Show HN: IRC like chat platform with 4chan like reply system 10 by ignasheahy | 5 comments on Hacker News. Hello HN, I want to share something that I worked on for quite a while as my side project - www.heahy.com an IRC like chat where you can share ...
If Donny van de Beek was expecting time to acclimatise to life in Manchester, away from the media spotlight, he was in for a rude awakening. In the past few weeks alone, the 23-year-old has had a Dutch legend telling him he made the wrong move, an ex...
With his hand weakened Jurgen Klopp is keeping his cards close to his chest as the Liverpool boss considers his defensive options for Saturday’s Premier League match against West Ham in light of injuries to Virgil van Dijk, Joel Matip and Fabinho. Jo...
When Willie Kirk arrived at Everton in December 2018 the team was bottom of the WSL and not so much a sleeping giant as a fallen one. The club that had been as close as any to challenging Arsenal’s dominance a decade earlier, and produced a string of...
Jurgen Klopp, Pep Guardiola and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer have turned up the pressure on Premier League chief executive Richard Masters to re-introduce the use of five substitutes. Liverpool manager Klopp accused Masters of a “lack of leadership” for putt...
Jurgen Klopp expected Nathaniel Phillips to leave Liverpool in the transfer window but could hand the rookie his Premier League debut on Saturday to solve his defensive injury crisis. Klopp was so convinced Phillips would be moving on that he left hi...
Nobby Stiles gone. With his passing does the glory of England’s 1966 World Cup victory retreat further from view, ever more the museum piece. Only four of those who jigged along the touchline with Stiles remain; Sir Bobby Charlton, Sir Geoff Hurst, R...
England World Cup hero Nobby Stiles has died at the age of 78 after a long illness. The former Manchester United, Middlesbrough and Preston midfielder passed away on Friday. Stiles won the World Cup with England in 1966 and was also part of the Manch...
England fans do not have much major tournament success to cling on to but the triumph at the 1966 World Cup remains the centrepiece of national footballing pride. But where are those heroes who won England’s only global football trophy more than 50 y...
After two penalty misses this season the spotlight is on Jorginho’s technique as Chelsea boss Frank Lampard weighs up whether to take the Italian off spot-kick duties. Jorginho’s record from the spot has taken a hit in recent weeks. Before this seaso...
Show HN: Inspired by the 'memex' I created Kokoro for building your second mind 2 by etanaka | 0 comments on Hacker News. Hi HN, I have been working on a new tool that was inspired by Vannevar Bush's memex and Luhmann's Zettelkasten. Having been a lo...
If there is much more of this, the anguish over Marcus Rashford’s suitability for inclusion on the Spoty shortlist will be no more.
During his Champions League cameo, he showed himself as adept on the pitch as he is in the political arena, the RB Leipzig defence going the way of the British Government against the unanswerable cogency of his attacks.
There are some Manchester United moaners yet to be convinced by Rashford, who believe him over-rated and symbolic of a team that blows hot and cold. Chatrooms ache with laments about his failure to kick on. Before the hat-trick there had been glimpses this season, the fine goal at Brighton, the embroidery at Newcastle, the winner in Paris, but outside of that too many duds.
It might be argued that Rashford’s better performances come with England, where the personal loading is not so great and responsibility is shared among Harry Kane, Raheem Sterling and Jadon Sancho. At United, Rashford ran himself into a stress fracture of the back in the service of Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, who, in the pre-Bruno Fernandes period, could not rely on Anthony Martial, Paul Pogba, Juan Mata or Dan James to deliver an edge.
Post-lockdown, Rashford found himself campaigning on two fronts, sporting and political. This would be a risk for the most established athlete. Though Rashford seems to have been with us an age already, he turns just 23 on Saturday. The bar was set high with those goals on debut against Midtjylland in 2016, repeated days later against Arsenal. There was little scope for backward steps.
Rashford began his charitable drive last year, providing essential items to the homeless at Christmas. He extended that in the early days of lockdown to the provision of food for kids no longer receiving meals at school. And in June the game-changing open letter shaming the Government into a policy U-turn to supply school meals during the holidays.
This moved Rashford from sports bulletins to the main news. Not only had he become a national figure in a radical new context, he was transformed into a folk hero, a symbol of good. Simultaneously the football season was about to resume, and Rashford, recovered from injury, was asked to play his way into form while at the same time holding the Government to account more successfully than Her Majesty’s opposition.
Though United dragged themselves into third place in the Premier League they ran out of gas in the Europa League. When United began this campaign after a short intermission Rashford struggled to find a rhythm. The brilliance of his social media strikes against the state contrasted with his faltering form, making him an easy target for hardliners too ready to believe his priorities were elsewhere.
And then came the defenestration of RB Leipzig, a starburst that lit up Europe bringing with it Mbappé-levels of love and suggesting Rashford might yet become the great statesman on grass that he is off it.
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This week Thierry Henry, manager of Montreal Impact in MLS, was mic’d up for 1-0 home defeat against Nashville SC. It was the Impact’s fourth defeat in five league matches.
The video was illuminating. Henry can be heard questioning his players for taking extra touches, making illogical runs and blaming teammates for their passes when they had not moved into space. At one point Henry repeats the sequence “one, two” like a maths robot that needs rewiring. As the final whistle blows, he puts his head into his hands and marches down the touchline.
The overwhelming sense is of Henry’s disbelief that his players lack the natural instincts that his own greatness as a player was founded upon. How do they not get this? How are they not pre-programmed to do this better? Why are they not listening?
That frames being an exceptional player as a barrier to being an exceptional manager. What made them supreme players, putting them on a higher plane than their peers, is useless when they need to teach it. Their brilliance hangs like a weight around the neck of their ability to communicate. “If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe,” as Carl Sagan once said. You can do it with shop-bought pastry and a few apples, Carl.
It reminds of a wonderful anecdote about Glenn Hoddle’s tenure as Tottenham manager. One day in training he took the ball off Jamie Redknapp as he was practicing free-kicks and promptly curled the ball into the top corner, first with his right foot and then his left. “I was just thinking, that’s not the best way to get the players on board,” recalled Stephen Kelly. “You could see that there was a sense of unrest among some of the senior players. They didn’t like it and weren’t encouraged by it. They felt he was undermining them.”
You cannot bestow ability onto players. The key lies in the communication of your principles. When working as a translator for Bobby Robson at Barcelona, players noted – and were impressed by – the way Jose Mourinho translated Robson’s chalk drawings and passed them onto the squad with supplementary information that crystallised the manager’s plans. Mourinho had no playing history. That wasn’t important.
The last two winners of the Champions League – Jurgen Klopp and Hansi Flick – had middling playing careers. Last season’s four semi-finalists failed to win an international cap between them as players. Successful managers without stellar playing careers are nothing new (think of Arrigo Sacchi, Arsene Wenger, Gerard Houllier and Carlos Alberto Parreira). But we have entered a new egalitarian age of football management where success as a player is neither a barrier nor an indicator of success as a coach.
It is aided by the rapid increase in available information. There remains a benefit to the ‘been there, done that’ principle of management by inspiration that non-elite players miss out on, but the rise in sports science and analytics provide advantages that are not solely enjoyed by the old boys network of former players. In fact, there’s a theory that successful ex-players are likely to over-exaggerate the benefits of their playing experience at the expense of more scientific aspects of the art.
English football remains the exception. Frank Lampard this week bemoaned the perceived treatment he receives for being English. But Lampard was surely missing the point. He is doubted not due to his nationality, but because he was over-promoted by any reasonable measure because of who he was as a player rather than what he had proven as a manager. One season at Derby County does not get you a Big Six club with title aspirations. Nor does a relegation with Cardiff City and success at Molde in Europe’s 22nd-ranked league. Again, this not does render Lampard and Solskjaer as certain failures. But nor does it persuade that they are the best men for their jobs.
Lampard and Solskjaer were appointed to two of the richest clubs in the world because English football remains hypnotised by the intangible draw of reputation. It would be foolish to expect them to have turned down such glorious opportunity – that isn’t the point. But both lack the experience of those around them. Jose Mourinho worked as a translator, opposition scout and assistant coach. Jurgen Klopp earned experience with Frankfurt D-Juniors and during seven years at 1. FSV Mainz 05. Ralph Hasenhuttl honed his tactical philosophy at SpVgg Unterhaching and VfR Aalen. Marcelo Bielsa managed the youth teams at Newell’s and embarked on an educational tour of South America and Europe.
These managers also started young. Julian Nagelsmann took his first job at 29. Brendan Rodgers effectively retired from playing at 20. Bielsa was a youth coach at 25. Klopp took charge of 1. FSV Mainz 05 at 33. The benefits of a long, stellar playing career provoke a clear temporal disadvantage: Lampard began his coaching career at 40. The one benefit that being a player certainly does afford is opportunity.
Perhaps things are slowly changing. Ross Embleton was named Leyton Orient manager having earned his corn as a youth coach at Tottenham, Bournemouth and Norwich. Ben Garner was mentored by Jose Mourinho through his UEFA ‘A’ licence and is now Bristol Rovers manager. Mark Bonner is the second youngest manager in the country and was promoted through Cambridge United’s academy set-up before being made permanent manager last March. But all were internal appointments and all face a fight for relevance to prove they can succeed elsewhere.
At the top of English football, reputation still counts for far more than experience. To play at the highest level is to receive a VIP pass to a job interview and an advantage when you get there, for better and for worse. Frank Lampard is right; he is treated differently. Just not how he might care to think.
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