Austria's Englishman... and he doesn't think much of the game back home

Roger Spry will be immersed in this Alpine festival of football while back home we try to blot out flashbacks to the Wally with the Brolly and humiliation at Wembley.

Spry is performance director for Austria, who launch their Euro 2008 campaign against England's conquerors Croatia in Vienna on Sunday.

Dance class: English coach Roger Spry (right) wants his Austria players to waltz past opponents

The name may be unfamiliar but he is highly regarded on the European coaching circuit and has been working with the co-hosts since September 2006.

His work in football-specific physical conditioning is admired around the world. His training programmes focus on balance, agility and explosive bursts of pace.

He has spent much of his career working for UEFA and at clubs including Sporting, Porto , AEK Athens and Panathinaikos.

Spry, 57, worked for Sheffield Wednesday and Aston Villa in the early Nineties but English football was slow to embrace his methods until Arsene Wenger proved their value at Arsenal.

Perhaps that is why Spry is in Vienna and England are not.

'In English football I've always had to justify myself to someone about why I'm doing what I'm doing, rather than long-distance aerobic work,' said Spry.

'It's all about fitness related to match situations rather than just working athletically. It's very different to the traditional way the FA coach football but they've been doing it in Portugal and Brazil for 50 years. They call it physical-technical work and the idea is to produce football athletes.

'In England, we produce footballers who are strong in straight lines. They will beat any player in the world if you ask them to run and chase. But modern footballers play with dancelike movements. They don't outrun people, they out-move people with their body shape.

'Wayne Rooney is a traditional power player. He bursts past people. Cristiano Ronaldo goes past people by creating a space with an unpredictable first movement, throwing his hips or his shoulders. Once the space is there, he explodes away.

'It's like using your opponent as a dance partner. I've been a musician for 42 years and I've studied martial arts since I was six. It is about music and rhythm and especially the Brazilian art of Capoeira, which originally started in Africa and was taken by the Portuguese to Brazil.

To illustrate his point, Spry recalls a conversation he had with Brazil legend Mario Zagallo about English football.

'He told me: "What you guys do when there is a problem is roll your sleeves up and work harder. But if everyone is working to the maximum the problem is still there. That's when you are in trouble. We teach people to imagine harder".'

Spry is not surprised when European coaches such as Juande Ramos arrive in England and change the diets and physical routines of the players.

'A lot of English players carry too much weight but it's not fat, it's muscle, sometimes five kilos of extra muscle. Ronaldo doesn't have bulky muscles, he has the long, lean, efficient muscles of a dancer.'

One of Spry's earliest coaching roles was alongside Malcolm Allison at Portuguese club Vitoria Setubal, where he encountered the young Jose Mourinho.

'I would never call Jose my assistant but he would come along to help,' said Spry, who is working alongside Austria team boss Josef Hickersberger.

It has not always been an easy ride, with 10,000 supporters signing an online petition asking the team to withdraw before the competition to avoid embarrassment.

'Four or five of the top Austrian players retired at thesame time and left a vacuum which we filled with teenagers. It's been a learning process but they've got super talent and I think we'll surprise a hell of a lot of people, not least in our own country.

'I worked in Greece when they won Euro 2004. They'd never won a game in a major tournament. The aim was to not be embarrassed. But they played the first game against Portugal, the hosts, they won, they relaxed and kept winning.

'People look at Greece and think it's Mickey Mouse football. Then they win the European Championship and people think it was a fluke. The truth is, it wasn't. Which team qualified this time with more points than anyone else? Greece.

'I'm as patriotic as the next guy. I'd love England to be winning major tournaments but we're not as good as we think we are.'