Ex-Dunfermline defender Sol Bamba has spoken glowingly of the key role Jim Leishman played in kick-starting his career in British football.
And he has cited his former Pars boss as an inspiration in his bid to now move into management himself.
Bamba joined Dunfermline in 2006 following a youth career with Paris Saint-Germain.
Arriving in Fife with no English, he says Leishman helped him settle in his new surroundings, where he stayed until moving to Hibernian two years later.
From there, he went on to play for the likes of Leicester City, Trabzonspor, Leeds United and Cardiff City, as well as winning 46 caps for Ivory Coast and turning out at two World Cups.
Asked to look back on the managers who shaped his playing days, Bamba said: “I think first and foremost the first one I will always remember, and he was great with me when I came to Dunfermline, was Jim Leishman.
‘What a man. I can’t speak high enough of him. He’s a lovely guy, I still speak to him here and then.
“I went from Paris to Dunfermline and I didn’t speak a word of English. So, obviously it was very difficult to understand him.
“But he was brilliant for me. One of his best friends spoke French so he introduced me to him and from that I kicked on.
Jim Leishman’s ‘passion’ as a manager
“He helped me find an English teacher, find a house with my family; he was absolutely brilliant.
“On the touchline as well, the passion he would give you – you want to go through a brick wall for him.”
Bamba also worked under Neil Warnock at both Cardiff and Middlesbrough.
The Englishman’s recent stint at Aberdeen was disastrous and short-lived, but Bamba has better memories.
Speaking to BBC’s ‘Sacked in the Morning’ podcast, the 39-year-old added: “Neil Warnock was very good at that, his man management was unbelievable.
”It’s a skill, it’s very difficult to learn that, but if you’ve got that I think it’s half the job.
“Everyone’s talking about tactics, all that is important, but if you’re not a good man manager you’ll not win matches, ever.
“I remember playing for Leicester and him and Nigel Pearson had a fight, both of them characters.
“Warnock came to me on the touchline, [saying] if you play with me you’d be playing in the Premier League and a millionaire. Nigel didn’t take that well.
“I ended up playing for him for five or six years. We had a great relationship. We just clicked.”
Sol Bamba out to change the narrative
Bamba is also fulsome in his praise for ex-England manager Sven-Goran Eriksen, who he worked under at both Ivory Coast and Leicester.
He says he was ‘heartbroken’ when the Swede, who is terminally ill with cancer, left Leicester in October 2011.
Bamba, who himself successfully battled non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2021, now wants to follow his mentors into the dugout and confound fears over barriers to black coaches.
He added: “I’ve been talking to ex-players before and they said that, ‘yeah, there’s no point doing it because, you know, we’re never going to have the opportunity’.
”But I think that’s wrong because if you think like this, you’re never going to change anything. Things take time to change and if we don’t do it, we’ll never change it.”
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