Professor Champions League : Arsenal, Liverpool

Sturm und drang: A rough guide to coaching etiquette

Paul Simpson — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 16:21:00 GMT

When I first saw Steve Kean patrolling the touchline as Blackburn Rovers manager, I feared for him.

New managers, especially those filling a void as large as that created by the legend of Big Sam, must exude competence. And Kean didn’t. Truth be told, he had the slightly bewildered, moderately resentful air of a man who had arrived, slightly later than he’d hoped, at the bus stop, suspected his bus had already departed but was too embarrassed to ask anyone if that was the case.

Luckily for Kean, he has since acquired or discovered an inner calm. But his initial confusion set me thinking – increasingly rare these days – that one of the crucial choices facing any coach today is the persona they adopt on the touchline.

Jig, fists and rejigs

In the old days, when very few cameras covered matches, we barely noticed managers during a game. They might do an occasional jig (like David Pleat), or punch a fan (Brian Clough) but most of the time they were content to sit on the bench and make coded gestures to their players suggesting they were playing too far up or down the pitch (a technique perfected by the great Bob Paisley). Even a coach as demonstrative as Cloughie was usually happy just to shout a bit.

At some point this changed. Helpfully I have no idea when. Maybe when FIFA introduced the technical area in 1993. But while watching Aston Villa on TV a few years ago, with the camera constantly panning towards Martin O’Neill’s sturm und drang on the touchline, I realised how melodramatic coaches’ behaviour had become.

"No, I said hoof long balls to Heskey for 90 minutes, dammit!"

O’Neill ran through more emotions during a routine 1-1 draw against a middle of the road team such as Middlesbrough than Richard Burton displayed in a virile, passionate and sardonic take on Hamlet which enthralled Broadway in 1964.

I wasn’t sure what subliminal message O’Neill hoped to convey. Was he trying to prove he cared as deeply as the supporters? Was he conscious of the need to provide the kind of entertainment his team might not have been delivering? Did he think his antics would unsettle the other manager or influence the officials? Or was that just Martin being his loveable, passionate self?

To get ahead, get a coat

As a touchline performance artist, O’Neill has been surpassed by Jose Mourinho, who is just as emotional, but much better tailored. I mention tailoring because I am increasingly convinced that clothes maketh the manager. On a very basic level, the stylishness of a coach’s schmutter may do more to impress his players than the quality of his tactical insight.

Serie A coaches have long understood that one of the prerequisites for success is having a really nice coat. The best have aspired to the unflappably mysterious existentialist aura exuded by goalkeeper and raincoat connoisseur Albert Camus.

Like Camus’s idol Bogart, this type of coach rarely moves a facial muscle unnecessarily. (Carlo Ancelotti, the most minimalist Method actor on the touchline, signifies his moods largely through the manipulation of his left eyebrow – Roger Moore must be so proud.) The subtle implication is that these managers do not see the game as we do but are wrestling with some higher level of wisdom which will manifest itself in their next substitution.

Whether he's won the league or lost at Wolves, Carlo is understated

The trouble with this style is that existential mystery can easily be mistaken for hapless ineffectuality. Towards the end of Sven’s England reign, the calm that had once seemed such a reassuring contrast to Graham Taylor’s gibbering seemed, instead, to suggest that, like us, the Swede was an impotent bystander, with no more influence over the game’s outcome than the self-appointed tactical genius three rows behind you.

Something similar has happened to Capello. The passionate sergeant major shtick was initially more impressive than Steve McClaren’s wally with the brolly but when things fell apart in South Africa – and the centre of England’s defence couldn’t hold – the camera panned to reveal Don Fabio staring at his players with the same kind of enraged, stupefied disbelief as millions of fans at home.

Did we not loathe that?

There is no right or wrong way for a coach to behave in the dugout.

Actually, there is a wrong way – just watch the Channel 4 documentary Do I Not Like That. Lawrie McMenemy’s pained reaction to Taylor’s behaviour is almost as hilarious as the antics themselves.

Or, more recently, think of Cluj coach Soren Cartu kicking the glass out of the dugout in disgust after his side lost to Basel. (Cartu’s loss of the plot was swiftly followed by the loss of his job.)

Each coach must choose their own style but they must be convincing – otherwise it’s a bit like watching Jude Law playing Alfie instead of Michael Caine. And no manager’s style – even Mourinho's – will suit all seasons.

The statesmanlike gravitas Roy Hodgson exuded at Fulham seemed, in the cauldron of Anfield, more like anachronistic irrelevance. Under extreme duress, Hodgson indulged in manic face rubbing or reverted to a kind of bemused, fatalistic “Oh dearie dearie" reminiscent of Taylor’s immortal cry as England boss: “What sort of thing is happening here?”

Roy can be thankful he didn't get the root vegetable treatment...

Roberto Baggio, who gives a remarkably candid interview in the next issue of Champions, would probably suggest that “narcissistic coaches” indulge in all this sturm und drang because they can’t bear the spotlight to be on players.

We don’t need coaches to act as an emotional mirror to reflect what is happening on the pitch – we know how we feel when we’re losing – and we would, all things being equal, like managers to get on with the job they are paid to do and coach.

But if coaches feel obliged to perform, they could take their cue from Cloughie, whose occasional theatrics were often leavened with humour.

Once when Arsenal faced Nottingham Forest at Highbury, the linesman warned Cloughie to be quiet. Clough pointed at Terry Neill and Don Howe on the Arsenal bench and said: “They’re making just as much noise at me why aren’t you telling them to shut up?”

The linesman didn’t reply so Clough added: “Perhaps I should go over there and sit with them.”

“Come over and sit on my knee,” Neill chipped in.

Cloughie proceeded to do just that, nestling on Neill’s knee and asking the linesman: “Am I all right now?”

The linesman just flashed Cloughie a bewildered smile and ran off up touchline.

Who’s brainwashing who?

Paul Simpson — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 14:23:00 GMT

Is Sir Alex Ferguson a master of mind games? Most of us would agree he is although, as David Runciman has pointed out in the London Review Of Books, the primary evidence for that belief is his much-mythologized contretemps with Kevin Keegan as the 1995/96 title race reached its pulsating conclusion.

Keegan had been incensed by Sir Alex Ferguson’s mischievous suggestion that other teams wouldn’t try as hard as against Newcastle as against Manchester United. This provoked the most famous outburst in English football history; a furious fusillade which is still mesmerising today.

The popular conclusion is that the Newcastle players, watching their boss gesticulating and shouting, “I would love it” live on TV, decided Keegan had lost the plot and, losing faith in their leader, surrendered the title.

Watching it again now, Keegan isn’t as out of control as my memory, shaped by the media’s interpretation of the event, had suggested. Indeed, when Keegan says of Ferguson “He went down in my estimation when he said that”, his honest eloquence strikes a chord.

As Keegan’s fury mounts, his gestures become more frantic and by the time he reaches the “I would love it” passage that has haunted him ever since, he looks undone by anger. True, he can barely get the words out, but he doesn’t, to me, look like the gibbering wreck of popular legend. The only point at which he sounds completely daft is when he warns United that they have to get a result at Middlesbrough. The words “straws” and “clutching” instantly spring to mind.

That speech was delivered on 27 April 1996. That was 24 days after the meltdown many think really cost Newcastle the title: the 4-3 defeat at Liverpool. One of the most enthralling Premier League games ever (I can still play certain sequences from that game like a video in my head), this loss was the fatal blow for Newcastle’s challenge and the turning point in Keegan’s reign. David Ginola has since said: “If we had kept the score at 3-2, we would have won the league – definitely.”

It’s always tempting to look for a single explanation for any mysterious event, but sometimes the truth is more complex than that. Freakish early season form had given Newcastle a 12-point lead at the top of the table in January. But on 23 March, they lost 2-0 to Arsenal. That was followed by that glorious defeat at Anfield, a 2-1 win over QPR and a 2-1 defeat at Blackburn on 8 April. After taking just three points from 12, Newcastle were six points behind their rivals (albeit with a game in hand) and the title was Manchester United’s to lose.

All of this happened long before Ferguson decided to underline his mastery of mind games. So what Newcastle players thought about their boss’s outburst is almost irrelevant: they had already all but lost the title by then.

Yet the media, inspired by its own misinterpretation of this denouement, has consistently insisted that Ferguson is some kind of Einsteinian genius when it comes to mind games, without really offering any other indisputable proof of his Machiavellian brilliance.

Jonathan Norcroft did suggest in the Sunday Times that, in the psychological wars between Wenger and Ferguson, “Ferguson was getting under Wenger’s skin more than Wenger was getting under his” but again offered no supporting evidence.

There is no telling anecdote to convince us that the Scottish master had the sensitive Frenchman fighting back the tears as United and Arsenal duelled for honours. Indeed, in the most memorable joust, Wenger seemed to win on points with his suggestion that every man believes he has the prettiest wife at home.

But heck, why let the facts wreck a good story? It was Josef Goebbels who observed if you tell people a lie often enough they believe it. And as it has been officially decided, on the basis of evidence so partial and flimsy it wouldn’t convince the most gullible jury, that Ferguson is a master of mind games no football writer worth their salt is going to waste their time suggesting otherwise.

So in January 2009, when Rafa Benitez took on Ferguson at a press conference, the media reaction was utterly predictable and as one-sided as Pravda in Stalin’s heyday. Norcroft characterised Benitez’s remarks as a “white-lipped saucer-eyed rant” and, presumably appealing to the nation’s collective memory of the Manuel, the inept waiter from Barcelona in Fawlty Towers, lampooned the Liverpool manager’s pronunciation of “Meester Fer-goo-son”.

Yet as Musa Okwonga notes in his impressive new book Will You Manage? Gabriel Marcotti saw Benitez’s speech not as proof the Spaniard had lost his cool, rather as oratory designed to make the media and officials think about how referees were treating Manchester United.

The fact the gambit didn’t work had little to do with the merit of his case, it was just that the press, brainwashed by its own deluded nonsense about Ferguson’s Zen-mastery of mind games, decided the real story was that the Liverpool manager had gone crazy.

And when Liverpool failed to win their first title since 1990, the media decided Ferguson had done it again – even if it wasn’t clear what exactly “it” was. Although Liverpool did the double over Manchester United, if you compared the depth and quality of the two squads, United looked the most likely champions, something the media conveniently forgot.

The argument that a) Ferguson is the Muhammad Ali of mind games and that b) such mind games decide trophies is a convenient fiction which flatters certain managers, denigrates others, and gives journalists a narrative they can use to make sense of the season and fill a few column inches.

But the delusion may be self-perpetuating: any manager thinking of taking aim at Ferguson should know that the outcome of such a contest is (at least as far as the media is concerned) already decided.

By the way, I should add that I believe Ferguson is a master of mind games – with his own players.

FourFourTwo.com: More to read...
The Real American Football
FFT.com: Blogs * News * Interviews * Home
Join us: Twitter * Facebook * Forums