Looking Back At Thomas Frank

Tuesday, 9 December 2025 marks nine years since Thomas Frank was appointed assistant coach at Brentford and Leif Pederson takes a peek into our former head coach’s new book to reminisce about his time at the club.

On 17 November 2025, a book was published about Denmark’s currently biggest coaching name; Thomas Frank. The book is written by Danish journalist Kasper Steenbach, who has previously authored several books about football. 

There may of course be more debate as to how relevant the book is for Brentford fans after Thomas Frank moved to Tottenham, but as he was employed at the club for 8½ years and behind the greatest highlights in the club’s history, the relevance seems both pertinent and very real. The book provides insight into Thomas Frank’s background and the factors which have influenced his development to the position he holds today. Much of the information about the club is known to the well-informed fan, but the book puts words to the background underpinning some of the decisions made along the way – including the unpleasant ones. 

“If I was to describe a prototype of a good club owner, I would choose Matthew. Any day!”

Thomas Frank

When the book was published, the press material focused on three episodes in the book:

• In May 2024 Thomas Frank had initial talks with Manchester United and Chelsea on the same day, but as it is now known, this did not lead to employment with either clubs.
• The book also focuses on “Oscargate” – a phrase hailing from Thomas Frank’s time as coach at Brøndby IF, where the club’s owner, using an alias (his son’s name Oscar) – wrote strongly worded posts about Thomas Frank in one of the club’s fan forums. As a result, Thomas Frank resigned from his position at the club.
• Finally, the book once and for all quashes any assumptions that Thomas Frank was ever a coach candidate for the Danish national football team. The Danish football association asked him – as they did with all Danish top coaches – if he might be interested, and he said categorically no. I am particularly pleased with this clarification, as I have stubbornly maintained on the Griffin Park Grapevine that Thomas Frank is too young to give up a coaching career in one of the most prestigious leagues swapping his Premiership career at this stage for a national team job. 

However, I do not think these three topics are the most interesting in the book. Far from it. 

The book is structured allowing the journalist to describe the club, Thomas Frank, his background, career, and family in every other chapter alternating these with chapters printed on gray paper and shaped as diary entries from 27 January 2024 to 29 April 2025. One may, of course, discuss whether the journalist lent a ghostwriting hand, but I have had the pleasure of meeting and talking with Thomas Frank four times, and when I close my eyes, I can recognize Thomas Frank’s way of expressing himself, including a few well-chosen swear words along the way. 

Two old football friends about Thomas Frank.
Friend 1: “Once he got a yellow card because the referee got tired of listening to him.”
Friend 2: “He has certainly never tackled his way to a yellow card.”

Thomas Frank was very close to not having a coaching career at all. He grew up in a small town 50 kilometers northwest of Copenhagen. He played football at the local club. Some of his friends from back then have kept up an annual trip to Brentford, where they enjoy telling tallish stories about their own abilities and Thomas Frank’s lack thereof. Originally, Thomas Frank wanted to be an engineer, but every time he applied for an apprenticeship as an electronics mechanic, he was rejected. So instead, he applied for a teaching degree and was accepted at a college in Jutland. He also applied for sports studies at the University of Copenhagen, as he did not quite have the required merits. He was mentally preparing to become a schoolteacher when a sudden impulse made him contact the University again. It turned out that the University had miscalculated his merits, and Thomas Frank had accumulated just over the admissions requirement, so he could, in fact, be admitted to the program. Thomas Frank moved to Copenhagen and quickly landed a coaching job in the Copenhagen suburb of Hvidovre. From there, his coaching career accelerated from Hvidovre via Lyngby to the Danish football association as U16, U17, and U19 coach.

“Thomas Frank was an idealist. On the U17 national team, we had to play like Ajax and Barcelona, but now he has realized that sometimes you must compromise to win a football match.”

Christian Nørgaard

In Hvidovre, he met Brian Riemer, and in Lyngby, he met Johan Lange, who is now sporting director at Tottenham, where the former Danish national coach Kasper Hjulmand – now coach at Bayer Leverkusen – was also a youth coach. Thomas Frank became part of a new generation of football coaches leaving their mark on Danish football, both at youth and senior levels. But had he not double-checked his merits for the sports program, he might have been a schoolteacher in Jutland instead. 

“Basic leadership is, in my eyes, a totally overlooked discipline in football. The majority of football coaches at all levels have not dealt with leadership at the level they should.”

Teddy Hebo Larsen, Management coach

A further coincidence in his life was when he met Teddy Hebo Larsen. Although Teddy Hebo Larsen came from a football-crazy family, he had chosen to study veterinary medicine and was now the director of the American pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly’s Scandinavian activities. But as a neighbor to the football fields in Hvidovre, he sometimes took evening walks in the area and watched the training sessions. Thomas Frank had noticed him, and one day they started talking. Hebo Larsen’s son, also named Thomas, later became captain of the team Thomas Frank coached. So, for a long period, there was regular contact between them. When Thomas Frank moved away from Hvidovre, they spoke less frequently, until one Saturday – 18 December 2018, when Teddy Hebo Larsen heard a segment on the sports news about Brentford losing away to Hull City. It was Thomas Frank’s eighth defeat in ten games as coach of Brentford. 

Teddy Hebo Larsen thought Thomas Frank needed help, so he called him. Thomas Frank took the call on the bus home from Hull, and this became the first of many conversations between them. At first, the conversations were random, but since February 2019, there has been a fixed pattern: one weekly conversation with an agenda and subsequent minutes, and a summary of the conversations every three months. Teddy Hebo Larsen is now Thomas Frank’s leadership coach, listening, advising and putting Thomas Frank’s ideas and actions into perspective. One of the concrete results of their coaching conversations is the leadership model PATH, which you may have heard Thomas Frank mention. 

Passion
Attitude
Togetherness
Hard work 

These are concepts Thomas Frank has actively used in his coaching work, but they are not just random clichés that landed on his desk by accident. They are the result of countless hours of discussions between Teddy Hebo Larsen and Thomas Frank focusing on creating a close correlation between words and actions. PATH is not just business phrases in a model. It is Thomas Frank. 

The two of them also use recognized leadership concepts, such as Spiral Dynamics, which is a well-known interpretive model for why people are the way they are and why they act the way they do. 

The book gives two concrete examples of how Spiral Dynamics can be applied, and my impression is that the book goes very close to the people involved and their situations.

The first example concerns the Swedish national team player Johan Elmander, who played for Brøndby for two periods. The first time, he got his career back on track after a failed stint at Feyenoord. Brøndby sold him on, and Elmander subsequently enjoyed a successful career with several European clubs, including Bolton, before returning to Brøndby at 33 years of age. He was supposed to be part of a new era at Brøndby. However, Elmander no longer had his previous ability, and Thomas Frank naturally had to act accordingly, primarily using him as a substitute. Elmander’s reaction was that, as the only player, he did not shake the coach’s hand when arriving for training, and in some instances, he even completely ignored Thomas Frank. In short, Elmander was toxic in the dressing room for a team which was already struggling. Thomas Frank did not have the leadership tools to resolve the conflict, and too much time passed before the sporting management decided to terminate Elmander’s contract. By then the damage was done, however, it is probably not wrong to assume that the foundation for Thomas Frank’s “No Dickhead” policy was created then. 

The second example is Saïd Benrahma. In the summer of 2019, he was apparently close to being sold, but the deal fell through at the last moment. He lost motivation at the start of the 2019/20 season, and since Thomas Frank considered Benrahma a key player in the effort to get promoted to the Premier League, he had to help him regain his motivation. One of the challenges was that Benrahma did not speak English very well. Thomas Frank therefore had to involve defender Julian Jeanvier. They explained to Saïd that he was an important player to Brentford, and that their common goal should be promotion. The conversation took place shortly after Benrahma had lost his father and was living in Brentford with his mother. Thomas Frank emphasized that it would take hard work to get promoted, and he especially stressed that if Benrahma did not contribute, he would have to involve his mother, and she was a figure in Saïd’ life, whom he did not want to disappoint. After going through all the elements for improvement, Thomas Frank pulled out a Brentford jersey. On the back it said: Benrahma 10. Even though Saïd had never mentioned it himself, Thomas Frank knew that this jersey was his dream. Player and coach now had a shared understanding of the challenges ahead and the path forward. You probably remember how he played for the rest of that season. 

If David Moyes had known about Spiral Dynamics, Benrahma’s career at West Ham might have developed differently. 

As mentioned, one of the main stories in the book is the challenges Frank experienced with the owner at Brøndby, but in reality, it was a side story that made the biggest impression on me. 

To fans, football players and coaches may seem a bit distant. We cheer them when things go well and boo them when things go badly. But behind every professional athlete is a family. 

When the crisis was at its worst at Brøndby, Thomas Frank’s wife and children were exposed to pressure they were not prepared for. His son Bertram, aged 12, was confronted by children in the schoolyard: “My dad says your dad will be fired tomorrow.” His wife had to stand in line at the supermarket and could see the morning newspapers being negative about her husband. At the same time, she had to listen to other customers discussing that surely the coach would be fired soon. Football came to have a negative impact on their lives, and for a period, the pressure on the family was overwhelming. So underwhelming that they suffered under it. Fortunately, Thomas Frank involved the club’s mental health coach, who gave them some tools to handle the situations. The particular period left its mark on the family. Thomas Frank and his son Bertram are still obsessed with football, while his wife Nanna and their two daughters are not interested in football at all, although they recognize that it is important for the two male members of the family. 

“If I would like to have a good football life, I just have to stay at Brentford.”

Thomas Frank

The gray diary pages of the book contain many good stories, for example, about how Thomas Frank has worked on controlling his temper. There have been incidents. He mentions Barnsley 2020, Norwich 2020, and Wolves 2022 as matches where he could not control his temper. To solve the issue, among other things, Thomas Frank has focused on the impact of fatigue on his performance.  After the defeat to Norwich, he lashed out at everyone who came near him: staff, players, and the referee. On the bus home after the match, he reflected on the possible causes. One contributing factor could have been that he and his family had moved into a new house the day before the match, so one of his conclusions was that in order to perform at a high level, there must be a balance between his private and professional life. After the defeat to Liverpool away in August 2024, he felt something quite similar again to the Norwich defeat. He did not have the energy to rewatch the match. In general, he felt tired during the 2023/24 season. Again, his conclusion was that there were imbalances in his life. Due to the many injuries in the squad, it was probably the most challenging season during his time at Brentford. Furthermore, his father died in May 2024. In combination, all of this led him to the conclusion that you cannot be at 100% energy level all the time, but you do need to be able to recharge quickly to around 90% to perform as head coach in the Premier League. 

The talks with, among others, Manchester United and Chelsea were also a result of him feeling that he could not move the club much further with the resources currently available to him. His contract was due to expire in 2027, and he had already decided that by the summer of 2026 at the latest, he wanted to have a clear picture of his future. It did not necessarily have to be as a football coach. He was aware that a sabbatical from football could also be an option, allowing the family to travel around the world and recharge with energy and experiences. He had the outmost respect for Jürgen Klopp’s decision to stop as manager at Liverpool, and he promised himself that at the next major career or life change, he would call Jürgen Klopp and ask for some advice. 

The next big change was the move to Tottenham. When he called Klopp, he was very accommodating and offered lots of good advice. The most important piece of advice was: “Be true to yourself,” – and I don’t think this would only apply to football coaches.

“New Personal record. 5.01 km. Average kilometer time 3:56.”

WhatsApp message 11.09.25 from Thomas Frank. Premier League’s fastest head coach.

Overall, this is a very well-composed book with lots of small and bigger stories. I felt I was relatively well-informed about Thomas Frank beforehand, but I still learned a lot about him – and the club. It’s always debatable how honest a book like this might be. In several places, Thomas Frank mentions that he cannot elaborate further on a story out of consideration for the parties involved, but in general, I think he opens up a lot about his private and football life. There is a lot of learning to take away from the book, and it is one of the best football books I have read. 

“Kind regards, King of all sports”
Thomas Frank’s signature when writing to his friends. 

I hope someone translates and publishes the book in England. You also deserve to have the story of the club’s most successful coach available to you.

“Easy” Leif Pedersen