Work-life balance hard 'due to pressure' - Mousinho

After four games Portsmouth are 18th in the Championship with three points.

Portsmouth head coach John Mousinho says he had ambitions to become a lawyer had a career in football not panned out.

The 38 year-old studied at the University of Notre Dame in the USA on a football scholarship but gave up his studies after the first year when he was offered a contract by Brentford - where he went on to make over 550 career appearances.

Speaking to BBC Radio Solent's “Who Needs Mourinho?” podcast, Mousinho said when he went to the US, he thought his chances of becoming a footballer might have passed.

"I started to look elsewhere, I wanted for some reason to become a lawyer - I don’t know why.

"I wanted to do a history degree and a one-year law conversion course and go into that, probably because I wanted to be rich, which isn't a great motivator."

Laptop in bed and tactics on napkins

In a wide ranging interview, Mousinho revealed it is much harder to develop a healthy work-life balance as a head coach than he thought.

The former Oxford defender lives in Portsmouth with his wife and two young daughters.

"I’ve found it really difficult," he said.

"I thought I’d be able to switch off, my life has changed a lot from being a player where the hours are very social.

"I try my best on days off to make sure I spend as much time as possible with the kids when they’re awake.

"My wife criticises me a lot for taking the laptop to bed and that’s something I need to be a bit better at.

"I've found it difficult because of the pressure of the game, you never know when you’re going to get another opportunity and you never know when you’re going to get another opportunity to be Portsmouth manager. It does benefit you when you have that work-life balance.

"My wife and I - if we can go out I’m usually scribbling a couple of tactical bits on napkins which is nonsense but I’m not sure why I do it, I don’t list that as a strength."

Mousinho said there was some trepidation when he took the Pompey job almost two years ago.

"When you do all of your coaching badges and you go through the process as a player, and as a coach, you can have as many ideas and theories as you want but when you get into the job it’s very different.

"I didn’t know if I’d be any good or not at that. I knew that if I fell flat on my face and we weren’t successful in the first few months that might define my career as a head coach and that was a real worry in the back of my mind."