Uwe Rosler interview: Interrogated by the Stasi, beating cancer and taking on Chelsea with minnows Malmo

German born, Uwe Rosler, manager and former player who manages Malmo FF,
Uwe Rosler's Malmo have been drawn to face Chelsea in the Europa League this week Credit: Geoff Pugh

Uwe Rosler is recalling the last time a team of his faced Chelsea, in 2013 at Brentford, his first English management job, when they were seven minutes from knocking their neighbours out of the FA Cup fourth round at Griffin Park, before Fernando Torres equalised and a shock was avoided.

There is snow on the ground outside in Malmo, and the new pitch is being laid for the start of the Allsvenskan season in April, but not before Rosler’s club face one of the biggest games in their history since that European Cup final against Nottingham Forest 40 years ago. Malmo have made it out of the group stages of the Europa League for the first time into the knockout rounds of the modern format of either European competition, and are up against Chelsea.

“That was 2013 and since then the Premier League has moved on,” Rosler says of that last time he faced Chelsea. “The difference between the top six and the rest of the Premier League gets bigger and bigger, that also means the top six compared to clubs like us. The difference, the chance to cause an upset of the odds, gets bigger and bigger against us.”

Although despite that, this famous East German, the unlikely hero of Manchester City’s chaotic 1990s, is a believer. At 50, and having defeated the tennis ball-sized tumour that almost killed him at the end of his playing career, this is his eighth management job already. He has been to one League One play-off final and two play-off semi-finals, one in the Championship as manager of Wigan Athletic. He eliminated the modern Abu Dhabi-powered City from the FA Cup with Wigan in 2014, losing the semi-final on penalties to Arsenal.

He has worked for Dave Whelan and for Massimo Cellino at Leeds United. He oversaw Fleetwood Town’s best-ever league season in 2016-17 and was sacked in February last year. Last season he turned around Malmo, historically Sweden’s most successful club, taking them from 11th to third and through the Europa League group stages. For the first time in his management career, he says he is in a position to win domestic titles.

Uwe Rosler, Manchester city ... Soccer - Nationwide League Division One - Oxford United v Manchester city
Rosler made a name for himself with Manchester City, where his son Colin is now part of the Academy Credit: EMPICS Sport

Beating Chelsea over two legs would be something else, even given their recent form.

Malmo’s turnover is about £26 million a year, more than any Allsvenskan club but a long way behind Chelsea, on £443 million. Their manager is best known as the goalscoring Kippax favourite who became a professional on the cusp of German reunification in 1990, having come through the East German state-sponsored elite sports system. In unified Germany, players from the east were suddenly battling with their western counterparts for an international career, and although Rosler never won a Germany cap, he carved out a singular career at City.

We discuss his 18-year-old son Colin – named after Colin Bell – who is a centre-half in the famous City academy. I remind Rosler of the passage in his excellent 2013 autobiography, Knocking Down Walls, in which he describes the hierarchy of life in the East German system. There, an athlete’s status on the world stage would even dictate the quality of food they were served in the canteen.

“I was not an Olympic champion or a world champion,” Rosler says, and so his food tokens corresponded to his rank. “The footballers were a little bit below that. It’s a little bit different in Sweden, where we have social democracy. When you don’t know anything better you just get on with it. I started at 11 and when you were 18 in the Under-21s, then of course you moved up in the ranking. Everything was based on performance, on competition, on pressure to succeed.

“I had not realised that because I grew up with this selection process to get there, selection process to stay there, to improve. Nobody spoke to me about those pressures. With our young players, we help them. For me, you survived or fell from the wagon and a lot of talent got lost because of those situations. That was the time.”

His cancer, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, was diagnosed when he was 34. He fought it for 18 months through four courses of chemotherapy in his wife Cecilie’s native Norway, where he was playing for Lillestrom. When he recovered he went on to manage three Norwegian clubs, reaching two cup finals. Yet when it comes to German football, he remains an outsider. Is Rosler, with his high-pressing, attacking philosophy, part of the new movement of German coaches led by Jurgen Klopp?

German born, Uwe Rosler, manager and former player who manages Malmo FF, Sweden.
When people ask where is home, Rosler replies: ‘I am a European’ Credit: Geoff Pugh

“No. I am not considered to be a German coach because I never worked in Germany. I did part of my education in Germany but the second part I did in Norway, because I was already working with Lillestrom and it was impossible for me to go to Cologne. People ask me where is home and I say, ‘I am a European’. The base is Manchester. My wife is there and commutes back and forward. My younger son still lives at home and plays for City.

“But, coming back to your question, I am not considered to be a German coach. I have the German ingredients – the mentality, the background as a player. But not as a coach.”

At Leeds he developed young players such as Kalvin Phillips and Charlie Taylor, and others since sold, including Lewis Cook and Sam Byram. At Fleetwood he took a club “in disarray” in June 2016, days before the start of the season, and they finished fourth. He left Brentford early for Wigan but many feel he laid the foundations for the side who would flourish in the Championship. Some near-misses, but a solid reputation. For his final job in Norway, with Molde, he was recommended by Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, whom he knew from his Manchester days through their mutual friend, Gunnar Halle.

There is another fascinating aspect to Rosler’s life, first revealed in his autobiography. As a young player he was interrogated by the Stasi, the secret state police who made East German citizens the most intensively surveilled of any communist state. The Stasi insisted Rosler inform on team-mates whom they were worried would defect on away trips. He refused.

Brentford's Manager Uwe Rosler (R) shouts instructions to his players while Chelsea's Spanish interim manager Rafael Benitez (L) looks on during the FA Cup fourth round football match between Brentford and Chelsea
Now manager of Malmo, Rosler has previously managed at English sides Brentford, Wigan, Leeds and Fleetwood Credit: AFP

It remains a sensitive subject for him but he describes a recent trip he took with his elder son, Tony, – named after Tony Book – to Leipzig, where Rosler was once in Lokomotiv’s academy.

“We went to the Stasi museum and I saw my files after so many years,” he said. “They had a map of where the Stasi used to interrogate people and that included the office they took me. I’ve seen my file already. It has what people said about me. Code names for me. How they judged me as a person, as an upcoming sportsman who represented the country and its political system.

“The people who were spying on me, there was not one report I saw that harmed my career in any way. I am not walking out of this as a very bitter person knowing that somebody destroyed my career. And that episode I talked about in the book? Those pages were missing from my file. I don’t know why.”

We talk about the extraordinary list of managers he played for, including Brian Horton, Alan Ball, Joe Royle, Otto Rehhagel, Glenn Hoddle and Wolfgang Frank, the late German tactical innovator who had such a profound effect on Klopp at Mainz. Rosler says that of all of them, Hoddle was unsurpassed as a tactician and he learned much from him during a brief time at Southampton. “For man-management, the best was Rehhagel by a mile,” he says. “What he did [winning Euro 2004] with Greece, nobody else could have done.”

He comes back to watch Colin when he can and his son has chosen to represent Norway, his mother’s country. “The competition to stay there is big at City and that is a little similar to how I grew up,” Rosler says.

“He is taking that on board. It makes him cope with pressure. He enjoys it. He now has the chance to train with Pep and I say, ‘Just listen. See what Kompany does. That will make you a very good player’.”

As for Chelsea, he is refining his plan as the weeks go by. Malmo have not sold any of their best players over the close season and Rosler senses in his squad a hunger for a tie that they have had all winter to mull over.

“I just believe we have the mindset, and the mindset, especially at home, is we are going out and giving them a really good game,” he says. “Whether it is from the beginning or later on, I don’t know. I have seen a lot of Chelsea and the tactics will be clearer when we know who may or may not play.” He rejects any notion that his team will come into their new season cold. “Everybody is pushing really hard to be part of the game,” he says. “That for me, as a coach, is a dream scenario.”

It would be the mother of all shocks if they were to win but the man in charge has had an extraordinary life on and off the pitch, and he has come close before.

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