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Who is to more to blame for poor soccer team performances: Players or manager?
Results so far:
| Players | 63% | 260 votes | Total: 410 votes | |
| Manager | 37% | 150 votes |
Players
by Natalie M. Wolverson
Created on: August 16, 2009 Last Updated: August 20, 2009
Managers are the ones who get the sack when things turn bad for a club, however a manager can only have a certain amount of influence on and off the pitch. The manager can't make the players work, he can only tell them what he expects of them and what he expects the opposition's strengths and weaknesses are - it is up to the players to use this knowledge to exploit a team's weakness.
Coaches and managers get a lot of abuse and are often in the firing line when the club they manage or coach has some bad results, but the manager can't have a direct impact on the pitch, as he doesn't play the football. Yes his decisions might change things a little, but it is all down to the players, and whether they want to win.
The players have to work as a team and listen to the advice of their manager, but also use their own creativity and experience on the pitch. The manager can't constantly tell each player what to do next or where to move; this is all down to the player and the team. Team work is key in football, and although the manager can pick the line up for the squad, he can't make them work well together - that is something that the players have to adjust to and work out.
Players don't get fired or risk losing their job when they miss easy chances to score, or mess up a pass - no one thinks much of it, only the manager. Fact is that footballers make mistakes on the pitch, and this influences the game. Look at England's last match against Holland in August 2009 - Rio Ferdinand gave the ball away and Holland scored, then Gareth Barry gave the ball away and Holland scored a second, yet no one got on the case of those two players because everyone just looked at the manager, Fabio Capello. Then when Jermain Defoe scored two goals for England to make it 2-2, no one really cared that we gave two goals away in the first half!
Footballers get paid a lot of money, and when things go well they take all the credit, however when things don't go their way it is immediately the managers fault according to some players and the press, however this isn't the case. If a player doesn't perform well that is the players fault - the manager has no impact on that. The manager or coach may set training for the player but the player also has a say in what he trains. If he feels that his training isn't benefiting him then he should speak to the coach or manager about it.
Managers can't change the way players play when they are on the pitch; they can only prepare them as much as possible in training, but if the player chooses to play a different way or not use what they learnt in training, then that is not the manager's fault. Training is not also just down to the manager to take care of - there are many coaches for different areas, yet they never get "bad press" or fired do they?
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Manager
by Rory Truesdale
Created on: August 17, 2009 Last Updated: August 22, 2009
It would be very easy to over simplify this argument and make wild generalisations that due to the fact that it is the players on the pitch; it is the players who are to blame for poor performances.
Throughout the different leagues, particularly in England, the importance of the manager to the players invariably changes. For example, teams playing in the lowest tier of English League Football are more likely to have similar squads than Premiership teams. This is due to a number of factors including the financial stability of the club, training facilities and youth facilities amongst many others. This does, however, reiterate the point that managers and their ability to work with the players are of paramount importance.
Brian Clough is heralded as one of the best football managers of all time, and his success came when managing two clubs which didn't necessarily have the best squads at the time. When he became manager of Nottingham Forest, they were thirteenth in the old English Division Two, but when Brian Clough took charge they soon gained promotion and in his third season in charge, they won the league. Under Clough, Forest also went on to win the European Cup, and all this while largely maintaining the same squad of players that the club had in Division Two. Despite the fact that this example is taken from a time when football players where less egocentric and overpaid, there are modern success stories.
Take Peterborough United FC as an example; a team that has risen from League Two, to League One, and now the Championship in consecutive seasons. Under manager Darren Ferguson, (son of Sir Alex Ferguson, undoubtedly one of the greatest of all time) Peterborough has bounced up the leagues with essentially the same squad. Although the Championship will prove a much sterner challenge than League One football, it is still suggested that Peterborough will flourish in this division. This is because the team have a manager that commands respect from the players and they all want to play under him.
There are possible exceptions to the rule, for example the Real Madrid team early this decade, nicknamed the Galacticos. Madrid chairman, Florentino Perez invested heavily and saw the club make some of the biggest purchases in football at the time, notably Zinedene Zidane and Luis Figo. However, despite all these world class players, the team enjoyed little success. The reasons for this were the lack of impetus placed on defensive options within the squad, and more importantly perhaps, the players did not gel together on the pitch. The responsibility for this failure could not land at the manager's feet as the erratic tendencies of eleven superstars on the pitch would be very difficult to manage.
Undoubtedly the players on the pitch do play a massive role in the performance of a team, but it has to be said that if the manager is not doing his job well, the players will not do theirs well. Think of it in dragon sleighing terms (hopefully avoiding the numerous football cliches); if you remove the head, the body will fail.
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