It did not take Lee Bowyer long to understand the scale of the task. Having won promotion on a shoestring at Charlton and escaped relegation despite financial meltdown at Birmingham, he was fashioning a reputation for football miracles.
This one involved trying to reach next summer’s World Cup with Montserrat, a tiny British overseas territory with a population of less than 5,000, and it soon became clear it came with a difference because some of his players no longer played football.
‘One of them played a lot of tennis,’ recalls Bowyer. ‘That was how he kept his fitness. He didn’t play football. Some of them used to play but hadn’t played for two or three years.
‘The goalkeeper, when I first arrived, didn’t play any more. He lived in Cyprus and owned restaurants. I’m like, “OK, wow, so this is going to be tough”.’
Bowyer set about building a new team like Brad Pitt and George Clooney in Ocean’s Eleven, flexing contacts to source a young keeper in Barnsley’s academy and a striker at Solihull Moors who he knew when he had been at Birmingham.
Word filtered his way of two brothers in the North West. They were also eligible for Antigua & Barbuda so he met their parents and convinced them it was the right move. These and more he brought together and forged into a team.
Lee Bowyer recently attempted his latest footballing miracle in trying to reach the World Cup with Montserrat, a tiny British overseas territory with a population of less than 5,000
‘The goalkeeper, when I first arrived, didn’t play any more,’ recalls Bowyer. ‘He lived in Cyprus and owned restaurants. I’m like, “OK, wow, so this is going to be tough”.’
Montserrat, ranked 175th in the world, did not qualify for the World Cup, but they gave it a good go, won more than usual and Bowyer left them with enough memories to last a lifetime, the joy of seeing players improve and the satisfaction of knowing he was still good at his job.
‘We beat Barbados first,’ he recalls. ‘Afterwards, one of the pressmen, said, “How did you win today?”. I said, “Oh, I thought we deserved to win” and then he was like, “I know, but Barbados beat Montserrat at everything. I mean everything, down to tiddlywinks”. I was thinking: “Tiddlywinks? Is that even a sport?”’
There were ear-splitting horns and a carnival atmosphere in the Caribbean and lessons in the complex logistics of football in the region, with anxious flights on small island-hopping aircraft, testing the nerve of Bowyer, a 48-year-old with vivid recollections of an exploding engine and an emergency landing during his time at Leeds in 1998.
When Bowyer found out the Montserrat players did not receive caps, he dug into his own pocket to have some made, just like the one he has framed on a wall at home from his one and only senior appearance for England against Portugal in 2002, when he set up the goal for Alan Smith in a 1-1 draw at Villa Park.
‘Whenever someone played under me, we’d give them a one,’ he says. ‘Just like you’d get for England, with the crest embroidered and a little tassel coming down.
‘It’s an unbelievable achievement to play for your country and I thought they should have something to remember it by. Something to show their kids and grandkids.
‘So that’s what I did. It went down well. Some of them had been playing for years without getting a cap and there were a few with tears in their eyes.
‘They deserved it. They always gave their all, and if they fell short sometimes when it came to quality or fitness, they were good honest lads who cared about their country.’
Bowyer’s Montserrat players with their caps, which he paid for out of his own pocket. ‘There were a few with tears in their eyes,’ he says. ‘They deserved it’
In training with England ahead of his sole appearance for the national team – a 1-1 draw against Portugal in 2002
Bowyer admits this passion for coaching caught him by surprise when he first experienced it. He had never envisaged the career, but Harry Kewell asked his old Leeds team-mate to help him, coaching unpaid with Watford’s Under 21s.
‘I went in for a few months,’ says Bowyer. ‘I’d always thought with coaching, what’s the reward? As a player it’s obvious. The reward is winning, scoring, atmosphere.
‘Then I worked on finishing with this young striker at Watford, teaching him to pass it into the corner like Thierry Henry, the best finisher I saw in my time. He started scoring goals for Harry’s team, and his Mum came and said, “Thanks Lee, he’s improved so much”. And I thought, OK, this is my reward. Yeah, I like this.’
Bowyer joined the coaching staff at Charlton, where he had once burst out of the youth ranks as a rampaging midfielder with a knack for goals, and became interim manager as they lurched through ownership crises and proposed takeovers, proving an instant hit.
When he took over from Karl Robinson in March 2018, they were ninth in League One and he led them into the play-offs. A year later, they went up, beating Sunderland at Wembley.
Again, improving players, including Karlan Grant, Josh Cullen and Joe Aribo who all went on to play in the Premier League. The board bought Macauley Bonne from Leyton Orient for £200,000 on Bowyer’s instinct and sold him a year and 11 Championship goals later for £2million to QPR.
In March 2021, Bowyer was lured to Birmingham, another of his former clubs. There is a recurring theme here, which marks him out as an unlikely romantic, closely bound to those clubs in his heart.
It was evident in his playing days when he pulled out of a move from Leeds to Liverpool mid-medical because he was hankering for London.
Bowyer became interim Charlton manager as they lurched through ownership crises and proposed takeovers, proving an instant hit
He led them to promotion through the League One play-offs a year later, beating Sunderland at Wembley
‘Robbie Fowler said one day at Leeds you should never have any regrets about the decisions you’ve made,’ says Bowyer. ‘But not going to Liverpool, is one I regret.
‘I should have gone there. It was close. I was there on the medical table. El Hadji Diouf was at the training ground as well. We were signing at the same time. Or meant to be.
‘Halfway through the medical we had a break, and I told my agent it didn’t feel right. I’d been at Leeds for six years and would be signing for another five years at Liverpool, 11 years away from home, maybe longer.
‘Gerard Houllier was in charge of Liverpool and he didn’t take it well. Nice man, though.’
Bowyer returned to Leeds and, six months later, to West Ham, the first of two spells with the team he supported when he was a boy in Poplar, in east London. Then onto Newcastle, further than ever from the capital although working with Sir Bobby Robson, one of the managers who left a mark.
‘Even when he was dropping you, Bobby knew how to make you feel good,’ says Bowyer. ‘I’ve taken that from him. Put your arm round lads if that’s what they need and be more like George Graham if things are not going great and you want to firm up. It’s a fine line, though. Some players can’t take criticism. Fewer now, for sure.’
Graham replaced Howard Wilkinson at Leeds soon after Bowyer signed from Charlton for £2.8m, a record fee for a British teenager at the time, in 1996.
‘I got a detached retina the day before Howard was sacked,’ says Bowyer. ‘The ball hit me in the face. So, I woke up from the operation and Howard was gone. I was thinking, Oh, so I’m 19, blind in one eye and might not play again and the manager who bought me is gone… what am I going to do?
Bowyer signed for Leeds from Charlton for £2.8million, a record fee for a British teenager at the time, in 1996
He later moved to Newcastle, working under legendary manager Sir Bobby Robson
‘I came back and thought I was doing well but George dropped me. I ran my socks off but not to his standards. I could get forward and score goals but he turned me into the all-round midfielder, he made me a better player, a team player and that sticks in my mind.’
David O’Leary and Graeme Souness, he has down as ‘good man-managers’ who created the right environment.
‘If you were suspended, they’d say, “Spend some time with your family, go on holiday” and I’d come back fresh and ready to run through walls for them. That was one of my strengths, running.
‘We’d have six weeks off in the summer, and I’d have three weeks downtime and then I’d be running, preparing for pre-season so I was ready to go. You’d see Mark Viduka and Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink come in.
‘They were good lads, unbelievable strikers, but the goalkeepers were beating them in the running, and I’d be thinking, “Wow, how’ve you done that in six weeks? What have you been doing? You definitely haven’t been running”.’
Souness did not encourage Bowyer to take his family off on holiday after the most infamous episode of their time together at Newcastle, when he and team-mate Kieron Dyer were both sent off for fighting on the pitch, images of which were rekindled when Idrissa Gueye slapped his Everton team-mate Michael Keane at Manchester United in November.
‘A moment of madness,’ is Bowyer’s only explanation more than two decades on. ‘It should never have happened, but it did. Nobody got hurt.’
All is forgiven. The pair are still friends, in close contact and had been planning a game of padel with each other on the day of this interview.
Bowyer’s infamous scrap with his own team-mate Kieron Dyer – the pair are now friends and even play padel together
As manager of Birmingham, Bowyer exceeded expectations – twice beating relegation despite a lack of support from the boardroom
At Birmingham, Bowyer exceeded expectations, collecting 17 points from his first seven games to keep them in the Championship with a nine-goal cushion when they had looked doomed under Aitor Karanka.
He did it again a year later, despite broken promises from the Chinese owners about the state of the finances.
‘That was tougher than Charlton,’ says Bowyer. ‘They said they’d sold Jude Bellingham and that if I kept them up the first year there’d be money to spend.
‘But I kept them up and they said I had to get rid of more players. There were 24 senior players when I arrived, and they cut the squad to 18 and said there were four kids to use.
‘One of them was Jobe Bellingham. He was 16 and coming from school with his uniform and rucksack on. They thought we could introduce him and they’d sell him on, which is exactly what happened.’
Bowyer was exhausted and in need of a break from the game after that, and then he went to Montserrat in search of something different.
‘I’d like to manage West Ham one day,’ says Bowyer. ‘I think I’d do it right. It’s my club’
Now he is back and although he has declined two offers from clubs in League Two, he is energised, and ready to resume his managerial career when the right opening comes up.
‘I’d like to manage West Ham one day,’ he says. ‘I think I’d do it right. For one, it’s my club. People talk a lot about lost connections. Charlton was the same when I took over. With only maybe 9,000 coming to games, it seemed like it had been pulled apart a bit, because of the owners.
‘We got the crowds up and they liked the football we were playing and by the end of the season we had a full house more than 25,000 for the play off semi-final and sold out 40-odd thousand for the final at Wembley.’
Brimming with purpose and ready to go again, wherever he turns up next look out for a man on a mission.
