Meet the coach who’s become Lewes FC’s secret weapon

Less than five months after being appointed as manager, Craig Nelson has led the club’s men’s first team to top spot in the Isthmian League Premier Division and collected the league’s September Manager of the Month award.

Nelson credits much of this early success to the hard work and level-headedness of his players and coaching staff, but who are the uncelebrated figures before this behind-the-scenes work?

One of Nelson’s coaching staff, Bryan Nzinga, is a huge part of the team. After Nelson assured me that Nzinga would become a manager at some point in the future, it was over to the man himself for introductions.

“I stopped my playing career quite early through injury,” said Nzinga. “I fractured my hip. I was mainly into athletics, but then I turned my coaching journey through a youth charity I used to work for called Reaching Higher. Through there, I got my coaching qualifications and badges, and kind of focused on that.”

From that point, Nzinga turned his hand to a whole range of opportunities.

As well as becoming Head of Football at Reaching Higher, Nzinga took on roles with Victoire Ladies FC, Sutton Common Rovers FC, Tooting Bec FC, Tooting & Mitcham United, and even the Reading FC Under-11s side.

All of this came before Nzinga turned 30, with his early retirement from the playing side benefiting his coaching journey hugely.

It was during this time that he met Nelson too, in the Combined Counties League Premier Division – the ninth tier of English football.

“I had a great opportunity to work at Sutton Common Rovers at a young age. I think I was like 23, 24 and that's when I met Pitts, and then, pretty much the rest was history.

“I’ve been working full time and doing coaching, men's and other stuff, so it works really well. I’ve coached a women's team, working at an academy, a bit of everything, and obviously, here as well now.

“I’m proud to be on the team and work with some great people.”

Much like his current boss, Nzinga is, of course, being modest. At both Victoire Ladies and Tooting Bec, he was manager, and certainly one of the youngest bosses in non-league football.

In guiding the latter to a place in the FA Vase First Round and a rapid start to the Covid-19-curtailed 2020/21 season where they sat fourth in the Combined Counties League Division One after 11 games, Nzinga made a name for himself at just 26 years of age.

Last season, Nzinga was one of the busiest young coaches in non-league football, too, combining a first-team coach role at Step 6 side Lewisham Borough Community FC, youth coaching in his community and academy coaching at Crystal Palace with his day job as a P.E. teacher at St Mark’s School in London.

With Nelson appointed at Lewes in May 2024, Nzinga was brought in immediately as a first-team coach and handed the opportunity to work at Step 3 for the first time. It is a role he has since embraced.

“My role, Pitts describes it as overall team performance. So, in possession and out of possession,” said Nzinga.

“I oversee how we perform with and without the ball. Then we have specialist coaches in Frankie [Sawyer], who works with the forwards, [Aaron] Fray, who works with the defenders.

“Me and Pitts will plan sessions, review games with our analyst Kevin, and then we come with our in-possession and out-of-possession strategy for each game and each opposition.”

With Lewes drawing huge attention for their work with the ball at the start of this season, and the likes of young technical talents Eddie Allsopp, Malachi Morris and Marcus Sablier shining in Nelson’s system, something is obviously clicking with Nzinga’s work. As the young coach explained, it is a huge compliment to hear the side’s end result being praised.

“Obviously, my preference [of work] is with the ball so we can be creative and expressive,” said Nzinga.

“There's no one solution to when you're going up against opposition. You have loads of different tactics and ideas for individuals.

“So, against Bracknell Town for example, Shae [Hutchinson], his individual strengths enabled us to expose their backline and combine with Bass [Danny Bassett] as well. So yeah, that's a bit of me.”

The aforementioned Bracknell Town game – a 6-3 win in the FA Trophy Third Qualifying Round – was another feather in the bow of Lewes’ young management team, all of whom are stepping up from roles in regional football last season.

While Nelson, assistant manager Danny Oakins and Sawyer were at Kent side Glebe, Nzinga’s role at Lewisham saw him make the biggest step up of all – a jump of three divisions. The transition was helped, as Nzinga explains, by plenty of hard work during the off-season.

Asked about the technical excellence of Lewes’ play this season, Nzinga said: “I think it stems from the summer. Me and Pitts used to meet up in the gym and just plan things out and work on our main concepts, which was how we identify the spare player and start there, and then whatever the personnel was on the pitch, we kind of go and create from there.

“I think it's really important to have those ideas. A lot of our goals stem from that concept, in terms of players getting into space, finding that space, so that person has time and space to make a decision, and we create a goal.

“It worked out really, really well [against Bracknell], and it [was like] an ideal world; it's really, really good.”

Lewes’ start to the season has been almost faultless, and despite exiting the FA Cup to lower-league opponents in Harefield United, the Rooks still have the Sussex Senior Cup and FA Trophy, alongside their league commitments, with which to eye up a trophy.

Nzinga was keen to impress that silverware is an ambition of the management team. “We always want to start with the end in mind. We're big dreamers, ambitious people and characters, but if you think too far ahead, you get lost.

“I think it's really important to stay with feet on the ground and be humble. But my perspective is about performing the best in terms of on the day and winning.

“If we keep doing that game after game in league games and cup competitions, we will get to where we want to, and then and after that, we'll celebrate together.”

Nzinga talked of how the staff and players geared up for each game: “We prepare as a collective, individually analysing, watching the content we have on us and preparing in training sessions,” he said.

“I think it always starts there, with the competitiveness in our training. We've got an abundance of talent, but now it’s about creating unity, especially in our Thursday session, and it's going out with one mind and showing why we are where we are, and then delivering through the basis of football.

“It’s about hard work and adhering to a game plan. We'll go into the game confident, but we’ve still got to keep our feet on the ground and be humble and work our socks off.”

Lewes have a stiff league test ahead of them this weekend – they go to FA Cup heroes Horsham, knowing they’ll need to be at their best to get a result which will see them stay top of the pile.