Appetite For Construction (Coach Kicks Special: Brian Sorensen)

Everton’s Danish head coach arrived after a season of three managerial structures and a tenth-place finish, with a brief to build and stabilise rather than chase Europe. He is a carpenter by trade and reckons he built and sold four or five houses while coaching in Denmark, which gives the interview its running metaphor and its best line on football: give players a clear structure, then tell them that breaking out of it is where the magic starts. The most affecting passage is about Nadia Nadim, whom he drove from a refugee camp to indoor tournaments across Denmark and Germany in a black Volkswagen GTI, her sisters in the back, and whose mother had died the previous November. His signings lean Scandinavian because he knows that market; the word he wants attached to his team is brave.