Meet the young English manager in Cambodia’s Premier League

Alistair Heath was working in Leicester City’s academy but the young coach wanted something more. It is that desire to make the move into football management that has taken him on a journey to the Cambodian Premier League

For the past year, he has been in Siem Reap – more famous as the gateway to Angkor Wat, the largest religious monument in the world – as the manager of Angkor Tiger. It is a role that has tested him on the pitch and off it but Heath has no regrets about his decision.

“I am a football manager,” he tells Sky Sports. “If you ask 95 per cent of people in England if they would move to Cambodia you would probably get a lot of negative answers because it is not on a lot of people’s lists. But this is what I have set out to be since I was 17.

“I did not have the fortune to play football professionally. The offer came and it was not something that I could turn down. Football management is tough. There have been a lot of sacrifices but it is probably the best decision that I have ever made.”

He took a pay cut for this opportunity and acknowledges that was a gamble. “If I get the sack, what am I going to do? It was a risk but you have to take the risk, don’t you, for the chance to get on?” There is not a long list of support staff for him to lean on either.