Paul Clement idolised Dave, his England footballer father. Then, aged 10, his world changed

Paul Clement’s home office is a museum of modern football. Medals from Chelsea, Paris Saint-Galermain, Real Madrid and Bayern Munich glint in a glass cabinet; a replica of the 2014 Champions League trophy sits alongside a Premier League manager-of-the-month award and a man-of-the-match trophy Didier Drogba pressed into his hands for support during a difficult Stamford Bridge spell. The newest curios are bright yellow Brazil caps, eight and counting, accumulated while assisting Carlo Ancel-otti as the national team prepares for this summer’s World- Cup. Yet amid the gleaming proof of a life in the elite game, the most treasured items are the oldest: five England caps, a No 2 shirt, and a photograph of a four-year-old Paul wearing one of those caps while standing next to his father, Dave Clement, at a Christmas tree in 1976.

Dave was the formidable QPR right-back who helped take the 1975-76 title race to the final day, earned five England caps and was renowned for a physique sculpted by squash courts, road runs and relentless push-ups. “Ray Wilkins told me he roomed with Dad on England duty and said he was unbelievable: ‘Come on, Ray, let’s do some press-ups,’” Paul recalls. Paul’s childhood memories are fragmentary—waiting beside the training pitch, sensing pride when his father watched him play for primary-school sides—but they end abruptly on a March morning in 1982. Ten-year-old Paul woke to find the house in chaos; he was told he would not be going to school, and then his grandfather explained that the man he idolised was dead.

The previous months had been brutal. A broken leg sustained in January 1982 while playing for Wimbledon had left Dave, 34, in a full-length cast, fearing the end of a career already sliding from QPR’s title chase to the old Third- Division struggle. Relegation worries, shrinking wages and uncertainty over how to support his family gnawed at a man who had lost a brother to suicide three years earlier. The coroner recorded depression exacerbated by football-related anxiety; Dave had convinced himself he had cancer, though pathology found none. Paul remembers being driven to London Zoo that day with his three-year-old brother Neil, “in a daze”, while the adults tried to shield them.

The tragedy made Paul the second active England full international to die after Munich 1958, preceded only by Laurie Cunningham seven years later. It also shaped a career Paul never imagined. He played semi-pro football, realised at 14 he would not reach the top, and channelled his drive into PE teaching and coaching. A part-time role at Chelsea’s academy snowb-alled into full-time work at Fulham, a return to Cobham, and rapid promotion from under-16s coach to first-team assistant under Guus Hiddink and then Carlo Ancelotti. The Italian’s trust took Paul to Paris, Madrid, Munich and now Brazil, where World-Cup preparation awaits.

“Even when I went into Chelsea and Fulham, I thought I might have a career in youth development,” Paul says. “I never thought I’d get to this level.” Four managerial posts—Derby County, Swansea City, Reading and Belgian side Cercle Brugge— lasted less than a year each, but his partnership with Ancelotti has yielded a Champions- League medal and, imminently, a global stage with Neymar and company. Somewhere between the academy and the Bernabéu he found time to guide Swansea to a Premier-League manager-of-themonth award, tangible proof that a surname synonymous with English football fortitude has now earned its own coaching stripes.

Fifty years on from Dave’s debut against Wales—QPR were top of the First Division that week—R’s supporters staged a reunion. Paul’s mother Patricia received a commemorative shirt with No 2 on the back; the FA later handed her a red legacy cap numbered 917 to mark Dave’s place in England’s chronological roll. Paul’s own son, David, took it all in. “Our dad would be proud that both of his boys have had good careers in football,” Paul says of himself and Neil, who played 103 Premier-League games for West Bromwich Albion. “And he would be proud of everything our mum has done for us.”

Paul keeps a 1970s Norwegian television clip in which his father, articulate and forward-thinking, predicts English football’s commercial future and warns academy players to stay in school because “you’ve got to be prepared for the worst”. The footage also catches Dave teaching young Paul to putt and laying a driveway with Patricia. “Family must always come first,” he insists. The words echo across four decades to a home office where new Brazil caps keep arriving and a son who never got to ask his father “Why?” or “How bad were you?” channels the answer into every training session.