Millwall boss Gary Rowett: John Berylson was an incredible guy – he was respected by everyone he met

Millwall manager Gary Rowett says that the club’s late owner John Berylson’s conduct and running of the club meant he never commanded anything less than total respect.

The 70-year-old American was involved in a fatal road traffic accident on Tuesday.

Berylson’s passion for the Lions, who he became involved with in 2006, saw his invest £100million in the South London club – helping them become a stable Championship club who have repeatedly challenged for a Championship play-off berth in recent campaigns.

Rowett is the second longest-serving boss in the Championship, enjoying working under the same kind of stability enjoyed by the likes of Kenny Jackett and Neil Harris.

Millwall’s players, who are on a pre-season training camp in Alicante, Spain, paid their respects, below, yesterday.

For John. pic.twitter.com/1qKEgz38w8

— Millwall FC (@MillwallFC) July 5, 2023

“It’s devastating news,” Rowett told the South London Press. “John was a huge, huge influence on everything good at the football club.

“He was such an incredible guy and such an incredible character.

“First and foremost as a person he had such great values and a brilliant way of putting those values across to you as a manager. He was such an interesting man full of so many brilliant stories and with so much information at his disposal. One minute he’d be talking about football and the next minute he’d be talking about European history and he’d know more than any person you met about it.

“He was such a pleasure to chat to, at any point.

“He’d always try and say the right thing to you. You could sense that was what he was doing.

“It’s very, very difficult to compute and comprehend the news and shows what a great owner and leader he was because everybody is so devastated.

“I remember quite clearly after the Blackburn game that everyone was on the floor about the result and how the season had ended. John rang me the next day and one of his first lines was: ‘I had my cigar ready, Gary, and now I’m obviously going to have to save it until next year’. It was something so simple as that, you couldn’t help but feel so desperately sorry that he couldn’t celebrate promotion.

“It makes it doubly harder now because anyone who has come across him, would love to have done that for him as an owner.

“One thing that struck me was I remember him walking around the ground applauding the fans and I don’t think there are many owners who can do that. I don’t mean that in a disrespectful way, but there aren’t many who can walk around the crowd – clapping all the fans – and getting universal, rapturous applause back.

“If nothing else, that summed John up. He was just respected by every person. That is a very, very difficult thing to be able to achieve.

“He used to say to me that he never really wanted to be a public figure or seek publicity. He always wanted to be there in the background, if someone needed him. He never really wanted validation for it all. He was happy to stay quite private. Everyone who has been involved in the football club and on the outside can see Millwall as a very, very obvious way to run a football club in a real sensible and sustainable way.

“He was always conscious of that but, at the same time, he always wanted to push the boundaries, if we could. That’s kind of the conversation we had this summer ‘we haven’t quite done it, but what do you need to get there next year and how can we give you the tools to get there?’. That was how his thinking worked – it was never one of blame. It was ‘what can we do together to move forward?'”