**Oliver Glasner survived a life threatening head injury and a challenging start to life in football management to get to where he is now.**
The Crystal Palace boss was named the Premier League’s manager of the month for September and guided the Eagles to the FA Cup last season, as well as a 19-match unbeaten run in all competitions.
But the 51-year-old’s career began back at small town side SV Ried in his native Austria, where he played more than 500 times before becoming the club’s boss in 2014.
Glasner’s friend Thomas Reifeltshammer played with, and for, the former Eintracht Frankfurt manager at Ried, but says Glasner’s start to football management was not without difficulties.
“When he first came in, we struggled,” Reifeltshammer says.
It was Glasner’s unwavering confidence in his beliefs that eventually saw Ried finish sixth in the Austrian Bundesliga, however – a respectable finish for a small club punching well above its weight.
“At first, I remember he was saying forget everything you did in the last one or two years, he will show us how he wants to play football and we had to trust in him,” said Reifeltshammer.
“He was very sure of what he wanted. One big advantage with him is he is a very good human being. Everyone was listening to him.”
Those qualities had already been evident during his playing career too, Reifeltshammer insists. “Already at this time, you could see our coach was talking a lot to him and you could see already that he overthinks the game, you know what I mean?
“He was already thinking like a coach and you could already see that he will become a football coach after his playing career.
“He was a little bit more of a quiet person but when he’s speaking, he was very clear and on point so his messages came into the into the team and everyone was listening.”
A serious head injury had earlier forced Glasner into retirement from playing. Reifeltshammer played in that game and recalled the frightening night his then captain was rushed to hospital.
“At the time, it didn’t seem that bad,” Reifeltshammer remembers.
“It came afterwards, when we were in the hotel and then the physio realised that he was having a real problem and brought him to the hospital and actually saved his life.”
Oliver Glasner as a player at SV Ried (Photo by Mathias Kniepeiss/Getty Images)
Glasner would stay for just one season in charge before leaving for fellow Austrian club LASK. “All the players and everyone knew that he will have a big career and he had to leave and yeah, we just had the best wishes for him,” Reifeltshammer remembers.
Regardless of what the future holds for Glasner, whose current deal at Palace runs out next summer, his impact on those he has worked with stretches right back to his early days in Austria.
Reifeltshammer, who went on to working as sporting director for SV Ried before becoming a teacher, says Glasner’s calm demeanour has taught him plenty about how to handle footballers – and schoolchildren.
“Yes, like being calm most of the time, as I try to be, and giving the players the right answers and everything,” he says when asked what lessons he has taken from his years spent with Glasner.
“How you treat the people around you. It makes a big impact, like how do the players feel in a club? Not only as a football player, but also as a human being.
“I think that is the thing I took the most from him.”