At one end of a training ground in Vashi, Navi Mumbai, the Mumbai City FC team sat in a circle, stretching as they cooled down after practice. Nearby a team support staff member collected the 30-odd footballs used during the session. Des Buckingham marched over, picked up one and headed over to one end of the field. It was time for his routine end-of-session-penalty kick.
Only this time, his shot sailed over the bar. On cue, from the group still stretching came a stray comment.
“I won’t mention who, but somebody just said something about age catching up to me,” Buckingham said.
At 37, Buckingham is the youngest head coach in the Indian Super League – and this is his second season in charge of Mumbai City. To put that number into perspective, he’s only three years older than the oldest player in the squad, 34-year-old Mourtada Fall, and a year younger than India’s star striker Sunil Chhetri.
In other words, Buckingham is young for a coach, but with nearly 20 years of experience under his belt, is an old coach.
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“If you’d say I have 20 years coaching experience over being 37-years-old, you’d say I’m a very experienced coach,” he said to Scroll.in, after the training session.
“It’s something that I’ve had all the way through up to this point. Generally, I’ve always found myself being younger than a majority of the people I coach. I’m now starting to tip the other side of that when I’m older than most of the people.”
Along the way, he’s made a strong connection with his players and picked up trophies.
Before his time in Mumbai, he led Melbourne City to the A-League title, was in charge of an Under-20 New Zealand team that beat the likes of Erling Haaland’s Norway to make an unexpected run to the Round of 16 at the U20 World Cup.
Recently, with Mumbai City, he helped the club become the first Indian team to win a match at the AFC Champions League. The club then finished runners-up at the Durand Cup ahead of the ISL season.
Central to his success as a coach, though, has been keeping his mind refreshed through activities outside football. And so, Buckingham is today a bonafide football coach, and a certified pilot and ski instructor.
“For me, it was always trying to get some kind of work-life balance. Even though I was young, I was 26 and working full-time at a club with four different roles, I was always trying to have something going on that was different to football,” he said.
“In Wellington (New Zealand), I lived five minutes away from the airport. For my 30th birthday, people I worked with booked me a practice flight. They had once asked me what would I have been if I wasn’t a coach and I think I said I’d have probably gone down into some kind of aviation stream – maybe a pilot since it always fascinated me.”
He remembers taking the first trial flight – a 40 minute journey in which he was allowed to take over the controls.
“They talked me into it by saying it was quite a simple training – although it wasn’t going to be,” he said.
“You have to go through some training, do some tests and get your license. I took three-and-a-half years, had over 100 flying hours, I flew in tests, cleared theory exams about things I had no idea about at the time. This had no crossover to my normal life. But I’m glad I did it. It was a wonderful thing to have.
“When I had some family come over, I was able to fly my dad over Milford Sound. He trusts me, but I think I tested the relationship of trust between father and son,” he added with a laugh.
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But this was only after he was a certified ski instructor – which happened by sheer chance.
“An old teacher of mine went to do it (in Andorra) and asked me if I’d like to go. He had taken me for 10 odd school trips prior to that, so I knew him pretty well.”
And he’s also worked as a sports science teacher (in which he has a degree). It’s something that helped him in his journey to become a coach – something he hadn’t expected.
“I was a student at Cherwell Valley College (in Oxford), and had an opportunity as a part-time lecturer to pretty much go in and lecture students that were two-three years younger than me. That was quite an experience. I was 21 and teaching 16-19 year olds,” he recalled.
“But that part-time role became a full-time role after a year. That exposed me to (knowledge) of how to help people to learn. At the same time, I was doing my coaching – what I didn’t expect was that it was all a part of my coaching journey.”
His early coaching roles were closer to home, where he was the youth coach for Oxford United. Later on, he progressed from assistant to head coach of Wellington Phoenix in the A-League, before returning to England where he was the assistant coach of then Premier League club Stoke City’s U23 team.
“I was surrounded by so many good people, coaches, I didn’t expect it to turn into a career as such, it was something that just snowballed and progressed as I did my badges. Opportunities came up and hopefully I did a good enough job that people wanted me to come into that environment as well,” he said.
“That’s continued all the way till now. I’ve been swallowed up by City Football Group. I moved to Melbourne and then got the opportunity to be here. It’s been a wonderful journey, but because I was surrounded by wonderful people to get to where I am.”
Where he is now, is in his second season of the ISL. Mumbai City have plenty of expectations on them. But Buckingham is relishing the chance to add another feather to his young cap.
Young, but still a veteran.
As he added, “Still young, still a long time ahead of me. But it’s also been a long journey for me so far.”