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the manager: inside the minds of football's leaders)
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roberto mancini established himself as a 17-year-old attacking footballer at sampdoria where he won multiple domestic trophies and the club’s first-ever european competition. fifteen years later he left for lazio where, under sven göran eriksson, he again won multiple trophies, both domestic and european. as soon as his scoring touch began to desert him, he announced his retirement and moved seamlessly into coaching as eriksson’s assistant.mancini was an almost instant success as a top-tier manager, winning trophies at both fiorentina and his former club lazio, and working with a huge array of world-class talent.at internazionale, he led the club out of the shadow of their milanese neighbours, rebuilding the nerazzurri’s reputation over five years and taking them to an unprecedented three consecutive italian league victories. in late 2009 he accepted the enormous challenge of revitalising manchester city under the new ownership of abu dhabi’s sheikh mansour. his first full season in charge brought an end to a 35-year trophy drought with fa cup victory, and a first ever 260/604 place in the champions league. in his second full season, mancini went one beter and won the barclays premier league title after the most dramatic of season climaxes to end the club’s 44-year wait. his philosophy roberto mancini is a charming man with a core of steel. his philosophy is very straightforward: assemble great players and work extremely hard. by ‘great players’ he means players with both the skill and the mindset
needed for the task. ‘i have good players because you can’t win if you don’t have top players. but if you tell me they all look like top players, then i tell you with some we need to work on mentality. you can look like a good player, but not have the mentality to win at the top level.’ and by extremely hard, he means a relentless pursuit of excellence. as his assistant and former sampdoria teammate david platt comments, ‘even winning 261/604 the league did not alter that. after a break, it was straight back to work.’ the dimensions of the task: skills and mindsets roberto mancini was installed as manchester city manager in time for the 2009 boxing day fixture against tony pulis’s stoke. presenting an immaculate and calm image, he oversaw a 2-0 victory – and so began his journey to club success. it was not a simple journey though. to begin with, mancini has some unshakeable views of how a team should work: ‘when i started to do this job i wanted players with good mentality ready to understand my view, my mentality.’ david platt observes a single-mindedness that alienates the less committed: ‘he has a very strong work ethic. there is an italian way of doing things which is professional, strong and committed, and he brought that with him. when he arrived at manchester city he didn’t say, “well, i’ll hang around 262/604 and look and see what’s happening and maybe change the odd thing.” he said, “i am going to come in and do it my way and that’s the way we are going to do it and it’s as simple as that – because in the end, i am responsible for team performance.”’ mancini may have felt he knew little of english football, but he wasted no time in getting to grips with the challenge. ‘it was difficult because i didn’t know this championship, i didn’t know the english players, i knew only david. in italy it is different. i had to adapt a bit to the culture. sometimes this is not easy and the first six months were difficult because i changed the training sessions, the method of training; and for the players it was also difficult for the first few months. however, in the first six months we improved a lot as a team, and we fought until the last game against tottenham for the champions league place.’ 263/604 mancini had made a fair start, with city finishing fifth. but for his first full season in charge he started shaping the team in his image: ‘in the summer when i changed players, and bought players that were for me good players, that month we start to work on their mentality and their attitude.’ there’s that word again – mentality – the mindset of commitment and hard work. mancini attributes it in large part to his small-club origins: ‘i had always this mentality even when i was a player and i wanted to play always to win. and from my colleagues too i wanted 100 per cent because only by this can you arrive on the target. i didn’t always play for a top team – this was my choice because i wanted to play for 15 years for sampdoria and then three years for lazio. i started playing for bologna when i was young, but they were all small teams and with these teams who never won, we won everything. and i learnt this: that if you are in a small team and if you 264/604 want to win, you work hard and you can do everything. also if you are not the top team, it is important that you have players with good mentality – that you have teammates who say they want to win, they want to work, to improve.’ mancini’s early work paid off: he managed to shift the mindset of the squad, and city’s trophy drought ended with the fa cup. in mancini’s view, that was a turning point: ‘i think we changed our mentality after the fa cup. we started to believe in ourselves. when you arrive in a club that has not been winning, you need to win one title. it’s not important [if it’s the] fa cup or carling cup – it’s important to start. when you start to win, the mentality changes. and the players are human beings – if every day you work hard and if you still don’t achieve your goals after one or two years the players can go down. if instead you work hard and in the end you win a title, your job becomes easier. 265/604 it is never easy to do this job; but when you win your car is full, everybody is with you. when you lose you are alone.’ preparation is everything football matches themselves are intense bursts of activity in the flow of the work that the manager, staff and players do together over weeks and months. getting the pacing right is all-important. mancini’s approach is to even out the workload: ‘before the game we spend a lot of time together. i believe you should work every day during the week to prepare the game, because the day of the game the players have pressure. usually i speak ten minutes with the players before the game and maybe another five minutes in the dressing room. the day of the game i don’t think they need a lot of this because if you are a good manager you explain everything during the week on the training ground.’ 266/604 in the run-up to the match, one of the manager’s tasks is to help his players into the right frame of mind for their burst of high performance. much of the preparation is personal. glenn hoddle recalls his own preparation as a player, involving getting detached, listening to music and using visualisation techniques. then he’d drive to the ground, visualising how he was going to play. where his manager really helped him was in two areas: guidance on his tactical role on the team, and helping him to stay positive: ‘i would also have to think about positive things. you can learn from your negatives, of course, but people don’t learn enough from their positives. as a player and as people we always analyse when we play bad or when something goes bad. we don’t analyse enough when things are going really well – we take that for granted. i’ve found with experience how to deal with those fears and those anxieties i had when i was younger, 267/604 and i’ve tried to hand that on to my players as a coach and get them to learn that early. if you haven’t played that well in a match – well, there must have been one or two things that you did well because you are back in the team again. so, an hour before kick-off, focus on the strengths that you have got and learn from the good things that happen to you. grasp hold of them, then step back into the arena and play again.’ hope powell reinforces both mancini’s view of the flow of preparation and hoddle’s commitment to the positives. she adds to that a clear message of ownership: ‘we have meetings every day with players where i give them ownership. we do a lot of group work, scenarios, what happens if? what would you do if? we have a lot of unit meetings – the back four and the goalkeeper, the midfield and the front three – and for each unit we ask what’s your role within the overall philosophy? then i get them to share it with each 268/604 other. what i am trying to do more and more is get the players to own their performances rather than leaving it all to the manager. they own the game. then when we’re leaving for the stadium, it’s just about reinforcing the work that we’ve done in training: a gentle reminder of what the job is, remember what we’re good at, remember what we can do, what your role is, what your responsibilities are.’ one thing the managers all point to is deemphasising the big event. all the preparation is done before. the well-prepared team arrives at the field of play confident in its ability to deal with whatever comes. such a team has no need for pre-match hype; they are professionals, out to do their job to the best of their very considerable ability. the training ground training is not just about honing footballing skills. at chelsea, carlo ancelotti built great 269/604 rapport with the players through the professional setting of the training ground: ‘i gave to the players all my experience, everything because i found a fantastic group. the english players were the symbol of the team: joe cole, ashley cole, lampard, terry – they are great professionals. the english players surprised me because on the pitch they are really professional. outside the pitch i don’t know, but on the pitch nothing compares, not the french or italians, because you have to push the french to work hard. the same is true with the italian players – you have to push them too. the english you have to push to stop! i felt really good about the group, we had a very good relationship.’ brendan rodgers accepts the implied compliment to english footballers, and builds on that on his own training ground: ‘the english players have a will, and that goes back to part of my philosophy, about integrating into their football their other qualities. decision- 270/604 making is the big one. i build their decisionmaking capabilities. we practise this. get intelligence working alongside that natural fight, that willingness the english player has, and you get a big player.’ the training ground is an ideal environment for building the team and for the manager to assess the quality and state of his players. many issues can be addressed and opinions formed. howard wilkinson found a need to address head-on a poor behaviour before a match: ‘i had a player who didn’t like doing set pieces in training. every time we were practising them he would be mucking about. so one morning i went out with a ball with his name on it and said, “here you are – this is your own ball – you go and play with that, and we’ll get on with this!” i wanted to keep it light, but give him a clear message: what you are doing is at the expense of everyone else. carry on doing it by all means, but understand that while you 271/604 may think it’s funny, it’s actually disrespectful. we’ve all actually said that there are certain common goals and common ways of doing things and processes that we think have to be there, and we have committed to them. we all agreed that this is the best way to do it, so you are being disrespectful of your teammates.’ and did it work? ‘just about. there was a laugh because he had got what he wanted, but he was suddenly not with the team. he wanted his own way, but he wanted to be included too. at least we got to a greater awareness.’ sam allardyce uses the training ground as a place to build on what’s going well. ‘i do put my hand on the shoulder of a player and have a conversation when times are tough – just like my managers used to do with me when i was playing. but it’s even more important to say, “you are playing really, really well – don’t start slipping up! i don’t want to be coming to you when things go bad, don’t 272/604 let them go bad.” i tell them don’t start practising when it’s too late. most players start practising when they are going bad. practise while it’s going well, because it’s easier then.’ training is about preparation on every front: both skills and mindsets can be assessed and addressed. neil warnock vividly remembers his first encounter with a player whose position was unclear, but whose mindset was excellent. ‘craig short was at scarborough when i started there. he was a bank clerk earning a small wage and he had such a great attitude. i was only a young manager then. they told me he was a rightwinger and i played him everywhere: rightwinger definitely not, midfield definitely not, striker definitely not. one game i told him, “look, you’ve played everywhere else – just go and play centre half.” he was marking peter withe, who was one of the top players at the time, playing briefly in the reserve team at birmingham. i told craig to mark 273/604 him, wherever he went: “just go with him everywhere. if he gets subbed, you go down the tunnel with him.” he was all over him like a rash, and after about 20 minutes peter came over to the bench and said can someone get this so-and-so off my back! in the end he made a great career out of it – and he’s such a superb lad as well. to see people like that, that’s what makes me proud.’ warnock stuck with a player whose mindset was ideal, and coached him through the technical challenges. football managers are at home on the training ground. we’d expect that. for the former players especially, it is a second home. the great football leaders push themselves and their team on the training ground, and fashion team spirit, character and a winning mindset. team selection 274/604 when ancelotti played for fabio capello at milan, he got angry with his manager for leaving him out of the team. ‘he took me out. i didn’t play and i didn’t understand the reason because i wanted to play, and i was really angry with him. capello told me, “one day you will understand, you will be a manager.” and when i became a manager i understood that it’s not easy.’ team selection – picking those who will start, those who will be on the bench and those who will not appear – is one of the toughest tests of a manager’s leadership. few if any find it an easy task. mancini is no different: ‘it is difficult because if you are a player you know that when the manager says we need to play [in this particular way] that you will be on the bench. this is my worst moment as a manager because i understand their feelings in that moment and this is difficult. i would like to change this, but until they change the rules to play with 14 or 15 275/604 players then 11 players will be happy, the other players will be upset. if you are a top club you have maybe 20 top players and i think that moment can be difficult.’ mancini feels this keenly. david platt recalls the dream situation where city had a settled, winning 11 for the six-match run-in to their title in 2012. a dream on paper – but a real pain for the leader. ‘he really does not enjoy having to leave players out. that run of games meant that good players were on the sidelines, and that gave him great personal concern.’ but when mancini finds the winning mentality he so keenly seeks in his players, his selection task becomes less painful. kolo touré was not always a first-choice defender under mancini, but he does embody the winning mindset. he reflects: ‘it’s not easy to not always be the one who is picked by the manager. but my attitude is always to keep going and give 100 per cent, and put 276/604 pressure on the manager to give me time to play as well.’ actually playing – bringing their skills, capabilities and flair to the big stage – is probably the greatest single motivator for true professionals. the top managers agree that this dwarfs the question of money for pretty much everyone. and it is the very mindset that mancini promotes at all levels of his squad: the desire to play, the desire to win. small wonder then that there is a disconnect when players are asked to take a back seat, however temporary. and with a squad of more than 20 players vying for 11 starting places, it is a leadership challenge. how then do the managers deal with it? most football managers do three things. the first is to be up front, clear and personal – without prejudicing team morale. mick mccarthy tells people individually, but picks his moment carefully: ‘if i’m leaving a player out i speak to him and tell him. i never pin a 277/604 team sheet up or anything like that. it’s a horrible one for them, but at least they are getting it from me. they all prefer to be told. i’ve never done any different. i’ve never shied away. i may have left someone off a subs’ bench, but the subs get named just before the kick-off. if you tell the subs prior to the game, that will have affected them completely, so you need every one of the 20 to know they have a chance of being involved. the 11 starters will know either thursday or friday, so you get some of them feeling a bit disenchanted, but if you tell any of the rest of them they aren’t going to be playing at all then they will come along heads down and that’s unsettling for everyone else. some will have an inkling, but they don’t know. you have to keep everyone involved.’ alex mcleish adds to that the need to be discreet with the modern football professional: ‘at aberdeen we would sit and have a prematch meal and then we would watch 278/604 football focus on the television. archie knox [the assistant manager] would come and tap somebody on the shoulder and say, “gaffer wants a word with you.” this would be about 1 p.m. before going to the stadium and you knew as soon as you got that tap on the shoulder, that’s me dropped. it was fine for us, and alex [ferguson] was great – but i’ve found it really awkward in recent years trying to do it that way because all the players know, and i know that the modern-day guy is extremely sensitive. one or two players at birmingham wanted me to tell them on the friday – anything, but not getting that tap on the shoulder in front of their colleagues. after a few times, some players would even find the one-on-one approach disconcerting, when i thought i was giving them great respect. i now use the tap on the shoulder for other things like a tactical change – but for team selection i try and mix it up a bit to keep them on their toes.’ 279/604 the second thing is to engage the players in the reasoning. this is not about consensus decision-making, nor about a leader justifying himself. it is about treating players like the adults they are, and cutting them in on your thinking. many of today’s managers have learned from less-than-perfect experiences as players. glenn hoddle recalls: ‘when i was a player, i hated getting left out and not told why. too many managers do that. so when i became a manager, i always told people why – even if it was just a quick word. then i’d say, “if you want to talk more, come and see me on monday after the game.” lots of them did come. in fact if he didn’t come, i would have a question mark over his appetite!’ in short: a leader needs to be transparent with his people. if a leader has integrity, he has no reason to fear being open, and hoddle’s invitation to his people to ‘find out more’ earned him considerable respect among his players. 280/604 the third thing is to work with the players who are left out. hoddle believes there are times when managing the ones that aren’t playing is more important even than working with the ones who are. ‘when i had a team i used to ask them which is the most important team: is it the one that starts the game or the one that finishes the game?’ games can be won or lost by the substitutes – they are very, very important people. and the ones that are out of the team remain crucial to team spirit – and might be tomorrow’s first choice. so in the world cup in france, we did everything to make the players who weren’t selected feel part of the team – that at any given moment they could be called on – and they had a part to play in winning the world cup.’ selecting the best 11 for a given day is a technical, knowledge-based skill. knowing your own mind, communicating your choices, and inspiring the rest of the squad 281/604 to continue to give their all day after day – this is a real test of leadership. the half-time team talk the half-time team talk is the stuff of legend in football because of its potential to change the course of the game. most fans will be able to point to the time their team staged an extraordinary turnaround – or suffered a reverse in the second half – but fans cannot really know what goes on during those few crucial minutes. half-time emotions can run high, but more often it is a practical session, an opportunity for the manager to communicate clearly with the players in an oasis of calm before 45 more minutes of intensity. mancini is honest about the variability of the talk: ‘you can have different situations depending on the score, depending on the performance and whether we made a lot of mistakes, and depending maybe also on my confidence at 282/604 that moment.’ regardless of the content though, his players know to expect a standard pattern: ‘during half-time it is important for the players to have a 10-minute rest and to recover because they spend a lot of energy. after, we talk for five minutes on specifics, tactics for the second half.’ it’s interesting – though unsurprising – that mancini’s focus is clearly on the needs of the players: hearing their experience and offering them rest. most managers make time for encouragement – for the whole team and for individuals. hoddle would always finish on the positives, making sure they walked up the tunnel with a positive mindset. as he candidly admits, ‘sometimes as a footballer they switch off during a talk – the last thing that they hear is probably the only thing they remember.’ mick mccarthy agrees: ‘sometimes i just encourage a player at half-time – say something on the way out, just a little word to say how much you love him, i guess. 283/604 that’s what we do. you have to. one of my philosophies is love them for what they bring to the party, try and make them better, practise, but you actually bring them in and love them for what they’ve got, don’t loathe them for what they haven’t got.’ of course, there are times when tough love is the right approach – and some characters respond well to a stern word. martin jol admits he can become ‘autocratic’ if the situation merits: ‘i can remember being really angry in the dressing room when i think we [spurs] were 2-0 or 3-0 down away to middlesbrough. the second half we came back to 3-3, so it helped. but if you do that all the time, i think it loses its impact on players.’ alex mcleish remembers vividly his encounter with the young alex ferguson at half-time in aberdeen’s celebrated european cup-winners’ cup final against real madrid in 1983. ‘we were 1-1 and i’d had a hand in 284/604 both goals! we had been 1-0 up and well worth it. it was a sodden night, torrential rain. i had been quite meticulous in my warm-up – i’d checked conditions and everything – then i’d said to the lads in the dressing room before kick-off, “look if you are trying to pass it you need to try and chip it a bit because it’s going to stick in the water.” of course, the ball came to me and in those days the goalkeeper could pick it up. instinctively between myself, willie miller (fellow centre back) and jim leighton (goalkeeper) we had a really fantastic understanding. but i was a victim of my own teaching. i was under pressure, i struck one back and under normal circumstances it would have just run safely back to jim, but it got stuck in the water and although i shouldn’t say it, big jim was a bit slow off his line! the real madrid striker – a famous name at the time, carlos santillana – rounded jim; jim brought him down and they converted the 285/604 penalty. i just wanted to bury my head in a hole in the ground.’ when mcleish arrived in the dressing room at half-time, the boss was ready for him: ‘it wasn’t a calm “what were you thinking about, big fella?” it was the famous hairdryer treatment. i was equally vociferous and archie knox had to calm things down. nowadays we can beat players up with tv coverage, hd, slow motion, super slow motion – you can kill players if you choose to. in those days coaches just had to remember exactly the detail of the moment something happened – a goal scored, a goal lost or a mistake and, of course, they could dress it up in those days because you didn’t have the benefit of looking at 20 replays. sir alex said it and you just had to accept it. that was the kind of motivational powers that he had in those days and we thought he was just like any manager! but in that second half i knew that i couldn’t put a foot wrong; i didn’t want 286/604 to let him down and i didn’t want to let my teammates down. it was a kind of fear probably – there’s a fear of failure that drives you – but with that comes the determination and i’ve always had that trait and character. ‘the second half went to plan; we won in extra time. we must have played really well in that second half and i was so glad at the end when we had won – but there is that individual thing where you still think of the mistake. we’d just won the european cup- winners’ cup and still my mistake was uppermost in my mind. alex came into the showers and i was last out – i was kind of reflecting and thinking the newspapers are going to kill me. it was a massive overreaction, but that’s what it’s like, that’s what the mind does. he came in and i always remember the shower splashing on his trousers because i was looking down and i was kind of laughing to myself thinking he is getting soaked here and he said, “really proud of you. a lot of 287/604 people would have crumbled tonight, but you stood tall and it was superb.”’ sir alex knew how to get the best out of his man, and played it to perfection – great leadership in action. half-time talks then are a mixture of the standard pattern and the variable content, depending on the player and the circumstance. but, whatever the circumstance, dialogue rather than one-way communication is becoming the norm. hope powell begins her half-times with no management staff – just the players and medics – and five minutes so they can have their own dialogue. then she comes in with clips of the game. ‘i’ll bring those clips in then my first words to the players are: “right, what do we think?” and i give them a voice. then i’ll go through and the clips hopefully marry up what i’m saying with what they are saying and i’ll visually give them some feedback. half-time is a 288/604 really powerful opportunity and they embrace it.’ hoddle goes even further on the dialogue point: ‘i used to like it sometimes if two players had a confrontation in the dressing room. if they had a bit of a spat, verbal not physical, i didn’t mind that – it showed to me that they cared.’ the dressing room is almost unique in this regard – outside of sport, probably only the military in liberal societies allows for this level of head-to-head confrontation. hoddle would use it for good though: ‘i’d always say “right, give me your input – you’re the ones out there and let’s see if we can work this one out.” some youngsters wouldn’t say a word and then you’d get the captain and a few others saying things, but it’s good to entice them to bring out their thoughts.’ but even the great dialoguers reserve the right to resort to a oneway conversation in a crisis. powell admits, ‘if we are having an absolute shocker and we 289/604 are not doing the things we say we were going to do, i don’t show any clips. i let them have five minutes, but i know when there is silence they know they aren’t performing well and then i say, “right, you need to do this, this, this and this and that’s how we do it.”’ in the heat of the battle leaders must choose carefully how to inspire their people. they use silence, listening, asking, telling, even shouting; they use calm reasoning and, from time to time, emotional appeal. there is no simple formula – a great leader will know what works best for his team in the particular circumstances. tactical change one of the most dramatic ways in which a manager’s craft is judged is by the substitutions he makes during a match. some will be reactive, driven by injury or as a response to a red card and the enforced change of 290/604 formation. the most interesting ones though are the substitutions a manager makes when he perceives that something needs changing. something – or someone – isn’t quite working out. his team needs fresh impetus. mancini’s manchester city were neck-andneck with ferguson’s manchester united all through the dramatic run-in to the 2011–12 season. with two matches to go, united were behind on goal difference alone. city needed to win both remaining games to be sure of clinching the title. the first was away against a talented newcastle side brim-full of confidence after an excellent run of wins themselves. with 30 minutes to go, the match was still goalless. all eyes were on mancini. what would he do now? his response was to send on a defensive midfielder (nigel de jong) and withdraw a world-class goalscorer (carlos tevez). to some observers, this might have been a surprising substitution, although by anchoring 291/604 the midfield, de jong would allow the powerful yaya touré to move forward and pose a new threat to the newcastle defence. but used to seeing him play deeper, the home team were caught out. yaya touré scored twice in the last 20 minutes, and city won 2-0. the fans were delirious; the press praised mancini as a tactical genius and city were firm favourites for the title going into the last match one week later. the vastly experienced martin o’neill outlines his approach to substitutions. ‘there is no question that substitutions can turn the course of a game. we see endless examples of this every weekend and the art or fortune of making these decisions can impact greatly on the result. i suppose there is a science that can be attributed to this, but it is really down to intuition and obviously an element of good fortune if it works.’ this demonstrates the power of a decisive intervention. o’neill would be the first to 292/604 acknowledge the element of good fortune involved; but there is science too – and intuition. ‘first, you have to know your players pretty well. you’re then looking at the state of play with 20-something minutes to go: (1) whether you are chasing the game or holding on to a lead, and (2) whether you think the energy levels have dropped considerably. if you’re chasing a game, you may need a bit more forward play, you might have someone on the bench that you think might be capable of doing something. if you are holding on to a lead, it’s important not to drop back too deeply, but maybe you can get a bit more solidity. ‘when you know your players well, you get a feel for how they play at certain stages of the match, and how they’re doing. you may have a good player playing in the team, but that particular day is not going right for him. you know that on another day he could turn it – so at what moment do you decide that 293/604 because he’s a good player, you just forget about what happened in the last 25 minutes and believe he’ll turn something for you? if there is someone there that might be able to do that then maybe that’s worth the gamble of keeping him on; then another time you might think he’s run his race, and know that no matter what happens, he won’t find that energy and determination and you make the substitution accordingly.’ the tactical substitution is another real test for the leader. the stakes are high personally and professionally, since the match outcome can turn on the choice; and the world will have as long as it likes to review the decision afterwards. in big matches it requires deep knowledge, clarity of thought and conviction against the backdrop of noise, drama and emotion, and leaders facing these tests need intuition and self-belief to carry them through. 294/604 the fallout after the 90-something minutes are done, the leader’s primary task is to take the team forward. whether the result is cause for celebration or upset, there are lessons to learn and then a future to play for. when mancini’s men lost at arsenal with six games of the season left to play, it appeared to most onlookers to be the end of their title chances as united were eight points ahead of them. mancini chose not to dwell on what had gone before, but to focus purely on the final few games. ‘at that moment we had a lot of pressure and the players had a lot of pressure around them and we decided with the staff to take off this pressure from the players. i told them we did a good game, we are a top team and now we need to finish our championship well. if we win all our games, we will finish second.’ while publicly declaring it impossible to go on and win the premier league, mancini privately thought it merely 295/604 difficult. his public declarations had the desired effect: ‘once we took the pressure off, the players started to play calm and controlled and we started to win the games.’ where mancini tends to be calm and phlegmatic, sir alex tends to be direct and crisp – and yet there are similarities between the two. sir alex says: ‘i think it’s black and white. if they’ve had a bad performance, i would tell them. i wouldn’t hold back. and once it’s over, we would never revisit it. i would say my piece on a saturday after a game and that’s it finished, we wouldn’t go over it again. i’d have no time to go over it again, i’d have next week to consider.’ this is the core of sir alex’s philosophy: ‘there is no point going back. suppose you have a game on the saturday and you give them the sunday off. you come to the monday training session and you’ve maybe got a wednesday game – two days to the next match. there is absolutely no point whatsoever 296/604 raking over old ground. the other important thing is always to tell them the truth. you have to be black and white about it. there’s no softening for one player over another player, they’ve all got to understand what black and white means, and they’d also have to understand what i am. once they accepted that, we’d have absolutely no problems.’ while the need to move forward is paramount, leaders give more or less vent to their emotions depending on their character and the circumstances. mick mccarthy is not prone to shouting in the dressing room, but admits from time to time emotion carries him away: ‘i did it twice in my last year at wolves. once was at manchester united when we lost 2-1 in the 93rd minute. we had the ball and all we had to do was take the draw – don’t try and win the game, just take the ball to the corner and keep it there – job done at old trafford. we come on the inside, give a bad pass, concede and we lose. i went 297/604 mental; i threw stuff around, i booted stuff. i was very close to lamping the bloke who gave the goal away, but i didn’t. ‘bolton was the other one. there was a throw-in in the 94th minute, we were drawing 0-0, he throws it, little back-pass and it goes to sturridge and it’s a goal. i apologised afterwards for it. it wasn’t calculated; it wasn’t to shock anyone. i was waiting for them to come in, i was throwing stuff, i was incandescent with rage; i could barely control myself. i didn’t do anything that stupid, but it was good for them to see it. i am calm generally and i think it shocked them how much it hurt me that we’d lost. i more often come in and sit them down and say, “look, lads, let’s analyse this: this happened, that happened, you could have done this better... ” discuss it and move on to the next game. then it’s done with. if there is an individual that has done something then i may point that out, and then maybe four or five things 298/604 tactically with the team we might just have a discussion about.’ even the serene ancelotti can get riled – but only around poor behaviour. and when he does, it is calculated: ‘sometimes we play well and we lose for an individual mistake. then i don’t say anything. but recently we drew a game because the players were selfish and didn’t want to pass the ball and wanted to score themselves. i killed the players for three days.’ ancelotti also makes sure the effect is not lost: ‘after the game i spoke in italian. usually when i shout, i shout in italian. i am more fluent in italian. it doesn’t matter if they don’t understand the words – they understand the sense and the emotion. sometimes in a foreign language it is very difficult to show emotion. this is not good, because sometimes you have to show what you really feel, and if you don’t have the proper language it is very difficult. one of the most difficult things is to motivate the 299/604 players. you have to use the right expression. sometimes with a foreign language i don’t have the expression – i speak like a computer. this is the most difficult thing. i show something with my volume and body language.’ the final piece of the post-match jigsaw is dealing with the individuals. as we know from mcleish’s encounter with alex ferguson, this matters a great deal. ancelotti’s approach is to take his time: ‘when an individual makes a mistake, i wait. i say nothing. normally he wants to think for himself. if you say something like “it doesn’t matter,” or “you have to look to the future,” – it’s not good enough. it’s better for me to stay a little bit back. i have to wait.’ keegan learned from the great liverpool masters, bill shankly and bob paisley. ‘when i had been sent off with (leeds united striker) billy bremner i think i got an eight-match suspension and phil boersma had gone in and done very well. i’d 300/604 also been injured and hadn’t even played a match for the reserves. then the first game i was available and the manager chose the team, i thought he might not play me. he announced the team and there i was and boey was sub. i felt so sorry for him – but in some ways very clever from shanks – because boey had done well and in my mind he just said to me you’re my guy, go on. i played a cracker – i had to!’ keegan the manager would in turn always persevere with key players: ‘it’s not about “i am just going to take you away for a little while”. unless they are having a desperately bad time, it’s the opposite. don’t even question it, name your team and say his name first. i don’t go to him and say, “you are having a shocker here but i am going to play you.” i say, “there’s the team – i trust that team to go out here today, i think it’s the right team for the day and off you go.” that way you put it back into the 301/604 player’s court. that is what i would want a manager to do with me.’ it is interesting how managers who are explayers talk often about what they experienced at the hands of other managers. the power of empathy is transmitted down the generations. in the matter of the post-match fall-out, it is clear that when the referee blows his whistle, the leader’s work is not done. how he deals with his players in the hours and days that follow will shape their ability to perform in the next match. the solution: command, lead and manage much has been written on the subject of leadership, and much debate exists around the difference between leadership and management. in england, we talk about football managers. in the rest of europe, they more usually talk about coaches. neither of these titles tells the full story. in reality, like most 302/604 leaders, their work falls into three distinct categories, each requiring a different approach. which approach depends on the situation in which they find themselves – and a little bit on their own natural preferences. leadership and management expert professor keith grint of warwick university defines these categories vividly. one approach is ‘command’. we don’t often think of leaders as commanders, except perhaps in the military. in fact, football managers quite often use command. it is the act of ‘taking charge’ and imposing a solution. it provides little or no room for discussion or disagreement, and is a sound approach in a crisis. when the going gets tough, people become worried and unsure. they look for direction – and commanders provide certainty and answers. when the team is not in a crisis, the question then becomes: is this something we’ve 303/604 faced before – something to which there is a clear answer? if the answer is yes, then it will respond to well-tried methods. it is a ‘tame’ problem. this is ‘management’. the manager is about rolling-out things that have been done before, where the degree of certainty is high. the problem may feel like a puzzle – may even be quite complicated – but there is a solution, and the manager engages in a familiar process to solve it. if it is not something we have faced before, and there might well not even be a clear answer, then we’re into ‘leadership’. grint calls these challenges ‘wicked problems’. in football, this could be about unusual individual behaviour, about a club near to bankruptcy, about a critical injury or about facing opponents who on paper are better in every department. the leader will need to ask questions. he will often hear himself saying: ‘i’ve never seen this problem before; i need to get people together to work out what to do.’ 304/604 mancini is a natural commander. as a player he was known for his assertiveness with his colleagues. sven göran eriksson was mancini’s coach at sampdoria where he observed his young colleague’s natural leadership: ‘he wanted to be a manager even while he was a player. he was the coach, he was the kit man, he was the bus driver, everything. he wanted to check that everything was in place before training. sometimes i would have to tell him: “mancio, you have a game to play on sunday. you’ll be exhausted if you have to control everything.” but he was like that.’ perhaps the young mancini recognised this in himself: ‘i thought this when i was 12 years old – that i wanted to be a manager. when i started to play football i thought i would want to be a manager. when i finished playing football this was still in my head.’ arriving at a manchester city starved of success, mancini the natural commander 305/604 simply said: this situation needs turning around. i know what to do here. if we do it, we will succeed. if we don’t, we will fail. in the end the margin to win the title could barely have been smaller. but mancini’s strong leadership delivered success and, although he has since moved on, his fans are now legion. or, as he would put it, there are many people in his car. the gift while the delivery of results in top-flight football is an almost unique challenge, there are interesting lessons for a wider leadership audience. football’s leaders, like business leaders, would agree that the underpinning dimensions of the task are the skills and mindsets in the team. then there is a sixstage flow from preparation to fall-out that enables repeated success. 1. preparation: 306/604 by focusing relentlessly, day in day out, on the basics of the work, the leader does away with any need for pre-match hype. in a healthy organisation, teams encounter major hurdles with a mindset of ‘all in a day’s work’. 2. training: by dry-running scenarios, football leaders foster team spirit, character and a winning mindset – as well as honing skills. 3. team selection: choosing the right people for the task is of critical importance. it must be done objectively, protected from the distractions of personal bias, preference and allegiance. for the leader, it involves knowing your own mind, having a clear rationale and communicating your choices. 4. half-time: 307/604 most great football leaders use the mid-point check-in first to listen, then to speak. there is no formula for this: in the heat of the battle, they choose carefully how to inspire. 5. tactical change: in the heat of the moment, great leaders can think clearly enough to make tactical changes – standing down one team member, introducing another, switching roles, and refining responsibilities. preconceptions are dangerous. the game belongs to the leader who is bold enough to respond to reality. 6. fallout: how the leader deals with the immediate aftermath of the big moment will contribute significantly to his organisation’s chances of ongoing success. he must put the result into context, and with a cool head choose how much emotion to show, how much significance to attribute to events that may seem 308/604 disproportionately good or bad and how and where to deal one-to-one with his people. above all of these, though, is an understanding of the problem. does the challenge require management, leadership or command? there is something inspirational about mancini. he is a commander in turnaround, a leader with conviction. he is a man who does not seek the approval of others, yet is genuinely concerned with the feelings of the players he has to leave out of the team. he is also a serial winner. success inspires – people follow winning leaders. mancini knows full well that the more he wins, the easier it becomes to lead. but he also knows he has been given a gift: ‘to be a top player means you have been given a gift. i had a gift from my father. then after, i need to work hard.’ the world’s most successful leaders all have gifts that set them apart from their peers – gifts of ability, strength, insight or just plain circumstance. 309/604 the leader who recognises this adds to his qualities
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