What do Franz Beckenbauer, Mario Zagallo and Didier Deschamps have in common?
Good question but I don’t think you deserve an answer.
Ok José. Well those three are the only men to win the World Cup both as player and coach.
Though that’s obviously a massive achievement, it also tells us something.
Many football legends went on to become coaches after their retirement as players.
From Maradona to Matthäus, from Cruyff to Pirlo.
Sometimes maybe good, sometimes maybe shit!
Well, actually often not that well.
Why do so many former legends struggle as coaches?
Are their phenomenal playing careers actually a disadvantage? And who the hell is this guy??
Let’s find out!
In professional football coaches are under constant scrutiny from team owners, directors, fans and the media.
Many like to see great performances but in the end it’s all about winning.
So when a club is looking for a new coach,
the easy solution could be and was for a long time: hire the legend.
Former elite players who become coaches are immediately able to garner respect
saying that seductive line...
They know the pressure, they know how is the pressure of the football player,
how is the pressure of the fans, what it means to play in that team,
what means to be a professional football player and they know, well, the game.
And they know how to win. Plus: football is football, right?
It’s all the same ON and OFF the pitch. Maybe it's NOZ that easy.
The practice of hiring former greats as coaches is not unique to football,
but it has always been common practice.
Let’s take a quick look:
In the past, successful players were often able to bypass a lengthy coaching education.
To a certain extent their successes as players were their qualifications.
Remember Beckenbauer and Zagallo from the beginning?
They were appointed national team coaches without any experience.
It was the same later with Rudi Völler and Jürgen Klinsmann,
who coached Germany despite having few qualifications
although they did bring considerable success.
While those examples were indeed exceptions, it shows that a lot of football stars get
preferential treatment due to their playing careers.
So some coaches got their gig at the highest level because they had already performed there.
Playing does provide players with a good opportunity to learn about
coaching from their own coaches.
Great players can learn from the best.
Technical and tactical stuff and also social skills like motivational changing room speeches.
However, there are limits to what you can learn on the pitch.
If you’re captain of your team you can boss your teammates around
and look out for their positioning and so on, but if you’re the coach, you have to do
that for every player on the field individually while also keeping an eye on the team tactics.
Of course coaches have plenty of assistants these days but it does help to know what you’re doing.
And that’s why there is one thing that every aspiring coach requires.
To manage a team in Europe’s top divisions, coaches need a UEFA Pro License.
Otherwise, you can only be a coach in the league for 15 workdays tops.
Each country’s football association has academies that offer this training,
which in Germany lasts around 13 months and covers three key areas:
but not only from a technical, tactical aspect, but also from the viewpoint of...
What do the players need? What do the players want from you? What do they require?
How do you target different qualities and players? How do you develop players?
How do you integrate youth players into professional teams?
It's not just your team, your players, it's also your coaching staff,
then you have a medical staff around you have you have team management,
you have several other people involving people that help you with the press
that you need to manage as well.
Everything that's around your organization and around
what you do as a coach that you cannot directly influence.
There are the media, there’s a league, there is a competition structure, there are agents.
And there you have it. Coaching is about a lot more than football knowledge.
Recent decades have shown that success
on the pitch doesn’t automatically mean success on the sidelines.
A quick look at the world champions between 1990 and 2010 shows
that while 44 out of all 135 world cup winners went on to become coaches,
only seven have arguably been successful up to now.
So those who once achieved everything as footballers
have it harder than other aspiring coaches?
Well maybe because great ex-players find it easy to forget
that they have to start from scratch and learn a new craft when they are managers.
Ole Gunnar Solskjaer for instance. At Manchester United his tactical knowledge was constantly questioned.
Or Tony Adams, a Three-lions hero
who was mocked during his coaching spells over his own lack of tactical acumen.
Or Steffi Jones, she was a three-time European Champion as a player
but as Germany’s head coach was criticized and eventually sacked
for a lack of a clear plan on the pitch.
Or Hristo Stoichkov. The Bulgarian Ballon d’Or winner once famously said
“I don’t believe in tactics”.
You could probably have guessed that his coaching career was short.
Just because you were good at football, doesn't
mean you can become a coach without putting in a load hard work.
Proof of that can be seen in none other than Pep Guardiola.
After retiring as a player, he spent over a year studying the game and meeting his mentors
before taking his first steps as a coach. Guardiola understood that despite his
success as a player, he had to learn the profession of coaching.
And he did. The Spaniard won 31 major titles in Spain, Germany and England,
with his "Tiki-Taka" style of play thrilling the football world.
There are others who realized that their player credentials weren't worth much as coaches.
Carlo Ancelotti learned as an assistant and then worked his way up from lower leagues
to become a master of changing formations.
Or former Germany coach Sylvia Neid who developed from an assistant manager
to an incredibly good analyst of opposing teams, who literally predicted to her players
how they would score goals.
Or Luis Enrique who managed Barcelona's B team for 3 years
before changing onto the big stage,
then successfully experimenting with different formations.
Of course, the coach can only do so much to improve a player’s technique at that level.
And that’s also not the main reason why clubs appoint them.
It’s because of their character. Because they are who they are.
Coaching, especially at the highest level, is far more about managing and motivating personalities
than it is about teaching players how to play.
The ability to connect with people effectively,
the ability to be empathetic, the ability to be a very clear communicator,
bring your ideas across to be also quite honest with players.
I think that's something that's appreciated by players.
All these things are more or less non-negotiable.
And when it comes to the right character, you either have it or you don't.
It doesn't matter how many trophies you won as a player.
There is no doubt that a coach can teach their players valuable lessons from their
own successes as players, but only if he or she is able
to translate those experiences into a coherent message for the players.
An exceptional playing career can also sometimes be a disadvantage.
Some naturally talented players don't have to study the game obsessively
like their "mortal" counterparts. Then, when they become coaches,
they find it difficult to relate to their players.
Instead of acknowledging that each player has their own individual strengths and weaknesses,
they begin to judge their players by the unfair standards of their own playing careers.
They are looking for players who are similar to themselves
and then sometimes get frustrated because by definition
most of the players that they’re working with probably are not quite as good as they were,
and then they find it hard to compromise, find it hard to convey certain ideas,
so I think it really depends on the type of player that you were.
While leadership skills can be taught, knowing what it takes to be
a leader does not automatically make you one.
Some professional or some successful players were very individualistic.
It’s a bit of a mental shortcut I think to suggest
that somebody who was very dominant on the pitch, necessarily has the same personality.
Maybe this explains the case of Lothar Matthäus, so far the only
German player to win the Ballon d’or. His managerial career with Celta Vigo
and the Hungarian and Bulgarian national teams was not very successful.
The 1990 world champion - while undoubtedly gifted -
is said to have a difficult communication style.
You give me nothing!
But the most prominent example is probably Diego Armando Maradona,
one the world’s best-ever footballers.
He had an unsuccessful stint as manager of Argentina, which came to an end
when they were routed 4-0 by Germany in the quarterfinals of the 2010 World Cup.
His only other managerial experience came at UAE side Al Wasl, who sacked him after one year.
In response to criticism, he famously told journalists once where they could stick their comments.
There are also more recent examples. Take former world champion Gennaro Gattuso,
who failed to lead AC Milan and Napoli into the Champions League
while…well…doing Gattuso things off the pitch.
Tutte cazzate. Shit. Malakia. 100% Malakia.
But of course a coach’s character can be the key to success.
And that’s why some big players have become great coaches.
Jupp Heynckes won both the European Cup and World Cup as a player,
and two champions league titles as coach of Real Madrid and Bayern.
Heynckes succeeded in emphasizing the individual in a collective.
Every player feels important. And every player really was part of the team, of the success etc.
And this people management and leadership was really outstanding.
He created a special team spirit and more or less everybody feels connected to him.
Or take Diego Simeone. He famously broke the
Barcelona-Real Madrid duopoly by winning La Liga twice with Atletico.
He's shown he's able to keep his team successful despite repeated departures of key players.
And his team plays in the image of the man himself.
In 1998, Zinedine Zidane was voted the best player in the world.
Twenty years later, the Frenchman led Real Madrid to a third consecutive Champions League title.
Zidane's personality, shaped by his experiences as a player,
has helped make him one of the most successful coaches in Europe.
Just have a look at his half-time speech
when Real Madrid and Juventus Turin were tied in the 2017 Champions League final.
Maybe we think that he is not the tactical genius, but the things that he does - they work
because we can say “we have to do this, this and this to win a match”
and Zidane arrives to a team and says, “If we do one thing, we win.”
And the players like the simplicity also. Zidane has a big personality,
but he always defends the players. Never says a bad word about nobody.
And he always defends the players until the end.
So having a great career can be both helpful and a disadvantage.
But it is striking that there are more who have failed than have succeeded.
It shows that: being a football expert doesn’t guarantee good leadership,
just as a lack of technical expertise doesn’t preclude someone from being a good leader.
No one sums it up better than Arrigo Sacchi.
He’s considered one of the finest coaches Italy has ever produced.
His AC Milan side won the European Cup in 1989 and 90, although he had never
played as a professional. As he famously put it...
Sacchi firmly believed that football needed to become more open to more non-playing coaches.
And it seems like it is. In the past decades, again and again
coaches without successful professional playing careers
were able to reach outstanding heights with their teams.
Sir Alex Ferguson had an ordinary professional career as a player,
but his career as a manager is one of the greatest that football has ever seen.
Not many will remember Arsene Wenger's performances on the pitch,
but he will forever be remembered as the only coach to lead his team to an
unbeaten Premier League season in 2004.
And then there’s Jürgen Klopp. He never played a single Bundesliga match,
but that didn’t stop him winning league titles with Dortmund and Liverpool,
as well as lifting the Champions League trophy with the Reds.
There are few in professional football that have understood
how to ignite the passion of his players like Jürgen Klopp.
You can learn about tactics, you can learn about ideas.
Klopp did, you know, he didn't grow up thinking about pressing and gegenpressing
and having all these very meticulous football ideas
but this charisma that he has, this force of nature,
I think that is something that you can't really learn.
The last 20 years show how much things have changed.
In the year 2000, 34 out of 78 clubs in La Liga, the Premier League,
the Bundesliga, and Serie A were led by coaches with
little or no playing experience. By 2022 that number had risen to 44.
The reason is simple: Most professional players cannot start their coaching courses
until after retiring from their time on the pitch. That means that managers who didn’t have
a long and spectacular playing career can start their coaching classes earlier.
Jose Mourinho began his managerial career after his playing days were
cut short when he was just 24 years old. His career took him from working as an
interpreter for Sir Bobby Robson in Portugal to Champions League glory.
...or Thomas Tuchel. His career came to an end at 26.
As a manager, that hasn't stopped him recently lifting the Champions League
and Club World Cup trophies. And Julian Nagelsmann who got
his first professional gig at Hoffenheim when he was only 28, once said,
"Thirty percent of coaching is tactics, 70% social competence."
So what's wrong with former elite players immediately moving into elite coaching?
Well nothing really, it just doesn’t guarantee you anything.
Hiring a former player might be a brilliant decision, might also be a very bad decision,
but it is the same with managers who have not played the game before professionally.
Coaches need to realize that learning doesn't stop just because they have a top job.
In the fast-paced world of elite football, learning and development is critical
whether you’re a Zidane, or a Mourinho.
The path to success can take many routes.
The likes of Xavi and Lampard can use their legendary status to help them on the sidelines.
But others pave the way for a diverse coaching culture, which is good for football.
What do you think of former legends entering the coaching game?
Are there any legends we forgot? Put them in the comments!
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Cheerio!