Meet Harry Watling, Hartford Athletic’s first-year coach chasing perfection through perspective and empowerment

Harry Watling coaches from a person-first standpoint.

Watling, Hartford Athletic’s third head coach in as many seasons, understands that X’s and O’s are fundamental toa team’s success. But he also knows that building a winning mindset, empowering players and creating chemistry isn’t necessarily guaranteed, so Watling started off one of his earliest meetings with the team this spring with a demonstration. Before the players entered the room, he placed a $50 bill under one of the chairs.

“I told all all of the boys that they might have it underneath their chair,” the 31-year-old Englishman said. “I asked them how they felt. They said they felt excited. I said, ‘Do you feel nervous?’ They said, ‘No, I feel excited.’

“That’s how I want them to feel when they have the ball. I wanted to instill that mindset.”

Building up the confidence of his players is imperative to Watling. The first-time head coach learned early in his soccer career that he was better served on the sidelines than on the field. He previously coached for Chelsea and West Ham’s U-23 teams. He learned how to coach working under some of Europe’s premier coaches, including Jose Mourinho and Carlos Ancelotti. But that focus on people more so than the game itself? That comes from his mother, Sue.

Sue Watling, a stay-at-home mom, raised Harry with “love and affection” to make him “the best possible person.” When he started coaching at Chelsea at the age of 19, Sue would drive her son to and from practices and games, 45 minutes there and 45 minutes back. With Harry now in Hartford, Sue stays up through all hours of the night to watch the Athletic play.

“My mom brought me up like that to always get to know the person first before you judge them,” Watling said. “If you can get to know the person first, and you can understand their journey and what they’ve been through to get to this point ... I learned that from my mom, not any coaches.”

So far it has worked. Hartford is 2-0-1, with wins over the New York Red Bulls II and Miami FC.

Sue Watling constantly preached that you don’t truly know someone until you walked a mile in their shoes. That type of outlook is key for Watling. He understands that Major League Soccer is largely the goal for many of the young players on his roster, which is the youngest non-MLS reserve team in the USL Championship league. Watling wants to put them on the proper path to get there. He understands the USL is not his last coaching stop, either, but instead focuses on the next game, the next practice, as opposed to the bigger picture.

Perspective drives how Watling manages the team, from how players operate on the pitch to how they view their own roles. He had the team watch a video of Jamaica’s 4x100-meter track and field relay team in which Usain Bolt was often the third or fourth to run even though he’d almost always have the biggest impact on the race.

For that reason, Watling refers to his reserve and bench players as “game changers” because they might not start the game on the field, but the minutes they do play could be the most impactful.

“If you finish the game, you are as important as the ones who start,” Watling said.

Watling, who was named Hartford’s coach in January after the team’s previous manager Radhi Jaidi returned to the Premier League, does his best to inflate the team’s confidence. Subliminal messaging — like referring to his forwards as “Commandos” and “Marines” because they wear down the opposition’s first line of defense — plays a part in that.

He himself speaks with conviction. Ahead of Hartford’s home opener against the Pittsburgh Riverhounds SC on Saturday, Watling declared to the media that Pittsburgh’s season could start “next week” because the Athletic wouldn’t let them win. The teams tied 1-1, and Pittsburgh (0-1-1) is still winless.

“I think tactics can be really bogged down by too much detail for the players,” Watling said. “I can worry about that. I can break down a 3-4-3, a 3-5-2, a 4-3-3. That’s my problem to do that. For me, it’s about making my players confident to win their individual battle, to understand how to adapt and win their space. For me, I think that’s football.”

He demands bravery from the team, something he first spoke about in his introductory press conference in January. He’s also a self-described perfectionist. When asked what he hopes to get out of his experience coaching Hartford, Watling said he wants to coach a perfect game. It sounds abstract, but it’s quite rooted in reality. Watling wants his team to play a literal perfect game; dominating the ball, constant pressure, exciting scores, no goals allowed, clean play, so on and so forth. He said he came close to coaching one while at West Ham, but the team allowed a goal in the 75th minute.

Whether Hartford has the ingredients to make up that recipe for perfection remains to be seen, though the early reviews have been good. Like his coaching tactics, Watling has liked the mindset of the players more so than their performances on the field.

“There’s no fear in our approach,” Watling said on Friday. “Saturday against Miami, I had a sense. I walked into the locker room, there were no nerves. They were ready to go. And let’s be honest, no one thought we were going to do that. No one thought we were going to beat Miami in Miami. A draw would have been really successful. We knew if we won that game, we’d be up there.”

Bravery — that’s all Watling has wanted to see. It’s the first step toward building up a winning mindset. It could be the first step to perfection, too.

“That is always the goal for me,” Watling said. “To coach the perfect game of football.”

Shawn McFarland can be reached at smcfarland@courant.com.