By the time Sheffield Wednesday’s players board the plane back to England next Saturday, there’s a fair chance that they’ll

know exactly what Xisco Munoz demands of them. This week will see the lean squad of players that Munoz has at his

disposal tested to the limit. Extensive training sessions in the baking heat of Murcia promise to push their physical

boundaries as he sets about laying out his masterplan for the season ahead.

There are also a couple of bounce matches pencilled in which will afford the new manager two more chances to see his ideas

play out in theory, albeit in temperatures seldom experienced in English football. As for how he wants the game to be played

and the life lessons that have shaped him, Munoz outlined as much when speaking to management bible The Coaches

Voice shortly after his acrimonious departure from Watford.

He spent just over nine months at Vicarage Road, leading them to Premier League promotion only to be dismissed seven

games into the next season. He said: “For me there are two types of football: there is English football and then the other

football.

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“At Watford it was common for the coaches to come from there (UK) and their faces to be well-known to the fans. But they

found me, a coach unknown to the vast majority of them and with little time on the bench. That made them have doubts.

And it was very understandable, because in football many times the cliché of experience is used to justify a contract. But

what is experience? Is experience spending ten years doing the same thing, even if you’re doing it wrong?

“Continuously crashing into a wall, no matter how long you have been doing it, is not an experience. For me the experience

is in your day to day, adapting to new situations.

“Then, when in doubt, we opted for something that never fails: work hard. And very fast, because the situation was limit if

we wanted to ascend. We would say that the margin of error we had to achieve it was almost ‘0.0’. That is, we could not fail

at anything.

“In football you must understand that there will be mistakes when you introduce new situations, but you must not stop for it.

In that Watford group, the coach and the players respected each other when we failed, because I also made mistakes. I also

had to get out of my comfort zone. As I told the players: “Try and propose”. That’s how they did it and that’s how we got it. It

is easier to achieve victories when you are constant in the concepts that you seek to print, make the players understand what

you are asking of them and the relationship that you want between all of them.”

Perhaps one of the most telling lines from the piece was his reaction as to why he accepted a job at Huesca – a second tier

team in Spain – just weeks after getting the boot from Watford. He adds: “Training is what I like. I carry it inside. Besides,

working is the only way to keep improving. Huesca was an opportunity to advance. As was Watford.

“A good coach is not made by staying at home.”