Sheffield Wednesday manager Danny Rohl is a dedicated student of football, and admits La Liga is featuring more on his curriculum now his mentor Hansi Flick works there.

Rohl was as an assistant as Flick led first Bayer Munich, then Germany, building a reputation as one of the world's best coaches.

The former Bayern midfielder became Barcelona coach at the start of last season but this time Rohl did not follow him, taking his first job in management with Sheffield Wednesday in October 2024.

Rohl admits he finds it hard to watch football without analysing it as a coach, and his friendship with Flick has seen him study more football from Spain, widely considered second only to the Premier League in world domestic leagues.

"It's always interesting to see the different matchplans on the pitch, what is the solution for a team and when this team does this, what does the other team try to do now?" he says. "If there are different solutions or it is always the same.

"Since Hansi went to Barcelona I've watched a lot of Spanish football as well and you look at a lot of Premier League games, a lot of Bundesliga (German football), a lot of Championship games.

"There are a lot of interesting games but sometimes I just see part of the games and it's good when you have a little bit of an idea of what the team does normally and it's interesting how the manager finds a solution now."

After 25 games Barcelona sit top of La Liga, ahead of Real Madrid by virtue of their head-to-head record. They finished second to them in Flick's debut campaign.

MENTOR: Danny Rohl (second from left) learnt a lot from working alongside Hansi Flick (third from left) (Image: Stuart Franklin/Getty Images)

placeholder image — MENTOR: Danny Rohl (second from left) learnt a lot from working alongside Hansi Flick (third from left) (Image: Stuart Franklin/Getty Images)

Barca face Benfica in the last 16 of this season's Champions League.

Although Rohl’s job title is “manager”, he is very much a modern-day head coach in his mentality, enjoying time on the Middlewood Road training pitches, developing players to be more versatile and creating an Owls side whose tactical flexibility within games is arguably their greatest strength.

Rohl revealed that whenever he sees something interesting, he stores it away for future use.

"I'm always thinking like a coach," he says. "It's not very often I can watch football without the context. I always look at what they're doing on the pitch.

"And when I see a solution I will take it the next day to our staff and ask them to save this clip because it could be helpful one day in the future."