“I wasn’t like this before,” says Tottenham Hotspur head coach Robert Vilahamn. “I wasn’t a good professional athlete. I wasn’t a good leader or person when I was younger. I was kind of snobby. I thought I knew everything. I’ve taken a journey and developed how I want to be as a coach.”
The 41-year-old has been on a journey from player to coach, teacher to entrepreneur. Such learnings have shaped how Vilahamn manages his Women’s Super League side. Before a historic FA Cup semi-final clash against Leicester on Sunday, he sat down with The Athletic to share his story.
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At 16 years old, Vilahamn, who had never travelled outside his small childhood village of Skalhamn, Sweden, moved 130 kilometres (80 miles) south to Gothenburg. He had his own apartment and a full-time salary as a professional footballer. It was a far cry from his family’s humble beginnings where his father worked at the harbour, driving a forklift truck, while his mother, who died nine years ago from cancer, stayed at home trying to make sure there was food on the table for his six siblings.
“The only thing I did was play football with my siblings, cousins and neighbours in the garden,” Vilahamn says looking out over the immaculate pitches at Tottenham’s training ground in north London. “We didn’t have anywhere to go. Football was the only thing I knew. I didn’t meet anyone outside that small village until I moved.”
Vilahamn, who followed in the footsteps of his older brother Lars Fredrik Risp, a former Sweden international, played in the country’s top division as a teenager and for the national youth team. Vilahamn was, in his words, “a huge talent… among the top five most talented players with Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Kim Kallstrom”.
But he struggled. He lived on his own, did not eat breakfast or cook, ordered pizza all the time, drank beer and went out with his schoolmates at the weekend. “I didn’t have the control when I was younger,” he tells The Athletic. “It was a professional club but they didn’t see the whole picture. I couldn’t handle it.”
It’s why Vilahamn’s management is based on ensuring he is across the details as well as seeing the big picture with his crop of players.
“People ask me about coaches I look up to,” he says. “I cannot actually name a single coach whom I try to copy. Everything is built on how I was, what I could have needed in those situations, what the players need now, how I want to act and treat people. It’s more about my life journey, which makes me the leader I am, rather than any other leader.”
While his team-mates who had played for Gothenburg with him moved abroad to play in Italy, Greece and Scotland, Vilahamn moved to Sweden’s second division, first joining Bodens in 2003, but he struggled to secure a starting XI spot. “I was on the bench because I was not professional. I was not behaving well,” says Vilahamn, who was nicknamed ‘mini Anelka’ for his poor attitude.
Vilahamn decided to drop down a division. The striker, whose role models growing up were Liverpool’s Robbie Fowler and Tottenham’s Jamie Redknapp, won the Svenska Guldskon (Swedish Golden Boot) for scoring the most goals (27 in 22 games) across Sweden’s top three leagues during his time at third-division outfit Ytterby. But despite interest from other clubs, Vilahamn decided not to continue his playing career.
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“My dream was so far away,” he says looking at a picture of him holding the Guldskon trophy. “I couldn’t handle not being a professional (footballer) like my friends and brother.
“I just feel like I wasted my career and I can never have it back. I had very strong regrets because I knew I could have been Zlatan. I was very good.”
But Vilahamn used the regret as fuel to drive his coaching career.
“I realised it’s a benefit because I could start my coaching career early,” he says, his eyes drifting to look out of the window. “If that was the right choice to put me in this chair at Tottenham, then I’m quite happy with that decision. So no regrets anymore.”
Vilahamn, who wasn’t fully ready to stop playing back then, was encouraged by his wife, Sofi, to think seriously about the future. At around the age of 25, he continued as a player-coach for his local team but also took two university courses to become a physical education and geography teacher, as well as a football coach, while also working extra hours as a supply teacher. In that time, Sofi also gave birth to twins, Kaspian and Alvina. “I went all-in with everything,” he says.
The experience gained from being a player-coach for semi-professional Ytterby still influences Vilahamn’s management style. One of the challenges was playing and coaching his friends.
“I put my best man on the bench one game,” he says. “He didn’t want to hang out with me for a few days. It was tricky being professional in a local semi-professional team.” It was the first occurrence of Vilahamn having to manage expectations.
“That’s the same talk I have now. Sometimes I feel like I am friends with the players, but of course I’m not. I feel like we are together but I always need to have these discussions every week with players. I just hope they can judge me on if I’m a good coach, and they can also be angry at me if I don’t play them.”
Vilahamn retired from playing football in 2015 so he could focus on the next step, coaching the under-19s at Orgryte, one of the best clubs in Gothenburg. With young players, he recognised the need to coach according to a playing style, in his words, “their own curriculum”. He brought 10 of Orgryte’s academy players with him to his next coaching role at third-division side Qviding and also promoted five of their youth players to the senior team.
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It was here that Vilahamn, who draws comparisons with the development of 21-year-old Grace Clinton, realised the hard work invested in nourishing young talent pays off, that their trajectories are not always linear and older plays can help them on their journey. “But you need to trust them,” he says.
Vilahamn’s philosophy regarding squad make-up, however, has changed over the years.
“Everything I’ve done, I’ve learned from and taken with me to the next club,” he says. “In the beginning, I just wanted young players but I realised I need passionate players that are present and want to develop. I don’t need younger players — I need players with the right mindset.”
Vilahamn cites Tottenham’s 33-year-old goalkeeper Rebecca Spencer. Spencer was dropped in December after the 7-0 and 4-0 defeats against Manchester City and Manchester United, but pulled off a heroic shootout performance against City to send Spurs through to this weekend’s FA Cup semi-final.
“The main thing for Becky was to stay professional,” says the Spurs boss. “Don’t make a scene, don’t be too down and train well. She did that. She didn’t complain. She wanted to have an explanation, I gave it to her, and she just went back to training, supporting Barbora Votikova and waiting for her chance. You saw the penalty shootout (against City in the quarter-finals, which Spurs won after a 1-1 draw), how she can be so present and calm and still act in a good way. She’s impressing me very much right now.”
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Vilahamn believes his teaching career — he has a master’s in education — which he continued alongside semi-professional football coaching for five years, has helped him from a human and football perspective.
“You need to find ways to motivate people,” he says. “My teaching experience gave me tools to sell ideas to the players, read them, and see how I can reach them.
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“My game model is also built as a curriculum with principles, sub-principles and sub-sub-principles. It makes me have a plan and good game model to always go back and forth with.” Vilahamn also feels such a model helps collaboration with his staff because they have the freedom to work within these principles without needing to defer to him.
At heart, he is a people person and has always wanted to lead from the front. Vilahamn spent nearly two years from 2020 as assistant coach for men’s top division side Hacken but he aimed to be a head coach. When the club proposed he became manager of Hacken’s women’s team in October 2021, that was not part of the plan, however.
“I had this big plan for my career and never thought about going into women’s football because I didn’t see the potential,” he says. “I had a few talks with people and what I saw outside Sweden, I realised that this is actually quite a cool choice: to be a Champions League coach, coaching national team players in this amazing club with these facilities.”
Vilahamn was catapulted into the women’s football sphere.
“I needed to learn who Stina Blackstenius was,” he admits. “Transitioning into women’s football was probably the best decision I’ve made.”
Vilahamn, a surname stemming from Vilhelmina and Skalhamn, where he and Sofi are from, says his family, avid travellers, always wanted to live abroad. “I’m doing everything I couldn’t do when I was young because I wanted to see the world and meet people,” he says.
When he saw Spurs had sacked Rehanne Skinner in March 2023, he asked his agent to send his CV to the women’s team’s managing director Andy Rogers. As well as his coaching pedigree, Vilahamn, who runs a football academy in Uganda and part-owns Gignation, a digital platform that matches supply teachers with schools, believes his business acumen impressed Tottenham owner Daniel Levy during his interview for the Spurs women’s job, which he took on last summer.
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“To be a coach in Tottenham is to be an entrepreneur for women’s football and this club,” says Vilahamn. “Being a coach at this level is not only about tactics. It’s about branding the club and women’s football, making sure we grow as a company. We are a club but we are also a company. The knowledge I got from starting and running a company is very important to my leadership, interviews or speaking to the board. When I speak to Daniel Levy, it’s not always about football.”
But there has been plenty of football to talk about. Vilahamn lists his first game against Chelsea, even though they lost 2-1, the historic 1-0 victory over Arsenal in the north London derby in December and last month’s FA Cup quarter-final penalty shootout win against Manchester City as the highlights of his short tenure.
It has not been all plain sailing, however. Spurs’ humiliating 7-0 defeat away against City made Vilahamn realise “it hurts a lot of people when you lose with big numbers.”
“As a new coach in the league, I felt stupid,” he continues. “It was a big step for us… a tough game to approach the media or the players afterwards, and still make sure that they believe in what we’re doing. It was also a good test for me. Not everything can always go smoothly.”
As a child, Vilahamn dreamed of one day being at the FA Cup final at Wembley. He says it would be a dream come true if Spurs reached the final stage of the competition, not only for him but for his club and its fans to believe in winning a trophy.
“Imagine, in a few years, where we can be with this club with this strength we have,” he says.
Asked about his future, Vilahamn sees himself developing this team for a few more years to come. “We cannot do this over one or two years but if we win the Champions League, I might say goodbye,” he smiles, jokingly.
(Top photo: Alex Davidson/Getty Images)
