GARY DICKER ISN’T quite sure but he reckons that Gus Poyet’s favourite musical is Grease.
“That’s the one he brought us all to see in London anyway,” the Dubliner recalls, adding with a laugh. “You could definitely picture him as Danny Zuko with the hair and leather jacket!”
So, from Grease to Greece, via spells in England, Spain, China, France and Chile.
Poyet’s managerial journey has been a trek over the last decade.
Dicker was a stalwart at Brighton when the Uruguayan got his first job a decade ago, and he speaks with a reverence that has stood the test of time.
“He is so passionate for the game. He helps you learn as a player, he makes you better. He has an aura and the kind of personality that players gravitate towards. He cares about his players and the game, but you know there is that other ruthless side to him too.”
That much was evident prior to one Championship match with Milwall, when former Ireland striker Andy Keogh travelled with a broken toe and in need of an injection to help play through the pain.
Millwall’s doctor was unable to attend, and when Poyet learned that they had phoned ahead and requested that Brighton’s medical staff administer it instead, he flat out refused.
“Maybe it was because he didn’t know about it first that he wasn’t happy, but he was adamant about it,” Dicker says.
The respect he maintains is mutal, as Poyet explained this week in the build up to Greece’s Euro 2024 qualifier with the Republic of Ireland. “You can’t imagine how important Gary was for me at Brighton,” he said.
“People don’t know that, when most people look at a footballer they only think, can he run, can he pass, is he quick? People don’t see when someone is so intelligent, and Gary was so intelligent. He understands football in an incredible manner. He knew exactly what I wanted to do and how I wanted to do it.
“He was a key part of my success at Brighton.”
It was a very different time when Poyet took over. Brighton were toiling in the bottom half of League One and in need of inspiration. “That first meeting, I will never forget,” Dicker says. “He told us how we were going to change, how we would play football and what he demanded from all of us. It was the same old speech you get from any new manager to be fair.
“But what was different is that he meant it. Usually, in the first game, if something goes wrong it’s ‘right, we’re not playing that, f***ing get it long’. But the manager stuck with us. The message was clear and the hardest thing is to get buy-in from players. He got us all together.”
The demands in training were relentless.
“He wanted us to make teams suffer so he made sure we were able to by how hard we worked in training.
“He would tell us ‘punish them, make them suffer when you have the ball’. It was so comepetitive all of the time.
“You could not take your foot off the gas because it was all about ball retention. He wanted 80% possession and to have control,” a principle he has maintained with Greece, given they average over 64% of the ball.
“He had belief in you and wanted you to have it too,” Dicker continues. “He wanted you to play with courage all of the time.”
It worked; Brighton won promotion to the Championship and it felt like the start of a revolution at the club under chairman Tony Bloom.
The Uruguayan was their first non-British manager since Liam Brady in the early 1990s. Dicker recalls Poyet travelling around England with senior staff visiting clubs like Chelsea and Everton to get tips for their own training centre and academy that was in the process of being developed.
It was the same for the Amex Stadium as that project neared completion.
It is now the home of a thriving Premier League club that has qualified for Europe for the first time in its history. Dicker’s playing days are now over but he is a fixture at Brighton once again as assistant to U21 head coach Shannon Ruth.
The impact of Italian boss Roberto De Zerbi on the first team has helped take them to even greater heights, and Dicker is grateful for the change that began to take place 10 years ago under Poyet.
“It was probably a big gamble from the chairman to give him the job at the time because maybe the easy thing to do was give it to a safe pair of hands. There are definitely similarities between then and now.
Poyet wanted our defenders to put their foot on the ball and wait for pressure. He wanted that pressure but he also simplified the game for us to get more out of us.
“We had a defender, Adam El Abd, who was probably close to being released under three different managers before him. He ended up becoming one of our most important players by how he changed things. If you can understand what he wants and are capable of doing it you will succeed,” Dicker adds, and it’s hard not to draw comparisons with the modern day.
“Their character, how they are around the place, the aura. As people and as coaches, how they want to play the game. You only appreciate it when you are out of it how much energy they have, the motivation needed every day to drive people on. I know it’s draining cause I’m doing it now. To have that love for doing it after so long is not easy.”
Dicker will be in Athens on Friday to cast an eye over Brighton’s Evan Ferguson, and he might just get the opportunity to catch up with the man whose influence on him has not been forgotten.