To Porto & Rome - Bobby Roberts On Post-Leicester Managerial Career

Leicester City paid a Club record transfer fee to sign midfielder Bobby Roberts in 1963. At his home in Leicestershire, Bobby recently spoke to Club Historian John Hutchinson about his management career after representing the Foxes.

2026-05-14T15:00+01:00

by John Hutchinson

Published

6 Hours 18 Mins Ago

To Porto & Rome - Bobby Roberts On Post-Leicester Managerial Career

Leicester City paid a Club record transfer fee to sign midfielder Bobby Roberts in 1963. At his home in Leicestershire, Bobby recently spoke to Club Historian John Hutchinson about his management career after representing the Foxes.

John Hutchinson

2026-05-14T15:00+01:00

To Porto & Rome - Bobby Roberts On Post-Leicester Managerial Career

Leicester City paid a Club record transfer fee to sign midfielder Bobby Roberts in 1963. At his home in Leicestershire, Bobby recently spoke to Club Historian John Hutchinson about his management career after representing the Foxes.

John Hutchinson

2026-05-14T15:00+01:00

To Porto & Rome - Bobby Roberts On Post-Leicester Managerial Career

Leicester City paid a Club record transfer fee to sign midfielder Bobby Roberts in 1963. At his home in Leicestershire, Bobby recently spoke to Club Historian John Hutchinson about his management career after representing the Foxes.

John Hutchinson

2026-05-14T15:00+01:00

To Porto & Rome - Bobby Roberts On Post-Leicester Managerial Career

Leicester City paid a Club record transfer fee to sign midfielder Bobby Roberts in 1963. At his home in Leicestershire, Bobby recently spoke to Club Historian John Hutchinson about his management career after representing the Foxes.

John Hutchinson

2026-05-14T15:00+01:00

At Wrexham, he qualified for the European Cup Winners Cup to face two European giants – FC Porto and Sven-Gören Eriksson’s AS Roma.

Bobby began by explaining how he became a manager: “When I finished my playing career, I got a job as youth team coach at Coventry. After about six months, Colchester’s manager Jim Smith phoned me. I’d been on a couple of coaching courses with him and we got on well. He’d just lost his coach and asked me if I would be interested in the job. He was a wonderful bloke and very clever as well, as his later distinguished career in management showed. I took the job as coach. We had two years together there and got promoted. When he left to become Blackburn’s manager, he wanted me to go with him as coach but Colchester offered me the manager’s job and I took it. I was there for seven years, during which time we got promoted and then relegated.

“After I’d finished at Colchester in 1982, I was offered the manager’s job at Wrexham (in June 1982). Two managers before me, John Neal and Arfon Griffiths, had both got Wrexham into Europe as Welsh Cup winners (in 1972 and 1975). They had a lot of good players at that time, but when I took over, they were struggling for money and experienced players had to go. I had to bring younger players in and try to get players on loan like Bobby Savage from Liverpool and Jim Steel from Oldham, who were terrific for me, but we couldn’t buy them, so we lost both players and got relegated (to the old Fourth Division).

“We battled on the next season and reached the Welsh Cup Final, where we played Shrewsbury. When we played Worcester City in the third round, my goalkeeper was injured and the only other goalkeeper I had was 16 years old, so I played in goal, at the age of 43. I told the defence that if I had to make a save, they’d all get the sack! It finished up 1-1. I’d only played in goal once before, for 12 minutes at Old Trafford against Manchester United and I kept a clean sheet there! I’d also played in goal in five-a-side games at Motherwell before I went to Leicester.

“Shrewsbury beat us in the final, but we still qualified for Europe as beaten finalists because Shrewsbury were an English side.

“Getting into Europe was lovely! In the first round, we were drawn against Porto, who had played in the European Cup Winners Cup Final the year before. They had a lot of internationals in their team including Paulo Futre, who was a legend.

“Before the Porto game, I’d come down to Leicester to play in a match at Filbert Street between two ex-City teams which was staged to celebrate the Club’s centenary. This was followed by Leicester’s First Team playing Alex Ferguson’s Aberdeen, who were the Scottish champions, so I got I got in touch with Alex beforehand and asked him for information on Porto. His side had played them twice the previous season. I had a good chat with him about Porto when he came to the game at Leicester. He couldn’t have been more helpful.

“The first leg was at Wrexham in front of a big crowd and we won 1-0. Jim Steel (the former loanee who had now signed for Wrexham) scored the goal. Barry Horne was also in our side. I’d seen him play for Rhyl and thought: ‘Who is this?!’ He was a really good player and I put in a bid for him right away. They wanted £2,500 and, to start with, Wrexham weren’t going to give it to me, but we did sign him. We sold him to Portsmouth three years later and, after a spell at Southampton, he went to Everton and also became the Wales captain.

“When we went to Porto for the second leg, the rules were that we had to be there two days before the match. We thought we were going for a nice sunny trip, but it never stopped raining for the whole time we were there.

“In the match, there was a big crowd and a fabulous atmosphere. They were 3-0 up after about 30 minutes. One of their goals was a penalty, which I thought was a bit dubious. From the dossier and the videos that Alex Ferguson had given me, I’d noticed that Porto didn’t look that great in the air, so in training, we’d worked on free-kicks and corners as we thought we might get some joy from this. Sure enough, just before half-time, we scored twice from corner kicks. Suddenly, it was 3-2 on the night, which made it 3-3 on aggregate. With about 20 minutes to go, they scored again to make it 4-2 on the night and 4-3 on aggregate. Then, in the last minute, Barry Horne scored a cracking volley on the run from 25 yards. That made it 4-3 on the night, 4-4 on aggregate and we were through to the next round on the away goals rule.

“In the next round, we were drawn against Sven-Gören Eriksson’s Roma, who had reached the European Cup Final the season before.

“They had two Brazil internationals, Roberto Falcao and Toninho Cerezo, and three or four Italy internationals. I think Bruno Conti was on the wing. So, I got in touch with Dundee United manager Jim McLean. He was a bit fiery and had done a terrific job with Dundee United. They had played Roma in the European Cup Semi-Final the previous year, beating them 2-0 in Dundee before losing 3-0 in Rome. I can’t thank him and Alex Ferguson enough.

“The first game was at the Olympic Stadium in Rome. We arrived two days before the game. We trained and nipped round to see the sites.

“In our side, I think I had three or four players who would have been apprentices the year before, we had Barry Horne, who’d recently signed from non-league Welsh football and we had other players who had come from the lower divisions. For these young players to be playing at these European grounds was fantastic for them.

“We lost the first leg 2-0. Roma scored with a penalty just before half-time for a hand ball when it was their player who had handled! Then Cerezo, the Brazilian who’d scored against Italy in a World Cup Semi-Final, scored an absolute blinder from 25 yards to make it 2-0.

“In the second leg, back in Wrexham, Falcao virtually ran the game. We couldn’t get the ball off him. Also, my centre-half was unfit so I had to reorganise the team which we could have done without. Falcao was international class, and we found it hard to do anything about it. I think our right-back hit the bar, but they scored near the end to make it 1-0, which was 3-0 on aggregate.

“Eriksson was complimentary in his praise. He was a gentleman who was very courteous and a really nice guy. He thought we’d done very well for a lower division team, which was a contrast to the Porto manager who thought we were like a pub team.”

Bobby left Wrexham at the end of that season. He subsequently coached in Kuwait (twice), managed Grimsby Town, spent three years on Leicester’s coaching staff, seven years as Derby County’s chief scout and also scouted for Tottenham Hotspur and Newcastle United. Thinking back, he said: “To qualify for Europe and then to play against two of the top teams at that time was probably the highlight of my managerial career.”

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