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.
Reputation over experience
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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from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/3e7xuIz
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