Oscar Garcia, a serial winner of La Liga with Barcelona as a player, is discussing his extraordinary managerial career, which has just taken another twist.
His year-long reign back home in the Spanish top flight with Celta Vigo ended on Monday after one win in their opening nine matches.
Celta were his seventh club in six countries in eight years. Speaking to The Athletic before his departure from the Estadio Municipal de Balaidos, Garcia says of his career: “It’s not usual, but I like to be unusual. I want to know different cultures, different players. Now I know the mentality of the English players, the Korean players, Japanese, German.
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“It has been a very good experience for me. I don’t regret anything or any club. I think I left a good legacy in all the clubs. I can come back to all the clubs I’ve been with, so for me, this is very important and also for my career, I think it’s perfect.”
Perfect? It’s an interesting description, considering some of the situations Garcia has found himself in throughout his turbulent travels.
He has fled rocket attacks, suffered a heart scare, walked away from successes and failures. None of his spells in Israel, England, Austria, France, Greece or Spain has lasted longer than 18 months.
Garcia had a contrastingly sedate and settled start to his coaching career on the staff of the Catalonia national team under Johan Cruyff, his mentor at Barcelona. He also had a spell as a youth coach at Barcelona, for whom he scored 21 goals in 69 games from 1993 to 1999.
Cruyff’s son, Jordi, was the technical manager of Maccabi Tel Aviv when he gave Garcia his first job in management just after his 39th birthday in May 2012.
It proved to be a baptism of fire with the under-achieving Israeli club. Delivering Maccabi’s first domestic title in a decade coincided with the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a nervy environment for father-of-three Garcia and his family.
“The first day with rockets, we were a little bit scared,” Garcia says. “But the people there told us it was no problem. Of course, it was the first time I saw these kinds of things and felt them. It was in the middle of the season. We were training and the general manager of the club told us to come into the dressing room. We started to hear a siren, so all the players went into the dressing room very quickly. We (staff) did the same.”
Garcia quit after a year to move to England with then-Championship club Brighton & Hove Albion.
“I wanted to experience other cultures,” Garcia says. “I thought I did a great job at Maccabi. I remember that spell as one of the happiest and most important of my life.
“I was prepared for the job to take two seasons, but when it was very successful in the first, I had the option to come to England. It was one of my dreams, not only as a coach but also as a player, to work in England. So I didn’t think twice about joining Brighton.”
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Garcia had another successful season with Brighton, steering them into the play-offs for the second year in succession, even though the squad was weaker than the one that had finished in the top six under Gus Poyet.
Garcia resigned as soon as they were knocked out of the play-offs, 6-2 on aggregate by Derby County. His discomfort had been bubbling behind the scenes. There was a lack of rapport with the head of recruitment, David Burke, and he feared a downturn in the club’s fortunes.
That turned out to be prophetic. Brighton were in the relegation zone the following season under Garcia’s short-lived successor, Sami Hyypia, before Chris Hughton rescued them.
Garcia has no regrets about walking out. “The results the following season showed why I decided to leave,” he says. “I was sure that what we were preparing to do would not be successful.
“The big concern was we were going to sell the best players and I was thinking the players coming in would not be at the right level for Brighton to fight for promotion, so I decided to leave.
“I was sure we couldn’t improve on the season we’d just had. I want to improve every year, be better every year.”
Garcia returned to Maccabi, but he lasted only 12 weeks. “To me, it wasn’t a mistake, because I wanted to give back all the support they gave me when I left,“ he says. “I went back in a bad situation.
“In the end, it was really hard because we had 50 days in a row with rockets. The situation was not like the first time when it was only one week. And I had the chance to come back to English football again with Watford. I had the feeling they would be in the play-offs for sure. The squad was really good to try to get to the Premier League.”
Garcia was proved right again. Watford won promotion in 2014-15 as Championship runners-up, but his part in the triumph only spanned four matches because of a heart scare.
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“To leave Maccabi in that situation, to come back to management so quick, my mind was a little bit confused,” he reflects.
“All this kind of stress was the big problem. It was not so bad (as a heart attack), but the doctors told me I needed to rest for days or weeks, they didn’t know. So I was honest, I spoke with the owner and said we could finish the contract and he could have another coach. I didn’t feel good about not being able to work when they had to pay me so I decided to leave.
“It was a signal for me to do things differently. I did and now I have less stress. Before, I took everything personally. Now it’s different.”
Garcia’s route back to Spain in Vigo took a customarily winding path, punctuated by smooth and rough patches.
He guided Red Bull Salzburg in Austria to a league and cup double twice in as many years before leaving for Saint-Etienne.
“It was maybe the same reason that I left Tel Aviv,” he says. “I wanted to be in a better league.”
It didn’t work out for Garcia in France, or in Greece with Olympiacos. He lasted only five months and three months respectively.
“Saint-Etienne was difficult,” he says. “They promised something they didn’t deliver. When I left, the team was in sixth place. It happened a little bit like Brighton. I thought without some new players, we’d have a lot of problems. At Olympiacos, we couldn’t reach first position. There were also some internal problems with the club and the players. With three games left, I decided to leave because I signed a contract only until the end of the season. I said to the owner if they want to prepare next season, they can start looking for another coach.”
Garcia had a 19-month break from management after leaving Olympiacos. He became a TV pundit, summarising on Barcelona matches, but he missed “the smell of the pitch”.
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When the offer came from Celta last November to succeed Fran Escriba, it felt like the perfect moment to resume his managerial adventure.
True to form in Garcia’s career, it was a bumpy ride. Celta were third from bottom in La Liga after 12 matches when he took over. The fight against relegation in a campaign interrupted by COVID-19 went to the final day in July, when a 0-0 draw at Espanyol kept them up by a single point and one place at the expense of Leganes.
Garcia paid the price for a poor start to the current campaign. Celta are 17th, one point above the bottom three, seemingly destined for another scrap to preserve their top-flight status.
It was new territory for Garcia, who left his wife and three children, aged 11, 17 and 19, behind in Barcelona, a 90-minute flight or 10-hour drive away. They visited him once a month as he battled to keep Celta away from the drop zone. “I have always been managing clubs before that are fighting for titles or play-offs,” he says.
So what now for the manager who, whether a success or failure, is never anywhere for long?
“I’m 47,” he says. “I would like to keep doing what I want to do. Hopefully one day I can come back to England, because I enjoyed very much my spell at Brighton especially, so I am open always to come back to manage in England.
“Maybe manage in Germany as well, but before I started out I couldn’t imagine I would be in Tel Aviv, Austria, all of these countries. Whatever happens will be good for me. If it’s a good experience, perfect, if not I will learn something.”
(Top photo: Quality Sport Images/Getty Images)
