How Carlos Corberan embraced life and football in England and with West Brom

The Albion head coach is about to embark on his third year in charge of the Baggies and is the longest-serving head coach since Tony Pulis. Only legendary duo Tony Mowbray and Gary Megson have managed the same since 2000.

Not only is the 41-year-old settled in England, and specifically in Birmingham where he resides – but he has already considered his sons’ eligibility to represent England.

“My two sons are British and Spanish, both born here,” says Corberan, who with wife Claudia has two sons, Marcos and Dario, the latter born this year. “I can stay here, I am one of those people not from England who can make his life in England.

“Not everyone who is not British can do it, because after Brexit it changed, but my two children are both able to make their lives here – and can even play for the national team!

“Me and my wife are both Spanish but they both have a nationality I don’t have! Imagine how many things this country has given to me. England. I have had the opportunity to develop me as a coach, a first coach. I met my wife here. My two children were born here. I am very pleased to have the possibility to come here.”

Claudia, Marcos and Dario very much have the Baggies bug, it is understood. They attend games home and away and, certainly in the case of the Corberan’s eldest, have begun to understand the feel of the club.

Two years on from his appointment, having just been sacked from a very short and ill-fated stint at Olympiacos, Corberan finds himself at the helm of a very different Albion.

Six games from a century in charge, it is “still West Bromwich Albion”, as he puts it. The badge hasn’t changed. But the club has changed direction, drastically, from even 12 months ago, let alone 24.

A year ago Shilen Patel and his Bilkul party had just entered negotiations to purchase the club from Guochuan Lai and Yunyi Guokai. That single, yet complex transaction will go down as one of the most significant moments in the club’s storied and proud 146-year history.

“For sure,” Corberan confirms when asked about how Albion’s direction had changed in the last year. “With the change of the owner changed the project of the club.

“It’s true that this club, in the previous year, was not in the financial challenge that this year the club was in, it had to reset. Now, a new owner with a new project, new ideas and different ways to make things – it’s still West Bromwich and it’s still a massive club, not because of us who occupy the chairs in the club now.

“I occupy the chair of the coach, there are chairs for the owner and others, but West Bromwich is bigger than any of us.

“The dimension of this (points to Albion’s Throstles badge on his chest) is the same, but the way to try and put the club where we want it to be, where it deserves to be, is different.”

Patel, who along with his partners and advisors are huge supporters of Corberan as an asset to the club, said recently he feels Albion belong in the Premier League but is acutely aware that position must be earned.

Asked about the owner’s public ambition, Corberan replies: “West Bromwich, as soon as you start to have the contact with the club, when you go to the stadium and know the history of the club, it’s a club which is massive.

“The work is must always be of our best to help the club to get to where we think it needs to be. After this process, we have more possibilities.

“One thing that makes England a special country in terms of football, there are a lot of clubs, massive clubs. What makes me feel proud is that I am at one of these big British football clubs.

“It is always our dream, and never it can change, to put this club where we want to put it.”

Corberan has now experienced Albion life under Lai and Patel but 10 years ago, in his very formative years as a coach, it was a very different club.

The Baggies had been a Premier League club since 2010, had been very competitive under Roy Hodgson, Steve Clarke and Pulis and would remain one until 2018. A decade ago Jeremy Peace, chairman since 2002, still held fort, but not for too much longer.

Corberan recalled the struggle to watch Premier League games while viewing the English game from afar, particularly those not the more traditional ‘big four’. But games, most often involving title-chasers against organised, stubborn and well-drilled Baggies sides, gave the young Spaniard a flavour of the club.

The Spaniard, for the first time, revealed he might have moved to England to work as an assistant around the time of 2010 to 2012, when he was working in the youth set-up at Villarreal. Instead, his passion took him around the globe, to the respectfully low-key leagues in Saudi Arabia, pre-boom, and Cyprus. He wondered if and when other shots at the big leagues would arrive. He adds: “When I was watching West Bromwich, it has always been a Premier League club, but because of my work as an assistant coach, I was working with a coach and we had two or three options to come to the Championship – we are talking about 2010, 2012, this moment in time. I had a couple of possibilities to come to England as an assistant.

“I was watching Premier League games, but I was in the lucky position to start, at 22, 23 years old in Villarreal to be in a professional environment and then into the first-team. Now I am 41, so time flies! I am talking about 15, 16 years ago.

“Now, everything changes. Watching Premier League around the world is easy. Before, it was a little bit more difficult.

“You were watching Premier League games, but it was maybe one game, not every single game. You have an idea of the clubs as clubs, but not in detail. In my mind there are plenty of clubs I would put in the same pack – big Premier League clubs.”

What struck Corberan most – and he immediately recalled the feeling when approached in October 2022 – was his first visit to The Hawthorns, with Leeds under Bielsa on New Year’s Day 2020, when the clubs were going head-to-head at the division’s summit, in a 1-1 draw.

It was a booming occasion and lived long in the Spaniard’s memory. Fast-forward more than two-and-a-half years, after a tireless job at Huddersfield and chastening experience in Greece, Corberan was ready for a break and family time. He was unmoved by other Championship interest – and then came Albion.

“What impacted me about West Bromwich, knowing they were a Premier League club, the first time I came here it impressed me a lot, when I came with Leeds,” the head coach adds.

“In this moment I was thinking ‘poof, what a club!’ I felt this now. Sometimes you get in the habit and you can forget about this, but I never forget that day. It impressed me a lot, the feeling of the stadium.

“You think ‘this is why they were in the Premier League’. I promise you that when I finished in Olympiacos – I’d been to Cyprus, and Saudi Arabia, and then Leeds and two years with Bielsa, after two years at Huddersfield and then Olympiacos – I was thinking ‘Carlos...calm’. Now is the moment to stop.

“After I stopped, the next weekend I received an offer to coach a team from another country. After I received another possibility to come back to the Championship.

“I was thinking it wasn’t the moment – I was going to prioritise my family, give them the time I otherwise couldn’t give them and take time to rest. Then appeared a couple of ideas, of Championship clubs – interest, not offers.

“Then, I wanted to go to Spain to rest. Then appeared the option to go to West Bromwich. I was like ‘come on, let’s go there and make our best’. The day I flew to Spain, I received a call to make an interview with West Bromwich.

“That day I was supposed to be with family and friends was the day of the interview so I didn’t see them! I came here. My mood changed straight away.

“If I didn’t have the memories of West Bromwich as a club in the Premier League, and the impact they had on me when I was with Leeds in the Championship, I might’ve said no, it’s still not the moment.

“Because it’s West Bromwich, I said to my wife ‘I can’t say no to them! I need to go.’ No way I can say no to this.”