Nearly men 30: cosmopolitan manager Constantine who turned down Port Vale in 2016

A book by well-travelled manager Stephen Constantine reveals he turned down the Port Vale manager’s job back in 2016.

At time of writing, Port Vale are looking for a new manager and with Stephen Constantine talking about an approach from Port Vale in his autobiography, we felt it was the right time to produce this feature.

It’s 2016. Port Vale are under the ownership of Norman Smurthwaite and with many senior players offered reduced terms and opting to leave, manager Rob Page has moved on to Northampton Town. Vale are on the look for a new boss and according to Constantine, he was approached.

Some readers may not be aware of Constantine but he has a long and distinguished career overseas. He’s been a national team manager of the likes of India and Sudan. He’s also won promotion in Cyprus, is a member of FIFA’s elite coaching panel and was named as Sports Illustrated coach of the year.

Whether the above would translate to success in League One is another matter and certainly the overseas coach that Vale eventually opted for – Bruno Ribeiro – struggled after a bright start.

So why did Constantine not fancy the job. According to his book one reason was the fact that Vale only had seven contracted players at the time (Ribeiro embarked on a massive rebuilding job with very mixed results). In an interview with Inside Futbol he added that: “I turned down the Port Vale job because firstly, I had given my word to come back to India.

“I hadn’t signed anything but I had given (them) my word that I was coming. The second thing was that they were not allowing me to bring any staff and that was an issue.”

For those reasons, Constantine never came to Burslem and the Valiants were eventually relegated under Ribeiro only managing to return to League One in 2022.

Image: OwenAmosBBC, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons