Quite a lot has been made of the coaching web from Pep Guardiola’s time at Manchester City, Mikel Arteta, Enzo Maresca and Vicent Kompany having all managed in the Premier League.
Carlos Vicens has also taken his first top job at Braga in the Portuguese top flight this summer and the tentacles are extending further with Barry-Murphy, who spent three years at the Etihad Stadium during an unprecedented era of success, now boss at Cardiff City.
Barry-Murphy left City last year without a role to jump straight into. Although ready to brand out before then, he’d promised director of football Txiki Begiristain to continue coaching the academy’s Elite Development Squad until the end of the 2023-24 season.
Leicester City soon came calling with an offer to join Ruud van Nistelrooy’s staff in December. The beginnings were fruitful, Barry-Murphy relishing the challenge – an uphill battle to prevent relegation – but players never truly jived with the backroom team.
Cardiff, with huge expectation in League One, presents a completely different task and one the Irishman will need to draw on the bad at Leicester and good in Manchester to make a success of this.
Time might not be on the 46-year-old’s side given a consortium involving Gareth Bale has registered interest in purchasing the club within weeks of his appointment.
Yet patience is one thing he took from Guardiola, as odd as that might sound given the public perception of his former boss. Guardiola’s attitude towards academy players – that they all often train up with the first team – was such that Barry-Murphy became part of the furniture on the training pitches.
He soaked up as much as possible – discussing his experiences with Mail Sport in September – and the patience Guardiola affords those eager to learn is one clear aspect he will attempt to replicate. Being forgiving is a skill.
Barry-Murphy’s resume at City is not half bad, winning consecutive Premier League 2 titles and credited with helping the development of James McAtee, Oscar Bobb, CJ Egan-Riley, Cole Palmer and countless others.
Palmer once featured as a late substitute for Guardiola in the afternoon and then scored a hat-trick for Barry-Murphy in the evening. McAtee became a goalscoring machine after a tweaked training regime. Bobb, who had been a timid winger behind Palmer and Sam Edozie (now at Southampton), transformed his off the ball work and now presses with as much intensity as anybody.
Guardiola gave Barry-Murphy his blessing to challenge Bobb, to put him in uncomfortable positions to develop, and it has paid off. Were it not for a leg fracture, Bobb would have truly broken through as a first-team star last season. The progression of players like that offers their old coach genuine warmth.
‘I guess how the relationship (with Guardiola) evolved was that he wanted more insight into the players, what they were doing when away from him and with me,’ Barry-Murphy said. ‘What made them tick and how they were when people weren’t watching.’
City had seen work that he was trying, a daring style of play, while manager at Rochdale in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt at staying in League One against the odds in 2021. Joe Shields, the ex-academy recruitment chief and Jason Wilcox, then academy director, pitched the idea that nobody had gone from league football to development before.
Effectively the wrong way from the outside but City’s chiefs knew that how their youngsters could test the new boss would improve him. It did, Barry-Murphy’s infectious character – he speaks exceptionally quickly and thinks even quicker – made him an overnight hit. Although enthusiastic, he is quiet rather than overbearing and not somebody who dishes out unwarranted dressing room scoldings. Aside from Guardiola, he’s learned from another best in class.
‘I didn’t really factor in the chance to work with Txiki,’ he said. ‘He gave me a lot of mentoring in terms of what’s important as a coach, where you’re devoting your time.
‘When I was managing previously that, because of the resources, there was so much to do. And not spending enough time doing what you should be doing. He made sense of all that for me.
‘I remember Txiki said to me that you end up talking so much about what you do, and how you do it. People don’t want to hear it. If you keep talking about the way you play then when you go on a run losing, nobody cares.’
Barry-Murphy has previously thought about a career abroad, testing himself in a different culture while still wanting this high octane, dominant style of play.
Cardiff, though, represents more of a traditional job: the capital of Wales is in the third tier for the first time since 2002 and his job is to make sure that doesn’t last any longer than 12 months.
Wilcox, Shields and Begiristain always told him that while developing players at City was important, they really needed to win and he had no choice but to satisfy that. Working under that pressure should stand him in decent stead to succeed.
