A case for all football managers

Football managers are probably the people on earth with most emotional roller coasters. If they are successful, they are hyped but if their teams lose some consecutive matches, they are about to be sacked. Every manager has already experienced these extreme situations but they still become nervous when they are questioned and make tiny but important mistakes for which they are criticized by the media. The more they are criticized, the better they can estimate their situation when times are good, though. They often scale down the expectations, rarely talk about winning the championship then and prefer focussing on the next match.

This is interesting!

I’m writing this article because I think the hard and precious work of managers isn’t recognized enough or even underrated nowadays. There are actually some great blogs on the internet that talk about tactics which is the managers’ main and most important task but the media still don’t seem to have noticed how influential the men on the sideline actually are. The media prefer to spread rumors about the coaches and make them insecure. This really can’t be because every good player, every good team, every good play has been influenced by at least one manager. Unfortunately the praise almost never comes full circle.

Sometimes though, the players don’t forget about the origin of their success and celebrate their goals with the managers. It happens quite rarely but footballer do notice when their coach has a hard time to manage and preferentially celebrate with their “brain” when he is under-fire. But even then the media sometimes like to slander about that and say the manager had told his players to celebrate with them. This has happened this season to Villas-Boas who has already been sacked hundreds of times by the media.

Ribery showing his support for van Gaal

It can also be that the footballers are intentionally playing badly because they can’t stand their manager. Of course this can also be explained with a lack of authority of the coach but I think everybody can imagine how hard it is to train a team where half of the players are against you. The board has to help the manager in such cases because otherwise they have to sack him. No team can play well if they are playing against the man who is supposed to teach them how to play successfully.

I do think that managers are the most vital component of a successful team. Guardiola and Mourinho are the best examples. I won’t discuss about whom of them is the better manager, I’ll let you, my dear readers, decide that with a voting at the end of the article and then write once about the result in another article. 😉
Well, Guardiola and Mourinho are undoubtedly among the best managers in the world and during the “Clasicos” you can often observe very well how the two world class coaches are the only ones who remain more or less calm while their players go crazy. Furthermore those derbies wouldn’t be the same without the tactics that haven’t been worked by the players but by the coaches.

He's still Chelsea's coach - it'll be worth it!

Actually football managers are working a lot. They have to work out the exercise regimen for the tactics, the tactics itself but there is even more work. They have to communicate with the players and always be there for them if they have any questions or problems. They must find a way to satisfy the wishes of every single player what means that they have to rotate a lot. But they still have to be successful despite this rotation that requires even more training sessions so that everyone can adapt to the tactics. As you can see this job is a doom loop.

I’ve always been a proponent of long-term engagements of managers. Managers need time. They just can’t build up a successful team in a few weeks. After all they are just human beings as well. Every fan, player and board director has to consider that and be more patient with their managers because they are truly doing a great job.

Thank you a lot for reading this article! 🙂 I hope you enjoyed it and if so, please share it on all of your social networks! 🙂 That’d mean a lot to me and I’d be even more motivated to write more posts in the future! 🙂 Comments and votes are wished-for as well! 😉