Daniel Farke - the under-rated Norwich manager who doesn't win awards, just matches

Is Daniel Farke the most underappreciated manager in English football?

It is a strange question to ask about the man who is on the brink of his second Championship title in three seasons, who receives regular messages of admiration from Pep Guardiola and whose Norwich team play some of the most stylish football in the country.

Promotion was secured this weekend hours before their match kicked off against Bournemouth, and Norwich are on course to beat their haul of 94 points from the 2018/19 campaign.

Yet for all that, Farke seems oddly under-rated. The 44 year old from west Germany last received the Championship manager of the month award in November 2018 and whenever a plum domestic job becomes available his name is never linked to it.

Farke doesn’t win awards - he just wins matches.

“It’s not important for me to be in the spotlight. I’ve had so many invitations from Germany to go on the big TV shows but I always cancel them,” he says, smiling as he sits in his office for a rare interview.

“I don’t want to be the guy on camera all the time, annoying people too much with my name and face.

“After our promotion two years ago there were opportunities in Germany and it would have been easy to leave, but the project at Norwich was not finished.

“I speak to other coaches and they know how difficult it is to achieve this.”

Norwich have done Farke’s talking for him on the field, dominating the Championship this season with a brand of football that is exciting and energetic.

Club records have been consistently broken and the recent 7-0 thrashing of Huddersfield - their biggest win in nearly 70 years - was Farke’s vision in high definition. The 3-1 defeat to Bournemouth on Saturday night was their first in 14 matches, but they will be crowned champions on Tuesday night with a win over Watford.

“I’m proud of the lads and it’s a big achievement, more complicated than two years ago,” says Farke.

“To win the title as one of the favourites, with that pressure, and show consistency and dominance is very impressive.

“If we can finish with at least 95 points it would be the best season in our history.

“Four years ago I’d never have expected to be working in the motherland of English football, the club’s first coach from abroad and having the best two Championship seasons in their history. It would be arrogant if I said I saw this coming.”

Appointed as Norwich’s head coach in May 2017, Farke’s journey has been a capricious one since those days when he was playing as a striker in the lower leagues of Germany. He was prolific with SV Lippstadt but never made it to the top level.

“My technique was alright, I was good in the box and with free-kicks but I was limited by my pace,” he says, laughing. “In the early 2000s everyone in Germany was asking for quicker strikers so it wasn’t good for me!

“I was a striker between a No. 9 and a No. 10 but yes, I knew how to score.”

Management was never an ambition when he retired at the age of 31: he studied for a degree in economics at university as preparation for life after football.

“I was thrown in at the deep end with a coaching role at Lippstadt, doing a sporting director job at the same time as the club had no money.

“But as a player I was always thinking as a coach. I was constantly over-thinking tactical things. I’m not sure I was the easiest to handle as I challenged things and questioned decisions.”

Farke did succeed at Lippstadt, guiding them from the sixth division of German football to the fourth. An offer to take over Borussia Dortmund II was his reward in 2015.

“If I’m honest, I was successful early in my career as a manager and that helped me,” he says.

“If I’d got the feeling I couldn’t be the best at my job, I would have done something else.”

Farke is now reflecting on another promotion to the Premier League, and the preparations start now. This summer he is planning a proper break.

He works long hours, away from his partner and young children who still live in Paderborn, and admits management gives you no option but to be a “workaholic”.

“It’s not easy to relax,” he says. “I do a lot of running to clear my head. I like to watch the big golf tournaments, though I could never spend five hours on the course myself.

“I read a lot of literature and biographies. I’ve just finished One Hundred Years of Solitude by the Colombian author Gabriel García Marquez. I find them inspirational.”

Farke’s second promotion is even more admirable when you consider Norwich’s dismal finish to last year’s Premier League campaign.

After returning from lockdown in June, Norwich lost all their remaining nine games, scoring only one goal, and finished bottom.

“I couldn’t allow myself to suffer too long,” says Farke. “You’ve been playing in the best league in the world and then go down to the toughest league in the world. You have to create a new atmosphere.

“From the first day of pre-season it was important to be highly motivated and in this situation you have to show leadership.”

After relegation there were two major departures, with £38.5 million raised from the sales of Ben Godfrey to Everton and Jamal Lewis to Newcastle.

Farke spent just over £6 million on new signings, with the intention to recruit players who can develop under his style of play.

Usually operating with a 4-3-3 or 4-2-3-1 formation, Norwich overload the centre of the pitch and dominate the ball in an approach which mirrors that of Guardiola or Chelsea’s Thomas Tuchel.

“We don’t want to be a flag in the wind: we’ve always wanted to have clear principles on how to play,” says Farke. “You have to be flexible and adapt or you become a dinosaur.

“Our intention is always to be ahead of the wave, in order to be successful. The principles will be the same, from the academy to recruitment. The time for one-man shows in football is over, it has to be a team effort.”

Farke is quick to highlight the influence of Stuart Webber, Norwich’s excellent sporting director, and his coaching staff, while his players have also responded to the challenge.

Many individuals have stood out, from Teemu Pukki with his 25 goals to highly regarded defender Max Aarons.

An unsung player has been centre-back Grant Hanley: he missed four games at the start of the season with a hamstring injury and Norwich lost two of them. There have been only four league defeats since.

Oliver Skipp, the midfielder signed on loan from Tottenham, has been outstanding while playmaker Emi Buendia’s numbers underline his consistency, with 13 goals and 16 assists.

The big question now is whether Norwich can survive next season and avoid forever being dismissed as a “yo-yo club”. Indeed, after the Huddersfield demolition, the joke doing the rounds was that Norwich were perfectly placed to lift the Championship title in 2023.

“My gut feeling is that we will be much better prepared than two years ago,” says Farke. “After the last promotion we used it to sort out all the financial problems, invest in the infrastructure and extend the contracts of our younger players.

“We will have more experience this time and we can invest a bit more in the squad now.

“We will still have our financial restrictions but we can be more ambitious. We will have a much better chance than two years ago. The next step is to become a permanent member of the Premier League.”