Meet the manager whisperer: Confidant to the top coaches

By Adam Bate

In the hushed corridors of elite football, where every twitch of a facial muscle is analysed and every result can shift the tectonic plates of a career, Ray Power has become the unseen companion to some of the sport’s most scrutinised figures. The Irishman, author of The Invisible Game – a text that reportedly rests on the desks of only the game’s most senior managers – has carved out a singular vocation: professional confidant to coaches who cannot afford to show weakness in public.

Power’s work begins where press-conference platitudes end. “I have had managers admit to me that they have sat in the car on the way home, pulled over and cried because that was their only private space where they could have that release,” he tells me. The admission is startling, yet it illuminates the isolation that accompanies the top job. Non-disclosure agreements prevent him from naming clients, but within the industry his reputation is iron-clad.

A former developer of coaching pathways in Ireland and Asia, and a collaborator with Sunderland on a youth project in Tanzania, Power now spends much of his time in one-to-one dialogue with Premier League bosses. The rhythm of contact varies: one manager phones every few days for a “deep dive into everything”; another contracts him for six-week sprints focused on a single tactical or behavioural knot. A third checks in monthly, reassured simply by the knowledge that an external sounding board exists.

The conversations are part therapy, part strategy lab. A manager cannot vent at home that a centre-back refuses to take the ball from the goalkeeper; domestic partners, Power notes, have “kids with temperatures and missing keys” to worry about. Nor can a coach always seek counsel inside the training ground. “In that environment, it can become a bit of echo chamber,” Power says. Instead, he offers what he calls “the inner face” – a space where the mask can slip without consequence.

Power’s small-group webinars for coaches operate under Chatham House rules. Ten to twelve managers from different leagues meet online, ensuring no two rivals share the same screen. Guest speakers have included Brendan Rodgers and Eddie Jones. Yet the real growth area is the private consultancy: dissecting press-conference footage, rehearsing persuasive communication with dressing-room leaders, or stress-testing what-if scenarios. When one prospective client hesitated, Power sent a 12-minute video deconstructing his television interview; a week later the coach’s public remarks mirrored the advice verbatim. They have worked together ever since.

Legacy, Power observes, preoccupies many of his clients. In a profession where tenure is fragile, managers seek to anchor their reputations beyond trophies: visibility at the academy, conversations with parents in the car park, public displays of gratitude that echo Jurgen Klopp’s spontaneous pub visits. Conversely, those climbing the ladder ask how to differentiate a mid-table side shackled to the same 4-2-3-1 mid-block as everyone else. Power’s answer is to weaponise curiosity: “How are you going to stand out unless you go in a particular direction?”

The common thread, he insists, is self-awareness. Elite coaches “tend to be very aware of their blind spots”; it is the upwardly mobile, still proving themselves, who struggle to concede a tactical misstep or a lost authority. Yet all inhabit a world where control is partial and scrutiny total. “The mask always has to be on for them,” Power says. His role is to let them remove it, if only for an hour, and walk back into the arena unburdened.

Ray Power, the manager whisperer, will never take a bow on the touchline. He does not need to. The quiet phone calls, the late-night dissections of body language, the gentle questions that help a coach decide whether “we” have become “they” – these are the invisible transactions that keep the game’s most impossible job just about survivable.