Newcastle Manager Matthias Jaissle Relocates Entire Squad to Silent Monastery, Vows to Win Every Match by Whisper
In a bid to quieten the noise on Tyneside, Newcastle United's head coach has moved his entire first team into a working monastery and imposed a vow of silence on the club, with all tactical instructions now delivered by hand signals and written on chalkboards.
Newcastle United head coach Matthias Jaissle has relocated the entire first-team squad, coaching staff and a rotating detachment of stewards to a working Benedictine monastery outside Hexham, where the club will remain until the noise on Tyneside is fully quietened.
The move follows a run of results that Jaissle described as «acoustically unacceptable». Under the new regime, players train in total silence, communicate through hand signals developed by the club's set-piece coach, and celebrate goals by nodding once in the direction of the dugout.
«We have removed all sources of noise from the football operation,» Jaissle told reporters through an interpreter who was himself forbidden to speak and instead held up laminated cards. «The crowd will be asked to applaud in a manner that does not exceed the sound of a kettle coming to the boil. Anyone who shouts will be escorted to the car park and asked to consider what they have done.»
St James' Park has been fitted with a public-address system that plays only the sound of a library at closing time. The club's ultras have been issued with felt-lined clappers and a timetable of approved chants, each lasting no longer than four seconds and performed in a whisper.
By Thursday, the monastery's cloisters were lined with training cones and the monks had been recruited as ball boys, instructed to return stray footballs without a word. Jaissle is understood to have demanded that the next home fixture be played behind a curtain of heavy velvet, with the result communicated to the city by a single bell.
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