“I would say that the odds of us turning the season around are lower than Leicester winning the Premier League, so they are in our favour, right?” Christian Fuchs is talking about his new life as manager of Newport County, the English Football League’s bottom club, and the task of staving off a descent into non-league. It is a challenge at the other end of the spectrum, though the fairytale 5000-1 title win in 2016 gave him more than a winner’s medal. “It helped change my mindset a little bit … it showed that the impossible can be possible.”
The logical place to start is: how did Fuchs end up here? “I guess that’s the part that’s not logical, right?” he says, breaking into laughter. It is the 39-year-old’s opening gambit and an indication of his playful and engaging character across a colourful conversation in his office overlooking an artificial pitch at a University of South Wales campus in Treforest, a dozen miles north-west of Cardiff. Discourse runs in different directions, from playing for Thomas Tuchel and Brendan Rodgers to the need to find a local barber.
He opens some post on his desk. There is a letter from a Leicester supporter wishing him well, accompanied by a couple of glossy photos from that season. “Young Fuchs,” he says, smiling. Another envelope brings a stash of old stickers, one from a Panini album commemorating Euro 2016, when he captained Austria. A card from the Newport Supporters’ Club has pride of place. “Stuff like this makes me very happy,” he says.
Until returning from North Carolina to accept his first job in frontline management last month, Fuchs’s previous visit to Rodney Parade was in January 2019, when Leicester were on the end of a Newport giantkilling in the FA Cup third round. That day David Pipe, the Newport kit man and former full-back, duelled against Fuchs. “He had the game of his life,” Fuchs says. But when the team sheets dropped, an error came to light. “You need to censor this,” Fuchs says. “They misspelt my name – somehow a ‘k’ smuggled itself in in place of the ‘h’. It is funny because Fuchs, in German, means fox, so it’s something nice.”
His decision to join the Foxes in the summer of 2015 proved inspired. A couple of weeks later Leicester appointed Claudio Ranieri and the rest is history. The Italian joined the club in the midst of a pre-season camp in Austria and his light-touch approach worked wonders. “When you look at Claudio you picture an elder gentleman, so long in the business, maybe a bit old school, but he’s so not,” Fuchs says. “He just said he was going to observe training in Austria for the first week. He didn’t get involved at all. After that week we had a meeting and he said: ‘I’ve watched you for a week and I’m not going to change anything.’”
Fuchs values lessons learned from Rodgers and Tuchel, under whom he worked while on loan at Mainz, from Bochum, in 2010-11. “He always thought: ‘How can I get more out of the players? How can I challenge them mentally?’” Fuchs says of the England manager tasked with winning the 2026 World Cup. “That’s a big part of our approach as well. How can you make good decision-makers? Back then he was probably in a similar situation to where I am now … very driven, very eager to prove himself. He has maybe changed but then if he likes you, top; if he doesn’t like you that much, hmm, you might have a problem. Off the pitch, on game day we would sit in a restaurant with the newspaper doing crosswords with each other.” So, was Tuchel any good at 10 down or 17 across? “Now you’re asking … Fuchsing hell. Ummm … I don’t think we ever solved them.”
Fuchs’s drive stems from his childhood in Neunkirchen, an hour south of Vienna. “There are similarities to where we are now, because I was told when I was 11 years old that I would never be good enough. There are people who let that get the better of them or there are people who say: ‘Fuchs you, I’m going to show you.’ I’ve been told too many times: ‘You cannot do this, you cannot do that.’ I’m going to prove that I can and work my socks off. The other thing about my character is: I’m pretty stubborn. If I see potential, I’m doing it.”
Fuchs’s assistant, Mark Smith, was born in Newport and previously led Fuchs’s Fox Soccer Academy. Smith’s father has a season ticket at Rodney Parade, behind the dugouts. Fuchs wakes his laptop to detail data from a 2-2 draw with Barrow, sharing a slide he presented to his players. “The team hit many, many season highs,” he says, highlighting ball progression and statistics about breaking defensive lines. Passing accuracy was recorded at 87%. “Not happy with that … that needs to be in the mid-90s,” he says. “My first game, at Oldham, it was very direct, long balls, League Two, but we want to be different. I think a five-yard pass has a higher percentage to arrive than just going long all the time.”
The overarching numbers make grim reading. Newport have won three of 19 league matches and are without a victory in eight in all competitions after exiting the FA Cup at Boreham Wood last weekend. By the time Fleetwood visit on Saturday they will have not tasted victory at home for 273 days and have kept two clean sheets in 26 matches this season. But with 10 men they scored a 93rd-minute equaliser at Crewe on Wednesday to earn a point in their fight for survival. “We need to be a force at home,” Fuchs says. “It’s just not good enough, not even having a win. We need to build a fortress.”
By his own admission, Fuchs likes a challenge. “What’s so wrong with that?” He retired less than three years ago and, like Tuchel, enjoys being in the thick of things. “I’m a part of the group. I’m still a player in here,” he says, tapping his chest. “At training I’m always joining in the boxes – two nutmegs already, get in! I want us to see each other as one team. Yes, you’re the ones on the field, but we’re one team, we’re working on this together.”
