Riza opens up on Cardiff job, assisting Cole in Italy and being banned in Turkey

“It has just broadened my horizons again,” Omer Riza tells Sky Sports. He is reflecting on his recent coaching role with Cesena in Italy where he assisted former England international Ashley Cole. But Riza’s experiences are already vast and varied.

Over the course of an evening, the former Cardiff City boss opens up about many of them. The highs and lows of managing in the Championship, how he once received a global ban from football, and even a recent broken ankle in a charity game. "Silly tackle!"

As a player, he started out at Arsenal, his connection to Cole dating back to when they were just boys. But his league debut came in the Netherlands on loan at Den Haag and he later spent five years in Turkey, including playing European football for Trabzonspor.

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As a coach, he has worked with England's age-group sides and managed Cardiff City in the Championship. Cesena was a chance to get back on the grass. "I had that hunger to get going again." Now, after that adventure, he is eager to return to the Football League.

"Italy was a good opportunity, working with Ashely who I have known for so long, and getting to experience a different style of football. The target at Cesena was to change the approach, change the mentality, and that is what we did in a short space of time."

Riza explains: "Italy can be quite defensively minded, low blocks and counter-attacks. They are quite happy not to have the ball. Our mentality was to try to have the ball, to control the game, to provoke the opposition to open up spaces further up the pitch.

"The players were used to a 5-3-2 and defending their box so to go press high and step on to the opposition to stop them playing and win it right up the pitch to cause them problems, that was a big change, not just for the players but for the fans as well."

Cole decided to call time on the Cesena project in the summer when it became clear that the club's ambitions did not match his own. "I honestly believe we would have done really well this year if we had been allowed to bring in the players we wanted," says Riza.

But he is backing his old pal to succeed somewhere else. "He has worked hard at his coaching, he is diligent and he has his head screwed on." Assisting him in the next role is an option. "We have spoken about it." But Riza's real aim is to be a head coach again.

His first taste of it came at Leyton Orient back in 2017. That was no gentle introduction. "There were five managerial changes that season. The owners were not paying the players and the fans were up in arms. It was really tough." But he saw out the season.

Now 46, there have been so many obstacles since. "I applied for hundreds of jobs after that and finally found a job with Watford. I started part-time on £20 an hour and worked my way up from the under-15s to become first-team assistant. And then I got sacked."

That one still grates. It was "a kick in the behind" to discover that his future was tied to departing head coach Valerien Ismael who had only been brought in that summer. "I had been there for five years, I was a Pro Licence coach." But Riza had to start over again.

At Cardiff, in the autumn of 2024, he was trusted with the top job on a caretaker basis after Erol Bulut was dismissed for taking one point from the first six games of the season. The turnaround under Riza was swift and impressive enough to be given the job permanently.

"I got nominated for manager of the month," he recalls. The first of two such nominations in five months. "Taking over after a start like that, it is like you have been deducted points. You are trying to survive. We nearly managed it." Unfortunately, a dip in the spring saw him sacked with three games to go, just one point from safety.

"It became harder to play with freedom and we drew 15 games, too many." Cardiff won none of the three games after he left and they finished bottom of the Championship, despite the fact that they were 19th during the 37-game period that he was in charge.

There are fond memories. A 5-0 win over Plymouth. "Wayne Rooney was in charge then." And two draws with Coventry. "I went up against Frank Lampard, who I played with at West Ham. It was nice to do that." But the derby win over Swansea remains bitter-sweet.

"I lost my father that week."

This is the unseen side of the game. "I was up and down the motorway because it was, 'It is your dad, you need to come back.' I would go and sit with my dad until two or three in the morning and then need to be back ready for training the next morning."

That could be a three-hour drive. "It was a very emotional period but I just love what I do and my father would have wanted me to carry on. It was tough but I just knew that." Cardiff beat Swansea 3-0 that weekend. "To get that result for the fans, it was special."

There is pride at the players that he helped to develop. "Yousef Salech is doing very well now. Will Alves and Sivert Mannsverk also did well when they came in." But he accepts that mistakes were made too. Calling out the fans for their criticism is a regret.

"It is not just about what you do on the grass," Riza points out. "You are representing the football club. That is so important. I have learned a lot from the experience, massively. But then, I have had so many different experiences now as a player and as a coach."

How have those experiences shaped his ideas about the game? As a youngster, he was coached by the great Don Howe at Arsenal, often hailed as a visionary. "He was very good at establishing what exactly you were good at as a player and developing it."

There was a season training with the first-team at Arsenal, working up close with Arsene Wenger. The Gunners boss did not say too much but every morsel of information was taken in. "When you get that one little moment of detail, it can sink in a bit deeper."

At Turkey, he added to his knowledge. "I remember our full-backs stepping into holding midfield." This was years before Pep Guardiola popularised the tactic. Those seasons with Trabzonspor brought some of the best moments of his career - and the worst.

"Playing in Europe was a highlight." There is an image of him with his top off celebrating a goal in the UEFA Cup. "As a Turkish-Cypriot, scoring against APOEL, a Greek-Cypriot side, was a fairytale story, really." But his time at Trabzonspor ended on a sour note.

"I ended up getting banned for five months. I left because they had not paid me but the Turkish Federation found me guilty. I had a ten-year battle in the courts, CAS, FIFA, European Court of Human Rights. I won the case but I did not win the pecuniary damages."

The experience damaged his career and his finances. "I spent a lot of money trying to get that but I have helped other people along the way. They had to change the rules. It was a long and painful process and my dad had to go through that too, all my family."

His playing career was not quite the same after that. "No one would sign me because the ban would kick in." He did play on down the pyramid. "That is just how it unravelled." But he considered working in another industry, walking away from the game that he loved.

"In my mind, I was going to come out of football. I remember telling my dad I did not want to do it anymore. But he reminded me I had been doing it since I was six years old, travelling all over the world, so I should try to stay in football. It just progressed from there."

Inspired by his father, and perhaps driven by a player career that did not quite deliver all that it had promised, Riza continues to push for the next opportunity. "It has all made me stronger, made me more resilient," he explains. "I am more than ready for the next chapter."