Lots of questions about football

As someone interested in football, and who regularly posts things critical of teams and managers, I think it is important to keep some perspective.

I know very little about the practical reality of coaching an elite level sport team.

So this blog is going to be a list of fundamental things that I don't know the answer to. This might be ignorance, or it might just be that there isn't a single answer to the question.

How much are players influenced by the tactical approach of their manager?

I remember two versions of Ashley Cole. A rampaging, attacking left back, regularly involved in goalscoring moves under Arsene Wenger. And an elite level defensive left back at Chelsea. He clearly changed his game based on his managers philosophy.

Then I think of Everton and the transition from Hibbert to Coleman as right back. Moyes had generally played a lopsided team with the left side attacking and the right defending. The emergence of Coleman allowed both fullbacks to attack. The availability of the player changed the tactical approach.

Perhaps this is due to the resources available to the manager. If you can sign any player in the world you buy those who fit into your ideal system. If you work with the players you have available you try to get the best out of them, altering your system to accommodate their skills.

With someone like Fellaini he clearly has played very different tactical roles, both as a number 6, a box to box midfielder and a withdrawn striker.

I also imagine there are players who can adapt their game better than others. And perhaps this is positional too with defenders more able to take instruction on how to operate within a system rather than attackers who rely more on instinct?

Which leads us on to....

Do players operate on instinct?

At the level of football I played at (e.g. kick arounds!) there was no such thing as tactics. We'd pretty much decide who would stay back and who would go up front but most of the time the goalkeeper was in goal because they needed a breather.

Once when I was playing a game as a teenager we did have a professional coach along for a session and the transformation, for that game alone, was amazing as we spaced out properly, and stopped bunching. Good coaching exists to improve the team as a whole.

Professional players will have received hundreds, if not thousands, or hours of coaching before signing a pro contract.

The best teams will rehearse attacking patterns and yet when a new player joins a club he is often put straight into the starting line up and will often thrive. So how do coaches know that what they are coaching is making a difference?

So are there some players who can instinctively just pick up on how a team plays? Is footballing ability just a transferable skill so that a good player is a good player however the team plays? Or are most systems similar enough that you can easily pick up how to do it? I expect most chefs could walk into most kitchens and be productive straight away. However, if they went into a 3 star Michelin kitchen they would need more time to adapt.

Are some players specialists who will only thrive in a particular style of football? To keep my cooking analogy in play how many potentially great pastry chefs are working in the sauce section? Do they even know they could be great at something else?

How many players are there at the moment who are struggling under one manager who would thrive in a different system? How many Andy Robertson type players are there out there, who went from decent to excellent in under a year of working with a new manager?


 Is coaching a skill like teaching?

Before I wrote about football I used to blog about education and the way I feel potential is written off too early in those who don't thrive in a traditional academic setting.

Is the same true in football coaching? How many players are rejected by the system who would flourish under a different regime?

We all had teachers who we liked and didn't like. And those we felt were good communicators and those who weren't.

Different skillsets work better with different age groups. A great professor might be awful teaching 7 year olds, and an inspirational primary school teacher might be awful at educating PhD students.

What I don't know is what is the difference in coaching received by a senior professional and those in the academy system?

My presumption is that before the player becomes a full time professional coaching is concentrated on improving them as an individual, much like school.

Once the profession is reached it becomes a job whereby they learn to turn their individual skills into a collective effort for the good of the team, more like a profession.

Is that true though? When I see the improvement in Raheem Sterling am I seeing the natural maturation process of a player from 18-24 or am I seeing the result of countless hours of tactical and technical advice?

When I see pundits or managers on television they very rarely actually articulate what they do in training. If tactical and technical training does hugely improve outcomes are players right to stay in an elite environment but not play (like Chelsea and Man City youngsters) or are they better to go into the professional game and actually play from an early age?

Or does it differ for each individual as I suspect? In which case, is there any way of knowing?


How do elite players actually develop?

I am always fascinated by the way we views systems that have succeeded, take an element and claim to have found the single answer to improving everything. A few years ago we needed to copy Iceland and have a technical centre with qualified coaches in every small town. Then it was copy the Croatians and have a few specialist centres. With France the success was both put down to Clairefontaine and also the concrete pitches of the banlieus of Paris.

So are academies the answer? If they were you would expect that the longer a player has spent in a system the better their chances of playing the professional game were. But when people have actually looked into the backgrounds of players who have come through at elite clubs it is surprising how few actually developed in their system.

It looks to me like a Monty Hall problem. Your aim is to develop first team ready players. You pick up the best 6 or 7 year old players in your local area and train them to the best of your ability. But you can recruit from all around the world. The chances of that 7 year old being a world class player of the future are tiny. But when your, still brilliant, player is 14 you see a 15 year old player in a tournament who looks amazing and plays in the same position.

You now have to gamble. The player you picked at 7 was easily in the top 1% of youngsters in the area. But now at 14 you are down to the top 0.1%, and to make it they have to be in the top 0.0001%.

The 15 year old who still looks a level above his competition is already certain to be in the top 0.001%.

Chances are the player you have picked is less likely to make it than the one you are seeing for the first time. So you sign the 15 year old to your academy. This act alone reduces the chances of your  original player making the first team by blocking off his chance of progression.

Is it all just really a numbers game? Get as many good players as you can signed to your club and hope some come through.


Is it tactics or personality?

Is a Pep Guardiola or Jurgen Klopp training session massively different to any modern coach working in League One or even Ligue 2?

In fact, is a "modern coach" delivering a session that is that different to an "old fashioned" coach? I don't know.

Is Klopp great as a coach or as a force of personality who makes players believe they can improve?
If you took his coaching ideas and gave them to someone without his personality would they work as well? If you took his personality and gave it to someone with different footballing ideas would they be a success?

Do you have to have both to succeed? Do both have to be in one person? I'd say no, there are clearly coaches and managers who have split the roles between them. The Ferguson/Kidd teams were different from the Ferguson/Queiroz teams so clearly a man manager can adapt to work with different coaches. But can a coach adapt to work without the man management part? Does the man manager always have to have the senior role or could a coach choose the man manager rather than vice versa?


How many potentially great managers and coaches never get a chance?

Every job in football attracts hundreds of applications. An outsider with no contacts, or name recognition, has very little chance of getting a job with the first team.

But who are these people applying for jobs? Is there more they could do in terms of self promotion?

Can anyone point me in the direction of people desperate to work within the professional game? I'd love to speak to someone in that position and see what I could do to help.