Big Interview: Nuno and a new way for Wolves

It’s a grainy video of him on a golf tee, surrounded by his Wolves players.

He’s an obsessive character, so he’s recently taken up golf as a way to escape his own mind constantly whirring about football, and this is his first round with the team.

He swings the driver, and the golf ball explodes before him. It’s a joke ball made of powder. Cue howls of laughter from the players.

Thankfully Nuno sees the funny side of it, and now he’s showing it off to the assorted members of the Midlands press as a sign of how strong team spirit is within the squad.

The Wolves boss was speaking at length at the Sir Jack Hayward Training Ground just hours after the Bank Holiday promotion party – which was attended by roughly 80,000 people.

It’s been a long season, but he’s in good mood, riding high from seeing so many fans turn out, and he’s far more at ease with the media than he has been throughout the campaign.

“When I’m upset I can be the worst guy in the world,” he admits. “I don’t speak to you one day because I have everything in my mind.

“Next day I’m hugging people. It’s natural, we have good and bad moments.”

Anybody who has watched Nuno on the touchline this season can guess he’s a passionate person, bordering on volatile.

But in this extended sit-down now the dust has settled, and the Championship trophy has been safely tucked away in its cabinet, his intellectual side comes across.

Last summer he was warned he might have to adapt his possession-based system to the Championship for its more direct approach.

“For me it didn’t make sense,” he says. “If I have to adapt to the Championship and play like 70 oer cent of the teams, I am not the right coach.

“It is the main thing. To have an identity. To have an idea.

“(Before it was) go to the line and put it in the box. You come here and say ‘no, we don’t want that. We want the ball to come round again’. That was a challenge. I remember the beginning of the season. Against Jablonek (in pre-season) we lost 1-0.

“There was a big doubt after that game. We had 70 per cent possession and we didn’t shoot at goal.”

But Nuno stuck to his guns and Wolves won their first three games of the season. After that, the players were convinced.

From then on his 3-4-3 system swept aside pretty much every other team. Not only did Wolves romp to the title, they did it in style.

But the key to getting any squad to function together is to build team spirit. There were plenty of doubters who thought the influx of Portuguese players into the squad would have a detrimental impact.

Nuno, though, ensured early on that no cliques emerged, by changing the tables in the canteen every day.

“Before I came here, they had small tables around the place, so I said no, let’s make it a big table,” he revealed.

“We had groups of English, African, Portuguese – and they divided themselves because it’s nature. We are animals of habit.

“The next day, you change, you make it tables of five and see how they mix. Then you change it again and you force them to interact.

“Now I have to speak to someone who doesn’t speak my language. In the beginning, it was very interesting. “We started and then they got the message.

“They changed by themselves... ‘How am I expected to talk to you on the pitch if I don’t know you out of the pitch?’.”

Not that it was easy. Nuno is weary after a long season and looking forward to going home to Portugal and watching the World Cup ‘on his sofa’.

And the manager who took the Championship by storm, still thinks it’s the toughest league in the world.

“It surprised me,” he said. “It is a false myth that it is (just) balls in the channel, kick and run. It doesn’t exist anymore. Not many teams. It’s changed.

“You can see very good football in the Championship. Much better, and more difficult. It is the toughest league in the world. I have a document there which was made by somebody here (before the season) with all the contenders (for promotion). It’s totally wrong, all of it!”

But Nuno plans to stick to his approach in the Premier League and he’s planning to serve up the same front-foot passing and possession-based style at Molineux next season.

“Because it’s the way I see football,” he explains. “It’s not that I invented something, a lot of teams play good football but it’s the way I see football.

“If you have more of the ball than your opponent and you are organised and know when you are defending and when and where you will recover it, you are always in control of the game.”

He wants to create a Wolves identity – a way of playing that is instantly recognisable – and doesn’t think this should be sacrificed for the simple act of surviving in the top tier.

But that doesn’t mean he will be too stubborn to adapt, and he argues his team has proved that in his first season in charge.

“The team has shown that already,” he said. “Look at the goals we scored.

“There was a moment where we scored with fast attacks and the other opponents started to adapt.

“Then there was a moment we scored with set pieces and we won 1-0.

“There was a moment we scored with full-backs two or three games in a row. It tells you we have solutions.

“It’s not the style, it’s the idea. It’s the way we we want to be.” On the touchline Nuno can be as maniacal as Jurgen Klopp, but in the confines of his office he comes across as studious as Pep Guardiola. He even picks his beard in the same way as the Manchester City boss.

His passion endears him to the fans, and when the subject of his touchline antics comes up, he’s unapologetic.

“Half an hour before the match when the players go warming up, it’s the worst moment a manager can have,” he says. “You stay by yourself, it’s the moment you start thinking did I do everything? Did I say everything? They play like this, maybe I should have (said this).

“But after the game’s started you live the game, you share in the running, the kicking, the tackles.

“You share with what’s going on on the pitch to help them. If there’s a goal how can you not celebrate it? If you get a bad moment how can you not be upset?”

Next season he will be up against the likes of Klopp and Guardiola in the Premier League, and there are plenty of people tipping Wolves for big things. In fact, they are currently joint-seventh favourites to win the whole thing.

There is excitement building, and it was epitomised by the Bank Holiday bonanza this week.

But expectations are building not only among the fanbase, but also in the boardrooms of owners Fosun. Nuno is trying to stay grounded – he knows it’s dangerous to get too ahead of yourself.

“We know our ownership wants to be as successful in football as they are in business but football is not business,” he said. “Football is not mathematic. Football you cannot insure nothing.

“We are one year ahead of schedule. That will tell you that they know, the owners and (executive chairman) Jeff (Shi), that the Premier League is different and a big challenge.

“It is not my job to restrain their expectations, but just be realistic. If we can achieve what we want sooner, we will go for it.”

With Fosun’s billions behind them, there are plenty who are predicting a busy summer, as the owners splash the cash once more to make Wolves competitive in the top tier. Once again though, Nuno preaches caution.

“You know you are in the most competitive league, money-wise,” he said. “In the Premier League every club can buy whatever player they want. We are not different.

“We are fighting with the same. We are going to get the money we have, the budget we have, with Financial Fair Play, and we go by the rules, like everybody does.

“Because there are laws. You can have all the money in the world but on those terms I am no different than any manager in the Premier League next season.”

Then the subject of Financial Fair Play and Wolves’ links with Jorge Mendes rears its head – it is the only part of the hour-long interview where the temperature drops.

“Jorge doesn’t have any job here,” Nuno snaps back, furrowing his brow. “Any job at all. You see him here? Come on. He is a good agent, the best agent.

“We get what we need from him. If he can provide good players for us? Fantastic. If another guy can give? Fantastic.

“It is not the job of Jorge doing here. We are going to be with the owners and we will speak about things that we have to speak about.”

The EFL looked into the club’s relationship with Mendes after being urged to do so by some of Wolves’ Championship rivals, but they found everything to be above board.

However, Wolves will face a similar test from the Premier League this summer following promotion.

Mendes is Nuno’s agent too, but when the manager was asked if he had been annoyed by the criticisms, he said: “I don’t waste time thinking about it. I don’t care, I really don’t care.”

It’s likely to be an intriguing summer, with Wolves hoping to strengthen ahead of their first Premier League season for seven years.

But the World Cup in Russia will delay the transfer market from picking up. Even with Fosun’s spending power and Mendes’s contacts, Wolves have to wait for the big boys to start trading just like everybody else.

“Every time there is a World Cup or a European Championships the market changes so things will not move until the World Cup is almost done,” explained Nuno. “Because what moves the wheel is the big things so you have to wait.”

That will allow Nuno will get some well-earned rest back in Portugal with his family.

“Most of my time I spend with my technical team,” he explained. “We don’t have our families here, it’s not easy, it’s tough, I won’t lie to you.

“I live by myself in a nice place and I spend most of my time there, 90 per cent of my time there.

“I cannot tell you about living in England. I arrive (at work) at 8.30 or 9 o’clock, we train, we stay here until three or four o’clock, we go home, have dinner together.

“We live to work, if it was for the pleasure of living, you would not be a manager for sure.”

Nor is he contemplating moving his family over to England anytime soon.

“They have their own lives,” he said. “It would be a big mistake for me to be so selfish and take them away from their friends.

“I have big children anyway, they are at university and they have their own lives. But we still see each other, it is two hours away (by plane).

“They are Wolves fans. They come to see our games, it’s not very far. But Monarch (going bust) was a problem that we had!”

Before he heads home for summer, Nuno wants to attend the Championship play-off final at Wembley on Saturday, May 26.

“I would like to see that more than the Champions League final. I know what’s going to happen there and am curious to see.”

After the interview finishes he beckons us into his office. He wants to show us something else.

It’s a wall-chart with each fixture of the last season on it, and he has personally scribbled in pen how many points Wolves picked up from each game.

He points out that after almost every zero, there is a three that follows. After every setback last season, Wolves regrouped immediately and won the next game.

That strength and team spirit is something he’s hugely proud of. And he points to the last fixture, a shock defeat at relegated Sunderland.

“It is not a big deal for me but we have to bounce back,” he said. “We had been celebrating for four weeks.

“You do it in the hotel on the Friday (when Wolves won promotion), you win the game (against Birmingham) you celebrate again.

“At Bolton it is when you are officially winners, then you come home and they give you the trophy.

“I have a lot of titles but as a coach it is my first title. It means a lot and for most of the players it is the first title. When you win you want to repeat it.”

Something tells you that whatever happens next season, whether Wolves are fighting for survival or challenging for something more, Nuno has the strength to deal with it.