SHARE

After taking a couple of years out from football management during which he drove some rally cars and had a lot of fun, André Villas-Boas decided to return to the game this year as Marseille offered him a chance to get back into the swing of things.

The 41-year-old has had a rollercoaster of a start with the Ligue 1 side, losing and drawing his first two games before beating Nice and Saint-Étienne in the last two, but things are now looking up for the Portuguese.

Wanting to find out more about the man himself, RMC Sport decided to sit down with Villas-Boas and chat with him, during which his time at England was bought up.

First managing Chelsea in the Premier League, the manager then got given a chance at Tottenham, where he feels he was misrepresented in the press.

He said: “The thing is that, sometimes, in England, people sold an image of me that’s got nothing to do with me. They portrayed me as arrogant, distant. When I first arrived at Tottenham, we won a few games at the start. Things go well and I win manager of the month.

“Then a newspaper says: ‘André has changed so much that now he’s in Harrods at 2pm. He’s not obsessed with work’. It was my day off! I was there on my day off. The journalist who wrote that saw me there by chance. It’s just incredible”.

Unfortunately, this appears to be a recurring theme with a lot of football managers and players coming to England, with certain members of the tabloids focusing on all the wrong aspects of a person’s life to try and portray them as someone they aren’t.

Now far away from it all in the south of France, it seems Villas-Boas is enjoying himself, and with Marseille desperately trying to return to Champions League football, he’s got a challenging task on his hands to fully focus on.

Oh, and there’s no Harrods in Marseille.

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR