Despite struggling at Leicester in recent times, Conor Coady has enjoyed a successful Premier League career.
Coady’s Leicester career has disappointed, but it wasn’t that long ago that the defender was a Premier League regular and representing England at major tournaments.
Having come through the Liverpool academy, the centre-back would eventually find a home at Wolves.
It was at Molineux where Coady would go on to transform his career, and the Englishman has since credited a large part of his development to one Wolves man in particular – namely Nuno Espirito Santo.
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Conor Coady says Nuno Espirito Santo ‘changed his life’ at Wolves
Coady, who nearly re-joined Wolves in January, was a key part of the Nuno Espirito Santo team that managed European qualification in 2019.
A large part of Nuno’s success at Molineux came from his infamous three at the back – a system in which Coady was at the heart of.
Speaking on his time at Wolves, Coady revealed to the Still Talking Show that he was initially worried when Nuno was first appointed – those worries, however, soon evaporated after a life-changing talk with Portuguese boss.
“Nuno changed my life, honestly, he changed my life. When he first came to Wolves, we knew he was coming in from Valencia and we knew that he would make big changes.
“We all wanted to be a part of it. I remember the first couple of days in training, we’d worked on a back five and I’d always played centre-mid or right-back the season before in the Championship. We working on this back five and I was in the middle of the back five.
“I thought he was putting me there to make the numbers up because I’d never played there before. We’d trained for a few days, and we get on a plane to go to Austria for pre-season and he sat next to me and honestly, that conversation I had with him then was just unbelievable, honestly.
“Basically he told me that this was now his club and he’d have us there or thereabouts come the end of the season and he told me he was going to play a back five and I was going to play in the middle of the back five.”
Nuno Espirito Santo has ‘admiration’ for Leciester
Currently flying high with Nottingham Forest in the Champions League spots, Nuno’s is trying his best to recreate a Leicester like fairytale at the City Ground.
With that being said, the Portuguese manager is said to be a big fan of the Foxes’ iconic title win in 2016.
Speaking in 2020 ahead of Wolves’ visit to the King Power Stadium, Nuno sang the praises of Leicester (via the Leicester Mercury):
“I look at Leicester with real admiration,” said the then Wolves boss.
“Not only because of what they achieved as Premier League champions, but because of one of the hardest moments they had with the loss of their owner.
“How they united as a club was amazing. To be able to overcome such a sad moment and be strong again and compete like they are doing is a big compliment for them, so I have huge admiration for Leicester as a club.”