New coach of Thailand national team: From alcoholic to hope of a football nation

The great shadow of a great father

Anthony's father, Alan Hudson, was one of the great men of English football in the 1970s. Alan Hudson is a former player of Arsenal, Chelsea and the England national team. During his career, he helped Chelsea win the Cup Winners' Cup and reached the FA Cup final with Arsenal. The former midfielder himself was twice named in the Premier League Team of the Year.

His son Anthony could not build such a brilliant career, not even reaching the highest level of English football. Anthony trained at West Ham but only played at youth level. After that, this midfielder went to the Netherlands to play for NEC Nijmegen but was not successful.

And finally, he accepted to play semi-professionally for a club in the US. As glorious as his father Alan's career was, for Anthony Hudson, everything was humble and forgettable. As Anthony Hudson once confided, because of being constantly compared to his father, he felt overwhelmed and led to wrong choices.

"My biggest obstacle was my low self-esteem. I didn't know how to overcome that situation. Everywhere I went, people told me how great my father was and started comparing me to him. I felt so small. People started saying that I could never be as good as my father. That really upset me. I could never build up my confidence and overcome those criticisms. I just wanted to be a normal player, but I never even did that," Anthony Hudson recalled.

Retiring from his football career at the age of 23, Anthony Hudson began to fall into the path of alcohol addiction. He spent a long time trying to quit, until he finally received help from a charity. Thanks to his perseverance, Anthony Hudson succeeded in 2005. Since then, this former player born in 1981 has found the light at the end of the road, becoming a professional coach.

Hudson apprenticed at small clubs in the US

Start from the smallest things

Hudson recalled: “I took some time to reflect on my decision to retire and realised that I still really loved football. Although I wasn’t a great player, my future could lie in becoming a good manager if I tried. I believed I could do it but at the same time, I knew it wouldn’t be easy to get started.”

As the 44-year-old coach shared, he had to start from the humblest of places. Anthony Hudson applied to be a youth coach at Leyton Orient, which was then just a semi-professional club in England. He then coached Diabos FC and was hired by several other teams in the US for short-term jobs. With perseverance, patience and progress, Anthony Hudson accepted everything, even the most humble jobs he still did. Because he understood, all were useful for his accumulation path.

“I was still very young and needed a lot of knowledge. So I went to America and worked with many people. The goal was to work hard so that one day I could become the best coach,” Anthony Hudson recalled. “The more I learned, the more I discovered . My vision of coaching became clearer.”

Anthony Hudson set out to pursue his dream career and never looked back. He signed up for a UEFA coaching course and used the last of his savings to cross the Atlantic to Europe to set up his own training programme.

Hudson was an assistant coach for the US national team.

Hudson rented a car and traveled around Europe. He visited the headquarters of the world's top football teams. There, he listened attentively to the instructions of experts, including two legends, Sir Alex Ferguson and Marcelo Bielsa.

His journey of accumulating knowledge gradually gained its first achievements, with the former midfielder being hired part-time by Tottenham’s youth team, then full-time at the age of 30 when Newport County signed him.

The bad news was that the coach lasted only five months before he was fired. The failure of his first official job left Anthony Hudson in a dilemma. “I understand that the manager is responsible for everything. The phone rings all the time, and you have no place to go after work,” Hudson recalled of his initial frustration when things didn’t go as planned.

In that moment of frustration, he was saved by Peter Taylor, one of the legendary coaches of English football. Peter Taylor was then the head coach of Bahrain national team, and invited Anthony Hudson to lead the U23 team of this country. And the 3 years from 2011 to 2014 helped the young coach Hudson build his name.

He led Bahrain U23 to the final of the Gulf U23 tournament, losing to Saudi Arabia in the final. Two years later, he replaced Peter Taylor to lead the Bahrain national team. It didn't take long for Anthony Hudson to win over West Asian fans with a ticket to the 2015 Asian Cup finals.

He then made a name for himself in New Zealand football, taking the country’s Under-17 and Under-20 teams to the World Cup, and Anthony Hudson made his mark at stops around the world before landing in Thailand.

At the age of 44, this coach has been through 11 stops, has experienced countless harsh jobs around the world. And certainly Thai football hopes that Anthony Hudson's diverse talent and experience will help them reap success, in the period when Thai football is standing at a crossroads...