“You don’t call it Opel, you call it Vauxhall,” says Will Still. “A Corsa, little black thing that eventually died. Actually, no, Nico, my younger brother crashed it … it was crap, though, it didn’t even have a radio.” Still, who grew up in Grez-Doiceau, near Brussels, laughs as he recounts his days driving to work as an unpaid video analyst at Sint-Truiden while living at home with his mother, Jane. “Best time of my life, to be honest. It was like the dream was coming true.”
Twelve years on, the 32-year-old, one of the most intriguing managers in the game, has been tasked with returning Southampton to the Premier League after impressing with Lens. The only other time he lived in England was as a teenager when he spent two years studying at Myerscough College in Lancashire, where his degree included coaching Preston’s under-14s. At the time Still felt like “the little posh Belgian kid” but that period provided a handy lesson in English football-speak.
“I remember getting to college and people were like: ‘Bounce it!’ I haven’t got a clue what that means, mate, sorry. Or ‘man on’. By the end, I was like: ‘God, English football is the place to be.’ We were playing Stockport reserves and people turned up to watch that game – a lot of people. It was like: ‘Why are you coming to watch a bunch of college players playing Stockport reserves?’”
Still spoke English at home and French at school but had to get to grips with Dutch after joining Sint-Truiden’s academy aged 10. He recalls telling his father, Julian, that his teammates did not understand him. “Growing up in Belgium, not many people are ginger and speak English. I’ve always stuck out. Like a sore thumb. I think football’s always helped me integrate and be a part of something. And it just became like the one thing that I was actually quite good at.”
Still, talking in the boardroom at Southampton’s New Forest training base, makes absorbing company as he trawls through his journey, including coaching Hugo Ekitiké at Reims and shadowing Thomas Frank during his pro licence; enrolling meant the Ligue 1 club were no longer fined £22,000 every time he took charge of a game, a viral story that meant his profile exploded. “The world the way it is, people just expect it [success] to happen,” he says, clicking his fingers. “And it’s like: ‘Oh, social media told us that you can do it.’”
There is another myth to dispel. It wasn’t just a case of Still tapping the spacebar of his laptop playing Football Manager and landing in Ligue 1; at 30, he became the youngest manager in Europe’s top five leagues when appointed at Reims, having managed Lierse and then Beerschot in Belgium, taking the reins at the former aged 24. Still’s…
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