Patrick Kisnorbo has always been driven to succeed, and his coaching debut with Troyes in France’s top tier is just the latest step on that journey. In this feature published on the eve of the Isuzu UTE A-League Grand Final in May, Tom Smithies hears from some of those closest to Kisnorbo about the making of the man.
There’s a certain irony in the fact that Melbourne City’s training base was, until last July, at La Trobe University in the northern suburbs of Melbourne – the fields to which Patrick Kisnorbo reported in 2013 having signed for what was then Melbourne Heart.
The defender routinely dubbed a warrior by his coaches in Europe was returning after a decade away, a very different figure to the young centre-back, who in 2003 had trodden exactly the same La Trobe turf in his determination to make a career in Europe.
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Having secured a trial at Scottish club Heart of Midlothian at 22, Kisnorbo spent six weeks training daily in preparation with Fabian Incantalupo, whose goals in the 1985 NSL Grand Final had won Brunswick Juventus’s only Championship, pursuing a programme of stamina, strength and power.
As a window into the single-minded determination of Kisnorbo, those six weeks speak volumes about a player who has now become a coach with instant success. The trial at Hearts was so successful that he almost immediately was thrust into the first team; six weeks on he was playing in the UEFA Cup against Zeljeznicar Sarajevo at a packed Tynecastle.
Almost 20 years later, Kisnorbo is on the verge of winning consecutive doubles for the first time since the A-League Men began, his coaching career marked by the same singular drive and determination to succeed.
It is a drive that means he has little time for anything he sees as frivolous or distracting from the task in hand, and can be withering towards anyone or anything he thinks could disrupt that pursuit of success.
And yet he is fiercely protective of his dressing room, is venerated by his players, and is a loyal, passionate and dedicated friend according to those who have entered his inner circle.
At Hearts he formed a tight band with right-back Alan Maybury and midfielder Scott Severin; all in their early 20s, “we knew what we wanted and we enjoyed ourselves,” Maybury recalls now for KEEPUP.
“Paddy is a really good guy – what you see is what you get, there’s no airs and graces. I saw him a couple of years ago and he was telling me about the ‘City way’ of playing.
“As a player he understood that the fans would give their right arm to be out there playing and so that’s what he did, and the fans loved him for it.”
For two years, Kisnorbo and Maybury were part of a successful side; doing well enough that manager Craig Levein had been lured south to take over Leicester in the English Championship. Within months he had signed Kisnorbo, Maybury and team-mate Mark De Vries.
“Paddy is extremely clear in what he wants, and very comfortable doing what is necessary,” adds Maybury. “He’d be up early to make phone calls home to Australia so then he’d go to the gym before training. It wasn’t how we did things but that never bothered him.”
Throughout his career that single-mindedness has pushed him to achieve through maximising his attributes, notably his leadership and physical strength – even though he is shorter than the average centre-back in English football.
After winning numerous player of the year awards at Leicester, Kisnorbo signed for Leeds United where fellow Australian Neil Kilkenny was already installed.
“As a team we could pass the ball but mix it up as well – we had players who could put their head in like Richard Naylor and Paddy,” Kilkenny tells KEEPUP. “From goalkicks I used to stand back and just admire them coming over the top of me and heading the ball clear.”
Kisnorbo was signed for Leeds by Simon Grayson, not just as a defender but as a dressing room leader too. He and Naylor became Grayson’s enforcers off and on the pitch.
That kind of seniority made it likely he would at least consider coaching, and Grayson is not surprised at his success.
“As a player you think you want to become a coach and a manager but you tend to ask yourself, hand on heart are you ever going to be right for it?” he tells KEEPUP.
“All I would say about Paddy is that he had all the qualities to go into coaching. I’m not just talking about the technical side of it all and his understanding of the game because he certainly had all of that, he played at a real good level.
“What he did have was the dedication to do his badges, he had the intensity, he was like a sponge listening to everything that you were saying. But he was a good man manager as well. He’s good with people and that’s one of the biggest parts of being a coach or manager. So he had everything heading towards that direction.”
Grayson, who is still in touch with Kisnorbo, tried to sign him again for Preston in 2013, but Kisnorbo – having suffered a series of injuries – had elected to return home and sign for Melbourne Heart.
When the fledgling club was bought by the City Football Group and rebranded, executives were struck by the presence and demeanour of the Heart captain. There were certain moments, such as during a game where Kisnorbo felt a team-mate was being riled by the opposition in a way that went beyond the usual cut and thrust of on-field banter.
Stepping into the eyeline of the opposition head coach, Kisnorbo spat out three words. “This stops. Now.”
It did.
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He has become something of a City Group project; retiring as a player he became youth team assistant coach, then the women’s team assistant coach.
Promoted to their head coach, he oversaw a title win in his first year, then switched to be the men’s side assistant – first to Warren Joyce and then Erick Mombaerts. If Joyce was appointed to “clean out the stables” of clashing personalities, as one colleague puts it, Mombaerts’s brief was to play football the City way; Kisnorbo, who is still in regular contact with Mombaerts, loved it.
When the Frenchman quit due to COVID, the planned ascension happened a year earlier than expected.
So far Kisnorbo as head coach has delivered remarkable success on the field, thanks in part to his recruitment. Hearing from Joyce that former Arsenal full-back Carl Jenkinson was potentially available on loan from Nottingham Forest, and facing an injury crisis, Kisnorbo rang Jenkinson and persuaded him to come, literally the next day.
A few hours after arriving, Jenkinson came on as a substitute against Central Coast Mariners, prevented a certain goal, scored a goal, played for 32 minutes and became involved in a heated exchange with Mariners boss Nick Montgomery. “Now that,” Kisnorbo was heard to say, “is exactly the sort of character we need.”
Jenkinson himself has enjoyed the time since enormously. “Generally in life I like people like that who commit to something and give it everything,” he says. “PK puts so much time and effort into preparing his team for games.
“I’ve really enjoyed playing for him and also for his coaching staff. Everyone plays their part. It’s a real good group of staff at the club. Obviously that’s a big factor into why the club’s generally been successful.”
The football they play is powerful, skilful and successful. So far, though, it hasn’t persuaded huge numbers of Melbournians to pledge their allegiance to the City shade of blue, and there are interesting questions to be raised around the profile of their coach in that context.
Just a fortnight ago Kisnorbo bristled in a press conference at a fairly anodyne question about City’s record against the top four in the A-League, and told the reporter that he “couldn’t care less” what was written.
For a club still developing a true sense of identity to set it apart from Melbourne Victory, it’s arguable such an approach is less than helpful. Grayson, it should be noted, has some sympathy with his former player.
“I think the majority of coaches and managers would prefer just to be doing the work on the grass, doing the work behind the scenes and going home,” he said.
“But the way that football’s developed, especially in the last 15 years since I’ve been a coach or manager, the scrutiny that you’re under for one good decision, one bad decision, it all gets highlighted tenfold. And you have to deal with that.
“Paddy is a quiet person externally but internally is very dedicated, very passionate, and very driven. I’m sure he would like to get away with doing no media work and just concentrate on players, but it’s the way that football is – especially at such a big club in Australia as Melbourne City. If he wants to move his career forward in the future and go somewhere else, maybe it’s something that he has to deal with.”
The likelihood is that such a move will come sooner rather than later; for now Kisnorbo is one game away from becoming the first coach to win consecutive A-League Men doubles, but irrespective of the Grand Final outcome his body language is of a coach for whom this stage will shortly become too small.
As a player, all of Kisnorbo’s talking came through his actions. As a coach, the words he uses to his players are clearly very effective. And having reinvented himself several times already since his debut for South Melbourne in 2001, few would bet against this most driven of individuals joining the ranks of Australians coaching successfully overseas.
