Tony Pulis has provided a quite fascinating insight into his mind as he went into great detail about why Napoleon Bonaparte is one of his idols.
Since retiring from managing, Pulis has been doing a lot of media work, including his own podcast, but he also writes a regular column for the BBC.
The subject of this week’s entry wasn’t really anything to do with football and more to do with French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte.
Inside the excellently titled column ‘Why managers can learn a lot from leaders like Napoleon’, Pulis reveals how he first became obsessed with the French dictator after leaving Gillingham in 1990.
“Whatever I was doing, I always felt like I was learning, and not just by watching football around the world. I became an avid reader of sports books and also finding out about great leaders of men through history.
“So, as well as visiting Bayer Leverkusen, Athletic Bilbao and RB Leipzig – who back then had only just started their rise from the bottom tier of German football – I would analyse and investigate historic battles or events.”
I mean, that is just a fantastic paragraph isn’t it? That is full middle-aged living his best life. We presume he mixed this with playing golf and running a marathon.
“Napoleon Bonaparte really kept me busy. His attention to detail and his command of his generals was only superseded by his troops’ loyalty to him – they would literally die for him!”
Not to correct you Tony, but troops dying for their leaders is quite the point of the whole thing isn’t it? Perhaps a better example to use was when Napoleon returned from his first exile and when met with a battalion, they instead joined him rather than stopping him. Much like your return to Stoke.
And to be fair, exile on a remote island must be what managers out of work feel like, except Napoleon did not have the life raft of an appearance on Soccer Saturday.
“His 250th birthday was celebrated in Corsica in the summer of 2019, and a French newspaper invited me to go along and give a British perspective on how we see Napoleon as a leader and a person.”
Right, so there is a lot to unpack here and Pulis is quite vague on the details so we felt compelled to find out more.
It turns out that a reporter for Le Monde, a French newspaper, happened to discover that Pulis was a fan of historical world leaders and in particular Napoleon so invited him over.
Pulis, who was still managing Middlesbrough at the time we should add, travelled over to Napoleon’s birthday palace where he met a man who was 6ft 6’ and a direct descendant of Napoleon.
We are sure we can all agree that it is one of the great travesties of life that Pulis did not offer him a contract to play at centre-back and rob us of the chance to have Bonaparte marshalling the defence. He would probably be too focused on attack, though.
“Hated by many countries, but still adored by his followers, Napoleon also produced the Napoleonic Code, which is still the foundation of French civil law today.”
READ: Tony Pulis saying “I Know Him” about everyone is Peak Football Dad & weirdly comforting
Umm yes that’s right Tony but he was also responsible for up to 6.5 million deaths so swings and roundabouts. So annoying was he in fact that the British felt compelled to expel him to a remote island. Twice.
Much like Pulis’, Napoleon’s fall was expanding too quickly across Europe. The Battle of Waterloo is pretty much the same as Stoke being knocked out of the Europa League by Valencia in the round of 32. They finished 14th that season.
It’s not just Napoleon Pulis has a love-in for and when he’s not on the sidelines, it would appear he is travelling to remote parts of the world where battles once took place.
“One summer, I travelled out to Crimea to witness the scene of that tragic charge by the bravest of brave men,” he said of the Charge of the Light Brigade, which was narrowly ahead of the Britannia on a Tuesday night in the list of difficult places to get a result.
Pulis ends with some advice to his successors.
“You should never be afraid of dropping down a level the way I did, too. It is better to get a job, any job, than be out of football full-stop. That hasn’t changed since my day, either.”
Tell that to Sean Dyche who is too busy during Durex ads.
TRY A QUIZ: Can you name all 10 clubs that Tony Pulis has managed?