The fall and rise of Johno Clemente: Australia’s youngest senior NPL coach Johno Clemente had to fall before he could walk, but as the country's youngest NPL senior coach following his appointment as Heidelberg United's NPLW coach, he continues to stride forward. 21 January 2020 |

Journalist and Content Marketer 21 January 2020 | Matthew Galea

Johno Clemente's difficult past isn't stopping him.

Johnathan ‘Johno’ Clemente is a lot of things.

As of November 2019, he is the youngest senior National Premier Leagues coach in the country. His appointment as the head coach of Heidelberg United’s senior women’s team at the age of 20 confirmed that.

Before that, he was the youngest Technical Director of a football program at Essendon Royals Soccer Club, the club where his love affair with football started, where he headed up a community football program which boasted over 500 juniors at the age of 19

To some, however, Johno is something else: a hooligan.

Mere hours after Heidelberg United confirmed Clemente’s appointment as the club’s senior women’s coach, the 20-year-old became a Victorian football meme.

A three-year-old photo of fresh 18-year-old Clemente resurfaced.

In the photo, his face is contorted in combat. His right fist is clenched and wrapped in his belt.

He’s swinging his fist at a hooded opponent who wields a traffic cone.

This is Melbourne Victory versus Sydney FC, but hostilities aren’t meant to kick off for at least another two hours.

Set upon by a swarm of opposition supporters on the streets of Surry Hills, Clemente and other Melbourne Victory supporters went into self-defence mode.

It was only five minutes, but a perfectly placed photographer managed to capture the brawl.

One of the photos he took was the very same one plastered around the internet after Clemente’s appointment at Heidelberg.

It might only have been five minutes, but those five minutes have threatened to derail Clemente’s coaching path on more than one occasion.

“I was charged with affray, arrested, spent the night in a cell and was released on bail.”

That photo captured a single moment in time of Clemente’s life.

Devoid of any context, with no explanation for how the then 18-year-old kid arrived at that point in his life, it’s a photo Clemente can’t shake.

But Clemente is driven to ensure that no matter how persistent that photo is and no matter how accurate a depiction it is of his involvement in the often violent terrace culture of the time it won’t define his future.

A football love affair

Clemente’s earliest memories of football come from the 2006 World Cup.

As a young Australian-Italian, it was his family’s passion for the Azzuri which initially captured his footballing imagination.

By then, Clemente had already found his football club. He played for Essendon Royals, a club in Melbourne’s north-west, where his parents ran the club canteen.

“I remember watching all the big games from that World Cup at the club,” he said.

“Mum would paint my face in Italian blue - even for the game against Australia.

“I guess you should probably support Australia in those games but because Mum had me in blue, I was the only one celebrating when the referee gave that penalty.

“I remember the club president telling my Dad to make me stop before someone got upset!”

Like most of his early football memories, the Royals clubrooms at Ormond Park would play a big role in Clemente’s upbringing.

“It was such a big part of my childhood,” he said.

“At a young age, it was all about playing with my friends. At school, I was the soccer kid. I’d wear football jerseys or my Royals kit any chance I could get.

“As I got older my parents got more and more involved in the community at the club and I started to learn about all the other sides of football. From the sense of community around a club to the opportunities in coaching.

“I didn’t just go to training and go home. I was there all the time. One of my best memories is being at the bakery on Puckle St in Moonee Ponds with Dad at 6 am getting all the rolls we needed for the day for the canteen.

“We used to have to set up at the club’s main base at Ormond Park and then we’d need to the canteen up there and across the freeway at the Reggio Calabria club where the seniors were playing at the time.

“I’d sleep until about 9, get ready for my game, play and then stick around for all the other games. I lived at the club.”

Like most of his other football firsts, Clemente’s first tentative steps into coaching took place at the Royals.

“I had tried my hand at refereeing when I was 11 or 12 but I didn’t really like it,” he said.

“For me, I was really interested in coaching. I had great coaches in Lachlan Armstrong and Riccardo Marchioli [Brunswick City senior men’s NPL coach] who really inspired me.

Even at 12, Clemente was already showing a keen interest in the ‘why’ of football.

He got involved in coaching the club’s under-4 to under-8 Saturday program.

“It’s funny, because those kids I coached as a 13-year-old when they were four or five are starting to pop up at trials I’m running now,” he said.

After two years in the Saturday program, Clemente’s playing career took him to Northcote City for NPL football where he continued his junior coaching.

But whilst a fine young coaching career was blooming, Clemente found himself immersed in another type of football world.

No regrets

Without life on the terrace, Clemente wouldn’t be the coach or the person he is today.

“I was falling out of love with the game as a player and I felt like I was drifting away from my friends,” he said.

“I loved football but not as a player. I didn’t know what sort of person I was becoming.

“I started going to Melbourne Victory games and I found a community where I felt like I belonged. At that time of my life that was a place I could go every Saturday, meet new people and feel accepted.”

More than acceptance, Melbourne Victory and the terrace he became a part of provided an escape.

“I had started to get sick. Not physically, but mentally,” he said.

“I noticed these good and bad voices in my head. I was hitting puberty and starting to suffer from anxiety. I wasn’t enjoying playing football and I didn’t know who my real friends were. I just felt like I didn’t know what was going on.”

The Clemente household was struck by more bad news.

Clemente’s father underwent triple bypass surgery following a series of heart issues, went blind and lost a toe to diabetes.

His sister suffered from meningitis of the brain and entered into a coma.

“She had glandular fever for months and I just remember being at home and hearing her call for Mum,” he said.

“I found her in the bathroom on the floor having a seizure. It was a lot to deal with. My dad, my sister, my own issues. I guess I had to put my issues on the back burner.

“Amidst all of this, I started to feel depressed. I felt like I wasn’t in control anymore. I wasn’t enjoying playing, I’d stopped coaching, I wasn’t enjoying school, I felt like I didn’t have any friends.

“The only thing I enjoyed was watching football Victory and the terrace.”

Active support in Australia is often condemned by the media for being violent and anti-social however Clemente says what’s ignored by the critics is the camaraderie and support network that the terraces provide.

Clemente believes he is the embodiment of that.

Dealing with family illnesses, whilst also trying to be a pillar of strength for his family and battling his own mental struggles, the terrace was Clemente’s escape from his daily stresses and a place he could express his passion for football.

As he struggled with his mental health, Clemente found himself less and less interested in football as a player and at one point he stopped coaching altogether.

Clemente stopped coaching at 15-years-old in 2015.

As his terrace activities reached their crescendo with the incident in Sydney in 2017, Clemente found himself looking for a way back into the game.

The fall-out from five minutes of madness would have big repercussions.

Clemente was charged with affray and spent a night in remand before being released. He was banned from Melbourne Victory matches - and indeed any FFA sanctioned fixture - as a spectator.

He had previously been banned for running onto the field during an NPL fixture between Victory and South Melbourne, too.

When he was released in Sydney, he was sent onto the streets without shoes or socks because they were being held as evidence.

When the NSW Police finally returned them by mail, they came in a box with a photo of Sydney FC winning the A-League championship over Melbourne Victory.

“The worst part wasn’t the time in the cell. It was the call home to Mum,” he said.

“That was the lowest moment of my life.”

Returning to Melbourne in May 2017, Clemente said he reached a turning point.

“I felt like my life was over,” he said.

“I managed to get a job at SportsCo and with that responsibility, everything changed.

“Obviously, I wish what happened in Sydney never happened. But I wouldn’t be the same person I am without those experiences.”

Encouraged by mentors and friends to get back into coaching, Clemente enrolled for the final FFA/AFC C-License course of the year in 2017.

“Even though I hadn’t coached in years, I felt like me again. I knew this was me and what I wanted to do,” he said.

“I was putting on good sessions and I was only 18, so I think I was relieved that I could still put on a good session.”

After successfully completing the course, Clemente set his sights on a return to coaching.

Even today, the terrace still supports Clemente, as his father continues to battle illness.

A promising career rises

There was really only one place for Clemente to make his return to club football.

Clemente was welcomed back to Essendon Royals with open arms as then senior coach and former Socceroo Michael Curcija encouraged Clemente to return to the club and coach in the junior set up.

“I took on a job with the under-13s and I think that’s where I really discovered my passion for coaching again,” he said.

“It was the oldest team I coached and I think I thrived on that responsibility.

“Outside of football I got a job as assistant manager at SportsCo, so I felt like things were turning around.”

These days, Clemente is very open about his past experiences and is keen to share his experiences so that others can learn from them, but at the time, he was horrified of the thought of one of his players or parents finding out about his past.

“I was a role model for these kids,” he said.

“My friends called it a double life. It was like there were two different versions of me.

“Now, I realise it’s okay to talk about it.”

Clemente excelled as a coach, however, and he transformed his under-13 team from the club’s worst-performing team to one of the club’s best in one season.

He was rewarded by being appointed as the club’s junior Technical Director in 2019, a role that saw him become the youngest ever appointed in such a role at just 19-years-old.

The role included being the main author of the clubs football curriculum and being responsible for over 500 young players and playing a leading role in the club’s successful submission into the Junior Boys National Premier Leagues Victoria.

In 2019, he also took on the role of coaching the Royals’ senior women’s team, leading the club to promotion in his first season in charge.

Clemente’s rapid rise quickly grabbed the attention of Heidelberg United, who decided to take a chance on the 20-year-old as their senior National Premier Leagues Women’s coach.

In doing so, they made Clemente the youngest senior coach in Australian NPL history.

The announcement was immediately pounced on by the “Cult Figures of Australian Football” Facebook page, which shared Heidelberg’s announcement with the photo of Clemente from 2017.

“My phone started buzzing and everyone was sharing the post with me,” he said.

“There were comments on there like, ‘I wouldn’t let my daughter play for him’, and all this other stuff.

“I was actually on my way to a meeting with the club when it happened.

“I walked into the room and I was instantly supported.

“They told me, ‘now you just have to prove everyone wrong again.’”

Clemente’s done that plenty of times before.

He said he understands that people will continue to judge him for what happened in 2017. He accepts that some people won’t be able to see the changes he made and the hard work and dedication he has put into his coaching career.

“If people want to judge me for something that happened when I was 18, even though I’ve managed to achieve what I’ve achieved despite that by 20, then that’s their choice,” he said.

“I can’t change that. At the moment, people just see that photo, but they don’t get the whole story.

“I’m the youngest senior coach in the NPL by a long way, that’s the facts whether people like it or not.

“Sometimes I think, ‘what do I need to do to shake this photo?’, but now I’m starting to accept that some people might never let it go.”

Moving On Up

The decision to move to Heidelberg wasn’t an easy one.

In doing so, he had to leave a club he loved and one that had given him opportunities when few others would.

With his wage in football still supporting his family, with his father still suffering from illness, leaving Essendon Royals - even for Heidelberg - meant leaving a club he had grown up and one he loved.

“For me, it was a huge opportunity,” he said.

“I was comfortable at Royals and I love the club, but I thought if I didn’t take this chance now, when would the next one come?

“I had to have a discussion with Mum that I might not be able to give enough money to help like I was last year, but I didn’t want to let anything stop me from chasing my dream.

“I took the chance, and I’m just so excited now.

“I take great pride in getting here.”

Clemente has not wasted any time in preparing for his NPLW debut season and is looking forward to the challenge of coaching in the competition.

Heidelberg United finished sixth in the NPLW last season and Clemente has set his sights on taking the team above and beyond that in 2020.

“It’s a step up for me and it’s a big challenge for me,” he said.

“I want to be a professional coach, so this is an important step and I’m excited to take it on.”

If you or anyone you know is suffering from mental health issues or needs to talk to someone about mental health concerns, please consult the below services and resources as required.

Categories: People | Women | Local

npl, nplw, heidelberg united, women's football, johno clemente

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