - New Stockport County Manager
      Reply #24: Aug 06, 2011 02:12:19 pm
      Dietmar Hamann: 'It's different to World Cup but it's still exciting'

      Dietmar Hamann, who gained European glory with Liverpool, tackles taking Stockport County back to the Football League

      It's been an interesting day, hasn't it?" Dietmar Hamann says with a smile as he takes another drag on a cigarette and stretches out his legs in the early evening sunshine. Sitting outside a chic restaurant near his home in Alderley Edge, a leafy and celebrity-studded corner of Cheshire, the new manager of Stockport County looks down at the three drinks he has just ordered for himself. A Coke, a double espresso and a bottle of fizzy water may seem a bizarre combination but, after the day we have shared, the contrast is just right.

      The journey taken by the urbane 37-year-old German appears more surreal. As he prepares for his managerial debut next Friday night, with Stockport travelling to Forest Green Rovers in the opening match of a new season of non-league football, the distance from the peaks of his own career is vast. Hamann played in the 2002 World Cup final against Brazil and the 2005 Champions League final for Liverpool – when, despite a broken toe, he came on at half-time in Istanbul and, with Steven Gerrard, inspired an extraordinary victory from 3-0 down against Milan. In a more troubled era for English football, Hamann also scored the last goal at the old Wembley in 2000.

      Yet none of those moments seem quite as intriguing now as Hamman's new career at a club which, in April, lost its football league status after 106 successive years. Stockport County, following catastrophic mismanagement and administration, were relegated to what is now the Blue Square Premier.

      "I remember Stockport as a good Championship side when I first came to England in 1998," Hamann says. "At Christmas [in 1997] they were near the top and pushing for promotion to the Premiership." Stockport eventually finished ninth at the end of the 1997-98 season while their neighbours Manchester City were relegated from the same division and into the third tier of English football. Hamann, who also played for City, shakes his head at the subsequent gulf in fortunes. "Look at Man City," he says of his former club, who are now the richest in world football and preparing themselves for the Champions League, "and you see how far away we are from them."

      Pretty girls and young men drift past – and, accepting various greetings, Hamann tells me dryly that we're sitting in an enclave for Premier League stars. Rio Ferdinand and Wayne Rooney live nearby but Hamann seems closer in spirit to Stockport's training ground, where we had met eight hours earlier.

      Plunging into the Conference, how does he feel about managing players who cannot even dream of reaching the exalted level that was once his natural domain? "It's not that hard to adjust," Hamann says. "I only get frustrated when players don't do what they're capable of. That's the same at every level of football. I also know I can't compare these players with those I played with – because, if I did, I'd end up getting a heart attack or wind up in the madhouse. But if they fulfil their ability I'm happy."

      Stockport were stripped to a squad of only three at the end of last season. And, as the light fades from Alderley Edge, it is hard not to think of Mark Lynch and Matt Glennon. Just before nine that morning, I wandered into Stockport's training ground canteen to meet two of the lonely trio of players still contracted to the club in May. Hamann himself expected back then that he would spend another season assisting Sven-Goran Eriksson at Leicester City; but Lynch and Glennon were deeply concerned and vulnerable.

      "That's the unfortunate thing about football these days," Lynch says. "It's a cut-throat business and you never know what might happen next to you or your club. I became a dad for the first time 11 weeks ago today, to a little girl called Sophia, and it's brilliant. But it's also been a worrying time."

      It's easy to empathise with a likeable footballer who spent his first 11 years in the game at Manchester United and his past 13 tumultuous months at Stockport. "I've got a mortgage and a family. If you're a Premier League footballer earning Β£90,000 a week, on a five-year contract, it's easy. At this level it's hard."

      The 29-year-old's past lends weight to his words. "I always supported Man United and signed for them when I was 11 and stayed until 22. You had had some good players around my age-group – Darren Fletcher, John O'Shea, Danny Pugh, who's now at Stoke. Darren always looked good and from 14 you could see there was something about him. He's had a fantastic career."

      Lynch once played Champions League football for United, and it is affecting to visit an encyclopedic website devoted to the club and see his name in red and black. It confirms that, in a team featuring Fletcher and O'Shea alongside Laurent Blanc, Ryan Giggs and Diego ForlΓ‘n, Lynch played a whole game against Deportivo La CoruΓ±a.

      The same date, 18 March 2003, fills the space next to the separate lines marked First Appearance and Last Appearance alongside his name. "I played really well," Lynch says of his only game for United. "Afterwards Fergie gave me a new two-year deal – purely on the back of that performance. But I had injuries, which I struggled with, and Gary Neville was ahead of me at right-back. I was only ever on the bench for Premier League games but at least I played in the Champions League."

      Lynch looks wistful. "I haven't seen the tape for ages. But after this conversation I might go home and look at it again." He then laughs. "Actually it's on VHS and I don't have a video-player any more so I won't be seeing it."

      Do his non-league team-mates realise that, fleetingly, he played at the highest level of European football? "There are so many new faces here, and so many trialists, we're still learning each other's names. Once things settle down they'll probably just take the piss out of me." Was it painful to leave United? "Not really. It's one of the toughest tasks in football, trying to break into the Man United team and when Mick McCarthy said: 'I really want to sign you [for Sunderland],' I was ready."

      Now that he is at Stockport, at the lowest moment in their long history, can he describe the supporters' mood? "It's probably one of disappointment at what's happened to the club. I sympathise and feel the same. But things are changing, especially with the new manager, and hopefully we've got something to build on. I'd love to see this club back in the Championship. I'd love to go back with them but you never know in football. I've just qualified as a personal trainer. You can put that down! My contract runs until the end of the season so I'll have something to fall back on if it doesn't work out."

      Glennon, Stockport's 32-year-old goalkeeper, has already felt the financial bite. Last summer he was between clubs and keeping himself fit during the pre-season with Bolton Wanderers, when Paul Simpson called him. "Paul was just the first of three managers Stockport had last season. He knew I was in limbo and so I played 12 weeks for free because the club was in a financial mess. That followed three months without pay in the summer.

      "The only reason I did it is that it is my home-town club. My mum and dad came down with my brothers and whenever I turned round I saw someone I'd been to school with in the crowd. I was a ballboy at Stockport – in the Danny Bergara days – and I was also on loan here about 11 years ago when we were a good mid-table Championship team."

      Without any money for six months, Glennon's anxieties for his wife and two daughters, aged eight and four, were only eased late last year. "I finally signed an 18-month contract here. But the club can turn round and say: 'Right, we're going out of business.' You never know in football. Still we've come some way since it was only me and Mark and Matty Mainwaring on contracts. When it was just us three there was never a massive dinner queue – so that's the only time we felt OK.

      "Ray Mathias was given the manager's job permanently in pre-season. But Ray only lasted 48 hours. And then the takeover started [with a mysterious consortium fronted by a young Liverpool businessman called Tony Evans] and Didi has been great. But the Conference is a hard league to get out of. I played in it seven years ago and Carlisle went up through the play-offs. But it's not where I want to be now. It's the same for the supporters but at least there's anticipation we're going to win a few games this year. Last season put about 10 years on me."

      Stockport conceded more goals, 96, than any other league team in England. "Yeah," the goalkeeper says, grinning ruefully, "the workload was unbelievable.

      "You could see what was going on behind the scenes and that got transferred on to the pitch. But it helps massively we've got the gaffer. He seems very calm – maybe it's the German way. He's also got us doing strange things like bikram yoga. You feel as if you're going to die about five times in a 90-minute session in a sauna at 105 degrees. It's supposed to be good for you and you've got to believe Didi Hamann – although I'll never forgive him for that last goal at Wembley. When I really get to know him I'll start making those quips."

      Such wisecracking makes it possible to see signs of hope at a club made moribund by administration and relegation. "You do get disillusioned with football," Glennon admits, "but it's a new season. The first game against Forest Green is apparently on TV – on some obscure channel [Premier Sports]. I don't know what it is and that's saying a lot because I thought I had everything!"

      A weekday morning at Manor Farm, where Stockport train, features a variety of drills with the ball at the players' feet, as Willie McStay, who made his name as an academy coach at Celtic before managing Ross County and in Hungary, barks encouragement. "Take pride in keeping the ball," he shouts in his Glaswegian accent. "Use possession to make them suffer."

      Hamann watches silently – becoming even more sharply observant during a training game as he works out which players may help him lift Stockport back into the Football League. A draining session ends with races and ropes before, over a lunch of white fish and steamed vegetables, Hamann shudders: "You know when I arrived here [a month ago] they had sandwiches on white bread, or curry, after training."

      That afternoon, at the top of Vernon Park, he grunts with satisfaction as his increasingly fit squad complete 10 gruelling hill runs – the pain on his players' faces making him smile. From a squad of three, Hamann has expanded his roster of contracted players to 16. "I need two or three more – but they look like a team now."

      Driving with Hamann from Stockport to his home in Alderley Edge offers more illumination. He listens closely to the Test on the radio, assessing where India are struggling most against England, and explains a passion for cricket shared by few Germans. Hamann also offers fascinating company discussing his own career or the managers who shaped him most, from Giovanni Trapattoni to Eriksson.

      He is only hazy when asked about Evans and the consortium that convinced him to join Stockport. "Tony Evans phoned me and said he's in the process of taking over Stockport and would I be interested in becoming the manager. I know the consortium is with GT Law [a Liverpool-based insurance claims firm] and they're the shirt sponsor. That's good enough for me. I met some of them a few weeks ago at a sponsor's evening. They seem nice people."

      Over his drinks and cigarettes, Hamann is more interested in talking football – even if he also shows an erudite knowledge of the Guardian's investigation into the murky affairs of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. It is hard to know quite where Stockport will end up but, in Hamann, they have chosen an intelligent and pragmatic new manager.

      "If you said would you prefer to be at a Championship club I'd say: 'No.' I want to learn and you have to start somewhere. I'm not in the spotlight here I'd get at Burnley or West Ham. I don't think I'm ready yet for a club like West Ham. This is the right level for me to start."

      Are managerial tactics of real significance in the Conference? "Good question. I don't really know yet. Let's talk after 10 games. But even at this level we're trying to pass on a philosophy of football where they keep the ball on the ground and maintain possession."

      Hamann would love to manage Liverpool one day, but he laughs and says: "One step at a time." He lights a last cigarette when asked how he might feel in the dugout at Forest Green? "Of course it will be a different excitement to what you get before a World Cup or Champions League final. But I'll still feel it. I want to be successful while, at the same time, leaving the football club in better health in the years ahead. I think I can make a difference – starting on Friday night at Forest Green."


      http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2011/aug/05/dietmar-hamann-stockport-county
      kelvo
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      Re: Dietmar Hamman - New Stockport County Manager
      Reply #25: Aug 06, 2011 02:14:57 pm
      All the best for the season Didi!!

      Great player and a top bloke  :)
      simolfc
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      Re: Dietmar Hamman - New Stockport County Manager
      Reply #26: Aug 10, 2011 07:38:11 pm
      good luck didi, one of our most likeable players of the last decade, really got into the community
      finchie
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      Re: Dietmar Hamman - New Stockport County Manager
      Reply #27: Nov 07, 2011 05:59:54 pm
      Billy1
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      Re: Dietmar Hamman - New Stockport County Manager
      Reply #28: Nov 08, 2011 07:11:15 am
       Didi was on a hiding to nothing when he took the job and that is sad because he deserved better ,he was a class player for us.
      stuey
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      Re: Dietmar Hamman - New Stockport County Manager
      Reply #29: Nov 08, 2011 08:28:49 am
      Didi didn't deserve this, his resignation had nothing to do with football and he cited the failure of a proposed takeover by businessman Tony Evans as his reason for leaving.
      A great servant to LFC and I'm sure his return to the fold would please a lot of people.
      Venison 86
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      Re: Dietmar Hamman - New Stockport County Manager
      Reply #30: Nov 08, 2011 08:39:57 am
      I might pop in to the mighty FGR to see how they get on under Didi.

      Best of luck Didi
      sniperwolf4b3ll3ami3
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      Re: Dietmar Hamman - New Stockport County Manager
      Reply #31: Nov 08, 2011 08:00:59 pm
      he should try get a job in league 1 like roberto martinez
      crouchinho
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      Re: Dietmar Hamman - New Stockport County Manager
      Reply #32: Nov 09, 2011 10:50:06 am
      Bring him here as a coach I say.
      racerx34
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      Re: Dietmar Hamman - New Stockport County Manager
      Reply #33: Nov 09, 2011 11:51:47 am
      Bring him here as a coach I say.

      Bring him here as a German talent scout.
      KS67
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      Re: Dietmar Hamman - New Stockport County Manager
      Reply #34: Nov 09, 2011 12:04:41 pm
      Bring him here as a German talent scout.

      Great idea, there is a lot talent in Germany at the moment. Currently my fave foreign league.

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