Football has more money than ever before, and it has made some football clubs enter
a perpetual cycle of hiring managers, spending huge sums of money,
and when things go awry, sacking the manager and doing it
all over again. This endless pursuit of immediate success
and lack of stability is the result of poor leadership at the club, and
one way of explained that is through game theory.
Game theory is a branch of mathematics that also uses elements of sociology and economics
to better understand rational decision making in competitive
situations. It's used to understand a wide variety of
topics, from business to war. The premise is that when you have more than one competitor
in a situation, you have a game. And there are two types of games:
finite and infinite. Finite games are defined as having set rules
and players in which the objective of the game is to win. An
individual football match is a classic example. There are eleven known players on each team
and set, agreed upon rules that both teams follow in order
to try and win the match. In contrast, infinite games have changeable
rules and both known players and unknown players. Most
importantly, the goal of the game is not to win, but to keep playing. If we examine football
in a holistic sense, it becomes clear that it is an infinite
game. Nobody can win or lose the entire sport of football, they
can only try and continue to be a player amongst a large field of constantly changing players.
There is no football club who wins every trophy every
season, and there are countless clubs who fade out of relevance at
the highest level. In this sense, we can understand that the
clubs who are successful are those who recognise the type of game
they are in and implement strategies befitting that game.
An example of this is Sir Alex Ferguson and Manchester United from 2004 to 2007. United
failed to win the league for three successive seasons during
that time period, and Ferguson was facing significant pressure
from fans and critics who saw Chelsea and Arsenal as the best teams in England. However,
Ferguson understood that Manchester United could never
be Premier League winners every single year and that there
would be times in his tenure that his squad would be inferior to that of other teams.
Rather than trying to immediately sign big-name players to react to his competition, Ferguson
understood the benefits of developing talents like Wayne
Rooney and Cristiano Ronaldo would outweigh Manchester
United’s short term failures. This is not to say that Ferguson didn’t care about results,
it's simply that he believed in certain ideas about how football
should be approached, among which was youth development.
Ferguson made decisions based on his and Manchester United’s values ahead of their interests,
and this type of infinite strategy enabled him to eventually
outperform his competition in the long term. A more recent example of a team that recognizes
that it's in an infinite game is Watford. Watford are not big
spenders in the Premier League, with the likes of Wolverhampton Wanderers, Everton, and Fulham
spending far more than them in the transfer window.
Instead, Watford looks to make astute signings that fit a system
the manager is trying to play and do so with the intent of achieving stability and consistency.
Even when events take a turn for the worse, Watford
don’t become reactionary and instead stay committed to their
principles. For instance, at the end of the 17/18 season, Watford lost manager Marco Silva
and a huge talent in Richarlison to Everton, who finished six
places above Watford. In this scenario, it would be easy for a club
to spend big to try and plug the gaps in their side. However,
Watford appointed a manager who could get the best out of the players in the squad and
have now developed a cohesive and successful side that sit 8th
in the Premier League and in contention for Europe. It may seem
strange for Watford to take such a pragmatic and measured to its ownership.
After all, they will be never able to get close to winning the league without heavy
investment in the squad. But Watford realise that for them, that is
not the definition of success. If Watford were to stay a top half
Premier League side for the next 15 years and never finish above 5th, that would be
an astonishing achievement. Different clubs have different
potentials, and Watford’s approach has set them on course
become the best version of themselves. One case of a team failing to recognisee that
they are in an infinite game is Fulham. The London side was
sensational in the Championship and earned promotion with the expectation of performing
well in the top flight. The side was built on cohesion, and
understanding between players to achieve their possession-based,
attacking style. However, Fulham spent heavily in the transfer
window in an attempt to secure safety by improving the
quality of player in the squad. In doing so, they failed to recognise what had made them
successful in the past and aimlessly sought to achieve safety
in the short term. Fast forward to March, Fulham have had three
different managers and seem destined to go straight back down. There is no guarantee
that Fulham would have stayed up if had they depended on their
existing squad alone, but they would certainly have more
stability and long term assurance than they currently have.
It's clear that football is an infinite game because it is the clubs and managers who pursue
infinite strategies that become great. Managers like Sir Alex
Ferguson and Johan Cruyff made Manchester United and
Barcelona so successful by consistently making decisions based on their values, and thus
made those teams stand for something. As author Simon Sinek
puts it, when people know what you stand for, they can then say
“I believe what you believe. I would like to be a part of your organisation” and later
explained that “this is where loyalty comes from.” That loyalty
and trust enabled to both of those teams to create successful
footballing empires. The blueprint for these incredible coaches and teams and, more broadly,
the morals and values of football are clearly rooted in infinite
strategies.