We spoke to Ashley Westwood, 48, coach of the Hong Kong national team, ahead of the game against Premier League giants Manchester United on Friday. The match is part of the club’s post-season tour. Westwood, 48, was on United's books as a young professional.
How does a Manchester lad end up coaching Hong Kong?
There are always different routes. If you want to go from Manchester to London, there are different ways of doing that, and coaching is the same. Arsene Wenger ended up at Arsenal after going around the houses and being in Japan. Ange Postecoglou ended up at Tottenham Hotspur via Australia, Japan and Scotland.
I started in England as a player and played in the top five divisions, then I became a coach in England at Portsmouth, Blackpool and Blackburn, then went to India, where I won the league twice. Malaysia followed, then the Afghanistan national team, and then Hong Kong, where I am now. I had national team experience, which was one of the criteria, the others were experience in Asia and being successful. That’s what the Hong Kong football federation wanted.
How has it been?
Results have been good. When I arrived, Hong Kong were ranked 159 in the world and had lost seven of the previous nine, drawing two. Things had been bad for five years, and sometimes it’s hard to stop a downward trajectory, but we’ve managed it.
We won seven games on the trot and drew our last game. We’ve kept six clean sheets in those eight.
On a personal level, it has been about adjusting to living in a different part of the world.
What’s it like coaching Hong Kong?
Challenging. In a lot of national team jobs you have players scattered around the world who are eligible to play for your country. You can find new talent.
For Hong Kong, the rules are that you must be in the country for seven years before you can apply for permanent residency. Once you have that, you can apply for a passport, and you must surrender any other passport that you have. So, you must have proper ties to a country, which is how it should be.
Most of our players, probably 65%, play in the Hong Kong league. Then we have nine or 10 players who are in the Chinese Super League or first division. One, left-back Shinichi Chan, is 22 and starting every week for one of the best teams in China.
So we’re reliant on the Hong Kong Premier League doing well. There are only nine teams at present, and they play each other three times. I’d like to see more teams and competition, but they do the best they can in a small, densely populated part of the world.
You have Asia Cup games against India, Japan, South Korea and China coming up ...
India were ranked 96 in the world not so long ago, but have dropped, while we’re now 153. Japan, South Korea and China are major Asian football powers who’ve played regularly in World Cup finals. But the reason we’ll play against them is because we were successful in our three Asia Cup pre-qualifiers, winning the East Asia Cup pre-qualifiers. It’s not normal for Hong Kong and it’s our reward, and I can’t wait. As a coach you want to be involved in these games and test yourself against the best in the region so see how good you are.
How do you feel about playing Manchester United?
Proud. I was at United as a young footballer in the Class of ’93. I won the FA Youth Cup at United and had a great time there before making my way at other clubs.
I don’t want to feel overawed because I’m not. I feel like that’s where I want to be every week, that I should be aiming to be the best coach I can be against the best teams possible. I’m sure that if you’d interviewed Graham Potter 10 years ago when he was working in Scandinavia, he might have had the same kind of feelings. But he did so well that he got to the Premier League.
I kept in contact with people from United. I speak to Sir Alex Ferguson a couple of times per year. He’s always incredibly helpful to me, and we have a nice chat – even though I left under a cloud because he wanted me to stay and I thought I knew best and wanted to play first-team football. He laughs about that now. He’s a great man.
How did it end at United?
I played lots of reserve games and was making progress. Sir Alex Ferguson asked to see me and praised my progress. He said he wanted to offer me a new two-year deal. I was on £210 a week. The new deal was £275. I replied: “I can’t be doing that well if the increase is only £65.”
Ferguson was doing things the right way, but I was telling him that I needed to buy a car to get to training. I told him that I needed a £5,000 signing-on fee to buy a car. He laughed and said, "Get in my team and I’ll look after you." I replied: "How am I going to get in your team? When there’s a flu epidemic?"
My mentality was ‘I’ll go somewhere else and teach him.’ I didn’t have an agent, just a demon in the back of my head. A demon telling me the wrong information.
“I’ll leave!” I told Fergie.
“There’s the door,” he said.
“Can I go for free?” I replied.
“No chance,” he said. “You’re a Man Utd reserve team player. It’s £75,000.”
“Well, is that not going to make it hard for me?”
“Yes, of course it is! Who’s going to pay that for you?”
That made me want to prove him wrong.
Crewe were interested in me. They were happy to buy me for £75,000. I went back to see Ferguson. He already knew about Crewe’s interest. He knew everything. I still thought that he’d agree to a signing-on fee and I’d stay at United, but because I was pig-headed, I didn’t ask him. So I left the room again. Crewe then told me that United wanted £500,000 for me. A tribunal was needed to sort out my transfer.
Looking back, even though I was 10th-choice defender I was still ahead of Wes Brown – who I expect to see this week in Hong Kong as he works for United. But I hate ‘what ifs’. There are loads of people in football pinning the blame for not making it on someone else. Wes had a great career at United, and I went to Crewe.
Looking back, I probably needed Alex Ferguson to say: ‘Come on, son, trust me’. But he was a tougher man then, and he was right to be tough.
Years later, when I was a manager myself, I went to Sir Alex for advice about a problem I had with a player. I texted him on the off chance. He called me back from a cab in New York. He told me to explain honestly to the player why I was leaving him out. I did that and the player understood. It helped that I told him the advice had come from Sir Alex.
I’ve gone to him several times since and appreciated his help every time. And I’ll do my best this week. United are sending a strong team to Hong Kong, and we’re expecting a big crowd. There will be full application from both sides, and I hope fans will be entertained.
