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| Players | 63% | 126 votes | Total: 201 votes | |
| Manager | 37% | 75 votes |
Players
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Add to FavoritesBefore considering who is to blame for poor soccer performances we must first consider the different components of making a football team a successful and winning one. There are a number of different facets to a football team that need to be looked at in considering the make up of the team.
Psychology plays a big part in the modern game of football, whether played in the Premier league or played at a lower level, hence the prevalence of sports coaches and sports psychologists at professional clubs. The groundwork of mentally preparing football players and coaching a winning mentality is begun at an early age, generally in academies or youth teams. How to win is drummed into young players on a daily basis, at all times, engendering a hugely competitive nature and ensuring that nothing else matters but winning. Sports psychology is big business and is now part of the modern football teams makeup. It is the manager who makes the decision as to whether or not a sports psychologist would be a good tool to use in the search for a competitive edge but it is also the players themselves who have to embrace the use of such a technique.
Technique and skills, taught by coaches who are eventually beholden to the manager are the next component in the moulding of a winning team. However, good technique and skill can only be taught if the basic foundations of a physically athletic player are there. Arsene Wenger the successful manager of Premier league Arsenal football club is rumoured to only consider younger players for his academy if they can run the 100 metres in under 11 seconds and have a basic level of skill that can then be moulded to play in a definitive style of football and pattern of play. The players have to have a basic level and the aptitude to heighten that before it can be exceeded with good coaching.
The pattern and set phases of play are devised by the manager. The manager of a professional team will have a preferred format of play ie: 4-4-2, 4-3-3, 4-5-1, etc. This pattern of play and the different phases involved will be drummed into the players and coached and repeated until various patterns are recognised by the team and reactions will become second nature under certain circumstances. Players will know which shape the team needs to adopt and where they need to be in counter attacking for instance or the defending phase. Watch a professional Premiership side for any length of time and you will notice definite patterns emerging when different situations are occurring.
On the actual day of the match, again it is the manager himself who is responsible for which format the players take to the field in. It is the manager who is responsible for recognising when changes need to be made in a game and it is most certainly the manager who has to change the system of play and make substitutions. Now although the manager is ultimately responsible for tactics and motivation in any given game it is the players basic skills, whether or not they have a winning mentality and their ability to implement the managers requirements on the pitch that effectively defines whether or not the team will be successful. You often hear the phrase ' a bad workman blames his tools and this can easily be attributed to professional football however, a good football manager can often be made to look bad by the players he has to work with.
Professional football is littered with the broken careers of managers who failed to implement a preferred system of play or had to work with players who rebelled at coaching that was alien to them, Juande Ramos at Tottenham a case in point. A technically good manager who has proven in La Liga to be a very effective manager with a very effective system of play, a la Real Madrid and Sevilla, could not get across his ideas to a predominantly English changing room who were entrenched in the English systems and way of playing. Poor performances in the early part of the 2008/2009 season ensured that he was swiftly removed from his position as Coach/Manager.
The players ultimately have to take responsibility for poor performances. It is they who have the athleticism, technique and skills - that they are paid very highly for, it is they who should have the mentality to strive to win at all costs, in every competition entered and it is they who need to implement a managers plans on the pitch, ensuring that they provide a good representation of the managers systems of play and tactics. Despite the managers coaching, motivation, devision of tactics and implementation of substitutes, it is the players who determine whether the team wins or loses.
Learn more about this author, Wayne Clist.
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Manager
It is often moaned by coaches of all sports at every level that "if you don't have the players, you can't work miracles." In soccer management, miracles are never truly expected, but instead a manager is expected to harness the potential of his team to win soccer matches. Therefore moronic soundbites like that are only ever used by managers who have, quite basically, failed at doing their jobs right.
What is a soccer manager's job anyway? Not very different from that of a manager of your local McDonalds; he or she is the chief organizer and motivator of his "team". He dishes warnings for those who step out of line or slack off, he showers encouragement onto a team member of low morale. More importantly, he sets out HIS game plan and gets his players to stick to it, very often with the promise that this will in turn lead them to glory at the end of the season.
Poor performances can happen to a world famous soccer player like David Beckham or Cristiano Ronaldo or to a Sunday league amateur like myself and really, some days it just seems that no matter how much you have trained before or how hard you try to make an impact in the match, nothing ever comes off the way it is supposed to.
This is when a manager really earns his keep. On the touchline, he should sense that his team is under-performing, and therefore, it is upon him to make the necessary changes tactically and/or to substitute players. His mind tinkers with different possible solutions to try to turn the tide of the match back into his favour. The point is, a player who messes up could be hauled off the pitch and be immediately replaced by a fresher member of the squad.
What happens then if the manager messes up?
As comparison, we shall look at classic examples of high level soccer managers who have succeeded with a squad of players of limited abilities, as well as managers who despite the wealth of talented footballers at their disposal, have spectacularly failed to deliver results. Otto Rehhagel took the unfancied Greek national team to the pinnacle of European football when they powered to victory at the 2004 European Championships. Given a 100-1odds of winning prior to the tournament, the Greeks stunned the soccer world as their rock solid organization, fitness, and indomitable team spirit trumped more fashionable and silky teams such as the Czech Republic and pre-tournament favourites Portugal.
Mr Rehhagel was applauded by all; he knew his squad was limited in abilities at best, and devised a system that saw their players toiling hard for one another and emphasizing on defense before launching rapid counter attacks. The fact that most high profile player in the Greek squad was Stelios Giannakopoulos, who plays for English basement side Bolton Wanderers is a testament to Rehhagel's astonishing feat.
In contrast, England, the nation that invented soccer, had to face the humility of failing to qualify for the 2008 European Championships despite having top quality soccer players of colossal talent and abilities such as Frank Lampard, Steven Gerrard and Wayne Rooney. These English players were considered to be the best there is in world soccer, yet under the "guidance" of Steve McClaren, the England manager, they failed to garner enough points in their qualifying group, with them losing to underdogs Croatia twice and missing out on the ticket to the tournament. It was seen as a low-point in English soccer especially the fans truly believed that talent-wise, they could go on and actually win the 2008 tournament. But McClaren was totally inept with the complexities with international soccer and couldn't get the team to play as a unit most notably in him failing to come up with a plan to accommodate his best players in central midfield namely Frank Lampard and Steven Gerrard. His best players were also heavily under-used notably the mercurial Wayne Rooney and he resorted to clumsy long balls to Peter Crouch instead. He was sacked with the British press labeling him as a "Wally with a Brolly" - in reference to him sitting under an umbrella, glum and lost for ideas as his team lost to Russia.
Perhaps the clearest way of assessing the debate between players and managers in relation to a poor performance is to compare the whole relationship of the two as a game of chess. It is the manager and the manager alone that moves his pieces into areas he feels could win him the game. If that backfires and he is checkmated, blaming his rooks and bishops would be as foolish as saying "if you don't have the players, you can't work miracles". Mr Rehhagel certainly doesn't believe so.
Learn more about this author, Adrian Cheong.
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