Gould dares to dream the impossible dream

FACE TO FACE; Ian Stafford talks to the new Wales manager

You have to use one of three nails sticking out of a wall if you want to hang your jacket up in Bobby Gould's office at the Football Association of Wales. Even the most optimstic of estate agents would refer to the new manager's "bijou" quarters as in need of an instant and major facelift.

This description refers as much to Welsh football itself as to the state of the room from which both Gould and Wales hope to begin a footballing resurrection, preferably starting with a win over Moldova tomorrow night in Cardiff. The majority of managers might take offence to the writer eyeing, with thinly-disguised surprise, the bits of sellotape stuck to the walls, the blocked-up fireplace, and the distinct lack of pictures, posters, ornaments, or anything, except for one china model of Ian Rush, sitting on the window sill and gazing out across Westgate Street and towards Cardiff Arms Park.

But not Bobby Gould. Reading my thoughts immediately, he joins in. "Do you know, when I held my first press conference here, I asked the staff to provide 12 cups and saucers for the press," he said, leaning back and smiling. "Nobody could find that amount. Later, I said I wanted to see Ceefax on television. They said: `What?' Yes, you've guessed it, there was not one single television set here in this whole building."

He has to ask the woman at the Welsh tennis office, next door on the third floor, for some sugar, and then leans over to my cup of coffee to reinforce his point. "What would you like me to stir your coffee with, my biro or this marker pen?"

Welcome to the wonderful world of Welsh football, and a country which has failed to win a game in 12 months. It is a run of such stunning consistency that Wales sit forlornly at 52nd place in the Fifa world rankings. Looking around his depressing surroundings, Gould is entitled to make this summary.

"This organisation's not been managed well. It's been allowed to stagnate and Alun Evans [the former secretary of the FAW] has to accept the responsibility, because this nation should not be where it is today. The most intriguing thing Dean Saunders did, when he heard that I had been appointed the new manager, was to try and contact me at home, and not here at the FAW. He was taken aback when my wife, Marjorie, told him that I wasn't pottering around in my garden, because I actually worked from my office."

The environment may be depressed, but the mood is anything but. After a 20-month absence from the game, resulting from his sudden resignation as Coventry's manager back in 1993, Gould is delighted to be back. His reasons are not the usual ones. Yes, he missed the game, particularly towards the end of his self-enforced exile.

"I missed the players, the tactics, the team selections and the chance to pit my wits against others," he said. But he also needed the break and the challenge, as he puts it, of "survival" outside football.

"I'd been a manager since October 1981, when I took over at Bristol Rovers," he said. "I'd been at the sharp end for a long, long time. Like everyone else, I was working crazy hours because we all feel so insecure in football management. I quit Coventry because I'd had enough of managing a club that was prevented from going places because of its policy to sell all the time. But I also needed to be out of the firing line. Everybody deserves a rest some time in their life."

Although hardly on his uppers, Gould still needed to generate an income. Within a few months, he discovered a new lease of life in the media, writing newspaper columns and throwing himself into a pundit's roles both at Sky Sports and with BBC Radio Five Live. The fact that clubs were not exactly queueing up for his services did not bother him.

"I'm philosophical about that. Only Bournemouth expressed real interest, but that didn't work out. I also made soundings about the Arsenal job, but the feedback wasn't positive. With me, I always try and be happy doing whatever I do. Besides, I was only interested in a manager's job that I really wanted to do."

If circumstances had been different, Gould's absence might have ended a little earlier with his application for the Bolton manager's job left vacant by Bruce Rioch. "It was my type of job," he said. "It was against the odds, which is where I've been before. But Bolton were cruel. Although four or five of us were interviewed, they knew what they wanted all along.

"During the interview they asked me why I wanted the job. I was trying to tell them, but kept being interrupted, first by cups of tea, then by sandwiches, and finally by the telephone. People kept bursting into the room all the time and, finally, I was told that the interview had to finish because of other commitments.

"Worst of all, I bumped into Alan Smith [the new Wycombe manager, who was also looking for employment] in the lobby. We just looked at each other and were gobsmacked. The whole event left me flabbergasted." Gould's perennial smile leaves him for a moment as he seeks out an opinion. "Should that be allowed to happen?"

Happily, his confidence intact, the interview for the Welsh post went rather better. "I know it's a new departure for me, but I really fancied it, partly because it was another level for me, but also because I knew that it was a job that needed man-management. It was a colossal opportunity."

Flicking open a diary which has followed Gould's every move in football, he reads from it. "I told the six-man committee that this was the most vital appointment they'd ever make in Welsh football, I said that they'd have to be visionary, and had to look so far forward it was frightening. I then asked them if they all had a dream."

The Martin Luther King bit did the trick, and Gould now finds himself with a two-and-a-half year contract at the helm of a team that boasts world-class players but has gone nowhere. "The team's had big names, sure, but not the right blend and balance. They've got to feel important because it's obviously not been conveyed to them before."

Appointing Ian Rush and Neville Southall as joint coaches was clearly not for cosmetic reasons. "I went to eyeball them both at their homes, and left highly delighted. They are so bitterly disappointed and frustrated about the past few years, and they've got one last chance to get it right with me." They may be joined by some unlikely Welshmen, if Gould's hopes to follow Jack Charlton's example bears fruit.

He is duty-bound not to name names, but is excited about the response to his announcement that anyone with the most slender of connections to the principality would be considered for selection. "Some big names have spoken to me, but they'll have to really want to play for Wales," he adds. "But yes, I'm very excited."

That is all he asks from his current crop of players tomorrow night. "I want to see commitment, drive and passion. And I want the team to show me why they are playing for Wales."

Admitting that a few tears are certain to fill his eyes when he walks out tomorrow night in front of a noisy National Stadium crowd, Gould, who is originally from the Black Country, believes that he is a far better man, let alone football manager, for his experiences.

"I am more relaxed now than ever before in management, and I think that boils down to the break and the fact that, as an individual, I survived outside the game, I can't tell you what a confidence-booster that has been for me."

As you leave the office, you suddenly notice a Welsh dictionary and a "Teach Yourself Welsh" book on the mantlepiece. Although Gould will tell you that being "a professional" is more important for this job than coming from Wales, he is still trying to ingratiate himself with the locals. "I've learned `Land of my Fathers' in English," he says before suddenly pulling out a leek from his desk drawer.

"I don't want to be labelled a turnip," he adds. `But I suppose I could end up as a leek!"