What is it with professional football?

Every week we are bombarded with news of managers being sacked and stories of their inability to control their dressing rooms. Perhaps the most disturbing, are the stories of managers/coaches who insist on playing a specific system, that either doesn’t suit the playing roster or the competition that they are playing in. Worse still, there are stories of the need for strengthening of squads and weaknesses in certain positions that need to be addressed in order to become successful. All this in an environment that pays players obscene amounts of money to play football.

Forgive my confused state. I have only coached in environments where there is no money and you have to make do with what you have got. Surely when you are paying players in excess of 100,000 pounds per week, that you would be dealing with a player with exceptional skills and abilities, someone capable of performing a number of roles. That aside, the basic understanding of the role of the coach is to analyse what you have available to against what you need to have available to you to be successful in your operating environment. Assuming that is true, surely having a fixed strategy and buying players to fit that strategy is a very flawed approach.

I mourn for all the volunteer coaches out there that understand this simple approach to coaching and execute it without the resources available to the much vaunted professionals. Worse still a coach like me who didn’t play football at any recognisable level, well what would I know.

Well I do know one thing. After 10,000 hours plus of coaching across a number of sports at standards ranging from developmental to elite, I am pretty darn sure I could do a lot more with the resources available to me at a professional football club than some of the blinkered football coaches that still live in the world of ‘well that is how we do things around here’.

Simple message. You are well paid for a reason. your players are well paid for a reason. Prove you are worth it and at least follow the fundamental principles of coaching and keep an open mind.