So here's a disclaimer
from the onset; I'm a football fan so it's no stretch that my
"parable" originates from personal insights drawn from the beautiful
game. It’s an analogy for analysing leadership success and how to get there so
please bear with my overly lengthy references to football, hopefully I’ll get
somewhere with this in the end. However if you have absolutely no interest in football,
look away now. J
A few weekends ago, arguably the most watched
match in global football, the UEFA Champions league final, second only (to my
mind) to the World Cup Finals was played out in Berlin between Italy’s "old lady", Juventus and
Spain’s Barcelona. No doubt this was
not the draw that the purists had in mind at the start of the semi-finals, as
there was the more mouth-watering prospect of either another edition of the now
famous "El classico" (Real Madrid v Barcelona) or straight
punch up between two of the Champions Leagues more successful protagonists, Bayern Munich and Real Madrid, the side
that most epitomises this competition. Sadly, for some of us (this writer
included), we got the worst pick of the draw with the two least interesting
sides contesting the finals, but that's another day's story.
But the narrative going into the match was
that two fairly "young" coaches, were both contending for a treble
of trophies, and whoever won would join a select pantheon of team managers who
had achieved this feat. In fact with their victory, Barcelona becomes the first team to have done the treble, twice.
But staying on topic, Louis “Lucho” Enrique of Barcelona was in just
his first season as Barcelona first team coach. A former Real Madrid and Barcelona
player, his coaching career had begun training the Barcelona B team (the junior team who contest in the Segunda liga). From there he'd been
hired by AS Roma who tasked him with
the role of head coach for the 2011/2012 season. Roma failed to fulfil their potential under Enrique and did not
qualify for any European competition at the end of the season. Expectedly he
was not retained by the club. After Roma,
“Lucho” took the reins at Celta Vigo where he performed moderately
well ending the season’s campaign at 9th position (in a 20 team
league) and notably ending Real Madrid’s chances of winning La Liga in a 2-0
victory against a star-filed Madrid side. So to the non-Culers, it was something of a surprise to see him unveiled as
Barcelona coach after "Tata" Martino's unsuccessful spell at the helm
of the club.
On the opposing side of the pitch,
Massimiliano Allegri had had a less than stellar playing career in Italy with
lower League sides before joining Pescara
where he won promotion to Serie A,
and having brief spells with Cagliari,
Perugia and Napoli. Allegri’s
coaching stock rose, when by way of Sassuolo
and then Cagliari, he landed the
prestigious job of “Trainer” of AC Milan
(arguably Europe’s premier football brand; no bias). Allegri’s Milan career began in 2010, with a lot
of promise as his side finally managed to end Inter Milan’s domination of Serie
A beating their local rivals in both league encounters, they went on to win
the league that year. However from then on it was a case of diminishing returns
as Allegri would go on to superintend Milan’s
degeneration from Champions to also-rans. In his second season in charge, Milan finished runners up to Juventus, some arguing that the title
was theirs to lose, but they opted to hand it over to the Old Lady. The
following season they would slide down even further, rescuing a campaign that
had seen them as low as 16th and ending the season in 3rd
place.
To my mind, nothing in Louis Enrique’s past as
a coach (excepting his work with the junior Barcelona
side) suggests that he was the most qualified man to lead Barcelona. His legacy at Roma after his solitary season in charge
of the team didn’t show someone who had what it takes to manage a big team with
egos, and a mine field of talent, personalities and peculiarities in the locker
room. However he has since taken over Barcelona,
and after the dust settled in Berlin, history records him as having joined a
very distinct club of treble winners include Jupp Heynckes (Bayern), Jock Stein (Celtic), Sir Alex Ferguson (Manchester United), Pep Guardiola (Barcelona) and Jose Mourinho (Inter Milan). But you almost wonder what
was to be expected with a squad featuring Lionel Messi, Neymar and Luis Suarez,
coupled with the midfield artistry of Andres Iniesta and the solidity of Javier
Mascherano.
Similarly, Max Allegri’s first “real” big team
was AC Milan, and while having been
heralded in some quarters as a decent coach in his first season at Milan, I would argue that majority of
the objective observers would probably agree that he had inherited a talented
team at the time who were always in pole position to win the league even if
coached by a Monkey. To drive this point home further, it became noticeably
obvious how Allegri struggled as his more established big name players were
sold and he had to work with other talents, though not necessarily household names.
Like Enrique, Allegri has now been bequeathed with a squad of champions in Juventus, who you may recall had wrested
the Serie A title from his Milan
team, and had gone on to win 3 straight league titles on the trot with former
coach Antonio Conte. So maybe if anyone deserves credit for this Juve’s season it should really be Conte
who has now left to manage the Italian national side, the Squadra Azzurra.
I’m getting to my
point, and it is simply this; what makes a great coach? Or put another way
(maybe more directly) who is a great coach? In recent years after several years
of having the same old names bandied about as very good coaches (Sir Alex
Ferguson, Arsene Wenger, Brian Clough, Jock Stein, Vicente Del Bosque, Fabio
Cappelo, Arrigo Sacchi, Ottmar Hitzfeld, Helenio Herrerra, Johan Cruyff, etc.),
we seem to have entered the era of super coaches. It would appear that
consistent with our modern day penchant for super-sizing, over-estimation and
hyperbole, we want to re-write history and present these new pitch side
gladiators as not just the best of the current crop but in some cases (and this
is more and more the case) the best ever.
These are the 40-something coaches who have had
a glittering playing career (optional) and who since entering the warzone that
is club management have enjoyed some measure of success applying principles
that are bandied about as though they had never been adapted and utilised
successfully before. Yes I mean coaches like Jose Mourinho (“the Special one”),
Pep Guardiola, Jurgen Klopp, Andres Villas Boas, Vincenzo Montella, Antonio
Conte, etc.
It all began when a certain “young” Chelsea coach fresh from winning the
UEFA Champions League with FC Porto
(in which he beat Manchester United
on his way to the finals), held his maiden press conference with the English
press. Jose Mourinho was responding to a reporter’s question when he said “I
think I am a special one”. The English Sporting Press always greedy for
the slightest soundbite took the statement out of context and at every
opportunity sold the message that Mourinho had declared himself “the
Special One”.
Having created a Special one, and with
Mourinho’s knack for establishing a siege mentality at his teams, the Press was
always on the lookout for someone to pitch him against and had at several times
tried Rafa Benitez (then Liverpool’s
head Coach), Arsene Wenger (who’s footballing philosophy seemed to run counter
to the catenaccio style of football
auspiciously favoured by Mourinho’s teams) and finally and maybe most fittingly,
Pep Guardiola.
Guardiola was always going to be the perfect
foil for Mourinho, the yin to his yang. They both had had history with Barcelona; Mourinho as an Assistant
Coach to Sir Bobby Robson and Guardiola as a former Barcelona Captain and junior team coach. Pep’s Barcelona team played the much vaunted tiki-taka possessive brand of football which was the champagne
football that certain powers that be had once promised would be on offer at Chelsea. He was Jose’s anti-thesis and
in his first season in charge of Barcelona,
he would also win the treble of La Liga,
the Copa del Rey and the UEFA
Champions League. He and Mourinho would cross swords on more than one occasion
trading blows and each claiming significant victories against the other. When
Mourinho moved to Chelsea his Inter Milan side stopped Pep’s Barcelona dead in its tracks, and they
went on to claim their own treble of Serie
A, the Coppa Italia and the UEFA
Champions League. Their personal battle reached fever pitch when in 2011 Jose joined Real Madrid as Head Coach with
the task of dethroning Barcelona from
atop La Liga and winning the elusive Decima of Champions League trophies.
Football needs rivals
In the same way that controversy sells, a good
rivalry is always a great news maker and headline grabber. Sporting rivalries
sell newspapers, drive tabloid sales and league or local derbies sell match day
tickets. Just look at Formula 1 (Senna v Prost, Mansell v Piquet, Alonso v
Hamilton), Boxing, Golf (Tiger v everyone else), Basketball (Lakers v Bulls,
Celtics v Lakers), etc. The past 8 or so years, the subject of the most
deserving and talented player in the modern game has been the subject of
intense debate as it has essentially revolved around just two players, with
different individuals pitching camp with one or the other. So if players can
have their protagonists, why not coaches? So we go ahead and fan the flames of
conflict to conjure up some rivalry whether real or imagined. Sometimes it just
so happens that one of the principal actors says or does something that plays
into the hands of the Press, so they lap it up like the hungry gossips that
they are and regurgitate it in their blogs, columns or dailies for us all to
feast on. And like the gluttons we are, inevitably, we do.
But rivalries can’t sell if the coaches only
meet once or twice in season, if the coaches’ clubs don’t play in the same
league, or if one gets sacked or is out of a job. So what do you do? Well if
you’re a smart journalist, you realise there’s no need to reinvent the wheel;
you just crank up the hate-o-meter and presto: a new rivalry is born! But just
to make sure the process holds up, all the parameters must either be the same
or at least have the appearance of similarity. There’s no point creating a
rivalry between a very successful coach and an unsuccessful one; that’s just
pure S&M and we’d like to consider ourselves purists and lovers of the
beautiful game.
So to make it work, before we sprinkle flour,
sugar, spice and everything nice into our rivalry making machine, we have to get
the special ingredient that makes for consistency – two individuals, clubs or
causes of equal or near equal capability. If we only get one, the outcome is
imbalance, so we need two or more, after all who doesn’t like a three-way
slugfest? And if we can’t find one, then we’ll make one. The challenge is
though, that with coaches Like Pepe and Jose, practically monopolising the
trophies available between them and with teams like Barcelona and Bayern Munich
enjoying the kind of successful spells both have put together, it becomes
difficult to identify anyone as being just as “good”.
If life gives you
lemons…
So we make the most of what we have, and we
create new gods. We call them:
·
Roberto di Matteo because they used to play for Chelsea and have now come back in an
interim capacity to coach the same team and took them to their second ever
Champions League final winning the elusive trophy in the process
·
Andre Villas Boas (the new Mourinho) because he won both the
Portuguese League and the UEFA cup with FC
Porto, like Mourinho, worked with Mourinho in his coaching staff and is
also quite young and ambitious. Hello Chelsea!
·
Antonio Conte, whose Juventus side, won three successful Scudetti and who has now taken over the
reins of the Italian national side. He was remarkably the first coach of a Serie A side whose team went unbeaten
all season after the league expanded to its present 20 team format.
·
Jurgen Klopp, the erstwhile Borussia
Dortmund Coach who taught the Dortmund
faithful to dream again after winning two successive Bundesliga titles and
beating Bayern Munich black and blue
in the process. He would also be the first Dortmund
coach to take the team to the finals of the UEFA Champions League where they
would eventually lose to a very determined Bayern
side. Not bad for a coach in his forties!
And the list goes on…
So with an expanded roster, you can begin to rotate
who’s fighting who, who’s said what about whom and who thinks he’s better
than…well you get the general idea. With more “players” in the mix, the rivalry
blossoms. And if the term rivalry seems a bit extreme, you can use the
expression, “fact-based comparative analysis”.
(to be continued)
