Read The Manager: Inside the Minds of Football's Leaders Online
Authors: Mike Carson
The Manager: Inside the Minds of Football's Leaders (29 page)
Sir Alex acknowledges this wasn’t easy: ‘No criticism of [predecessor] Ron Atkinson, because management is a job – was then and still is today. It is a results-based
industry, so for a lot of managers they have to concentrate on the first team. I’ve never been that way. The club’s got to be out there for sure – we’ve got 11 men on
the pitch and five on the bench and we’ve got to be out there performing today. But at the same time you are thinking long term about bringing the talent through. So I’ve never
worried about the result of the first team, I’ve always worried about the foundations of the club. I’ve always felt it’s not building a football team; it’s building a
football club. There needs to be a foundation there built on young players. We have over time got to the level where now we are turning out some very, very good young players who are all
playing today – and not all at our club. Many of the ones we didn’t take are playing for Scotland and England, and we felt they weren’t as good as the ones we had – a
fantastic position to be in.’
For certain, his plan caught fire. ‘Bobby Charlton in particular was a great support. When we found young Ryan [Giggs] at 14 years of age I said to Bobby, “You need to come down
and see this kid – he’s unbelievable.” So Bobby came down to the far pitch on Littleton Road down the far side and I’m standing there and I’m watching a game.
Bobby’s walking across and by the time he gets to me, Ryan’s been on the ball about 20 times. He walks from the pavilion end over to the pitch and says, “That must be him
there!” He knew right away because Ryan was like a terrier chasing a bit of silver paper in the wind, his head was up and he was off the ground, floating about the place. Fabulous. Bobby
and [then chairman] Martin Edwards supported us in everything we tried to achieve with youth.’
The academy system at Manchester United is at the heart of the club’s long-term success and represents the dynasty that Ferguson built. This work appeals deeply to his people skills.
But he did not do it all himself and had to rely on his academy team to implement his vision: ‘Building up young players to the necessary level of self-belief and skill is a job for our
academy when they arrive. They are rebuilding their character. If they can rebuild a player’s character to the level that he can handle me, then he’s got a chance. That’s a
fact, because when they got to me they would have to be men.’ Here again, the focus is on people, but without a trace of sentimentality: ‘We’ve no time for a weak person in
the first team. When they see weakness [at the academy], they keep working at it. Because a player would not only be dealing with me, he is dealing with 76,000 people expecting them to win each
week – and that’s a different issue altogether. So the rebuilding of a character that’s strong in terms of handling a crowd and the senior players in the dressing room: big
stars, expectations, media, all these things – it’s not done in the wind. It’s a building process, and the academy people are good at that.’
There is a real pride in Sir Alex’s eyes as he considers how this academy team has reproduced something in the finest traditions of the club: ‘They have recreated history at
Manchester United by developing these fantastic young players. It has given everyone the satisfaction that they are doing their jobs properly: the scouting, the coaching, the decision-making
about who was the best one to bring into the club, all these things. So this has created a foundation for Manchester United as it is today. This is absolutely what has built lasting
success.’ For Sir Alex then, building a football club is synonymous with investing in the next generation and in creating sustained success.
And the final part of the loop? While Sir Alex entrusted this sacred work to his academy team, he was far from losing touch. Peter Schmeichel recalls a visit to United’s training
ground in the later years of Ferguson’s managerial time at the club: ‘I walked around Carrington with him and we watched the kids train. He said, “That fella over there will
make his debut in 15 or 16 months.” That’s how he plans. But he never says that to the player. He just talks about the next game.’
Ferguson is not the only manager to place such emphasis on youth. Brendan Rodgers was convinced of the power of youth work from his earliest days at Reading, and makes the
connection between the next generation and the club’s culture and values. ‘Some young players grew and went right through to the first team. Development is a decade really. It starts
with the youngster who can’t tie his laces at the very beginning, making him feel important, secure in the environment, allowing him to play with freedom.’ So the work on mindsets
begins young. Culture, philosophy, values, morals are all words Rodgers uses to describe his focus during his decade as a youth coach. ‘I worked on interpersonal skills in relation to the
young players: shaking hands, little simple things, please and thank you, not simply expecting things, reiterating hard work, making them work. It was important to operate on their level, getting
myself feeling how they feel, building rapport, building trust. Once they could trust me, I could incorporate core values: collectiveness, unity, pride. It was a commitment to nurturing.’
This is significant, core work for a leader in any sector. Business leaders – like football leaders – need to invest real energy and resource in ensuring the flow through of talent to
where it can best be used.
And nor does it stop there. For those who will move up to the elite squad, there is considerable preparatory effort: ‘I want them to smoothly come across, and then be able to go back and
forth. At Swansea, young players used to jump from youth straight to the first team, which was too big a jump for them. So instead we put in place a bridge, to prepare them for that jump. The
biggest thing with the young players is managing their expectations: walking alongside them, understanding them, creating possibilities.’
Dario Gradi talks of the ‘extreme pressures’ on young players moving up. He recalls the moment when the young Rob Jones moved on to the high-intensity environment of Anfield.
‘When I signed him as a schoolboy, I went round to his house with his forms and promised we’d look after him. When we accepted the offer from Liverpool, I rang his mum and said
we’d accepted and she asked if that would be good for him. She reminded me that we’d said we would only do what was right for him. I told her he’d be playing against Manchester
United on Sunday and marking Ryan Giggs and I thought that was quite good for him! So when he went, I said, “You’ll be alright on Sunday. You’ll do alright against Ryan Giggs. He
might beat you but, when he does, you’ll know what you did wrong. You know how to play full back. There’s nothing you don’t know about playing full back. So don’t worry,
you’ll cope. If you are worried when you get the ball, just kick the f***ing thing up the pitch as far as you can. Don’t worry about it, don’t overplay.” Anyway, he played
well. The following week I had reason to speak to [then Liverpool manager] Graeme Souness and I told him what I’d said. He said, “I told him the same thing. I told him to kick the ball
out of the ground if he wanted! But he didn’t, he played well.” Six months later he was playing for England. Terrific.’
Rodgers also agrees there is a considerable role for the senior players here: ‘The young players are only as good as the senior players and the senior players at Swansea were magnificent,
taking that responsibility themselves. They work with them on the field – they support them and encourage them, they give them advice. The key thing is they aren’t distant with them
– that they don’t see themselves as Premier League superstars, but instead they see themselves as people united in what they are doing as part of the club. And to have individual,
assigned mentors is also a great idea. We had that process at Chelsea: John Terry, Didier Drogba and others were great for the young players. There was a lot of integration there.’ Another
connection between the youth and club culture: if senior players take a leadership role in this way, club values get passed on and become even stronger in the first team itself.
Gradi’s three decades at Crewe Alexandra – including a 24-year unbroken spell as manager – make him one of the most enduring figures in the industry. He is acknowledged as one
of the most dedicated and successful developers of young people in the game. He has great technical focus – a commitment to footballing skills that has launched a significant number of highly
successful careers. David Platt, Rob Jones, Danny Murphy, Robbie Savage, Neil Lennon and Dean Ashton among others bear testimony to his abilities. ‘There are certain core skills a successful
footballer needs – and he has to learn them young. I say to our under 12s when I’m working with them, “We might be doing this every week but it’s a skill that you
won’t be able to develop when you are 18 or 19. We can’t get you to receive the ball from the back players in tight situations if you’ve not done it as a kid. You are going to
make too many mistakes, which means you’ve got to be able to screen it. You need to use two feet and you’ve got to be able to do that in the game, and you’ve got to get into the
drag so you can dodge people. They’re simple skills and quite easy to teach, but if you haven’t mastered them by the time you’re 15 or 16 then you aren’t going to.” I
remember working with Alan Hudson and he had a weak foot when he was 17 or 18 at Chelsea, and we worked ever such a lot on his weak foot. But he never used it in the game. It was too
late.’
At a big-club level, Sir Alex believes the cornerstones of good youth work are a consistent environment, and an all-round view of care – including the tough subjects: ‘The people we
have running our academy – some of them were with the club for 20 years. They are part of the fabric of the club. So what you’ve got is consistency and experience of how to handle young
people, and of what Manchester United really means. It’s not always an easy job. We get a lot of kids from broken homes now – the father and mother have split up, and you have to deal
with both sides of it. The most important thing is the care we can give them. Of course, we do the educational thing, but there’s also development of character – getting them to
understand it’s not an easy job. We tell them, “It’s a commitment. You’ve got to do it 100 per cent – you can’t do it part-time at this club.” We have to
make them well aware of the dangers of drugs, we help them understand financial matters and all about what’s appropriate. There’s been a real change here. We got Ryan Giggs to sign his
first professional contract for four years on a quarter of what these guys are getting. You sometimes see them drive off in their flash car, and we immediately do something about it: the insurance
is ridiculous money, and the message it sends out is all wrong. Drink can be a problem too. And then girlfriends come into their lives, of course, from 16 to 19. Then there are agents – do
they have a good one or a bad one? We support them across this whole range of challenges.’
From the tireless work of Sir Alex comes this clear message: building the next generation is the essential work of a leader if he is to achieve truly sustained success.
Solution Part Two: Build Something Bigger Than Yourself
One of the toughest balances for a dynastic leader to strike is around how much personality to invest in the organisation. Too little, and he loses the power to shape something;
too much and it becomes dependent on him – with all the limitations and the dangers that carries. This part of the solution has three elements.
1. Infuse the organisation with your character:
Exactly how dependent Manchester United has become on the personality of Sir Alex will only be seen now that he has retired from the front line. But no one could argue with
the extraordinary success that has sprung up from the marriage of the institution and the person.
Ferguson does not think of himself as a leader in the traditional sense – more as a person who shapes others: ‘I would never describe myself as a leader. I think time has given
me an opportunity to influence people’s beliefs, to give them faith in themselves. Confidence and your personality get through to them. I always feel my teams mirror me, my personality,
and that’s what I always head for, that one personality.’
Paul Ince explains how, over time, Manchester United has become almost a direct expression of the manager’s character: ‘When you sign for Manchester United, you want to play for
Manchester United because for me it was the biggest club in the world. After about a year of being there I wanted to play for Alex Ferguson. In my eyes, he is Mr Manchester United. I wanted to
learn from him and pick his brains and play for him. You know what he expects from you and the fact that he wants you to come and play for his team gives you such a lift in your career. That
someone like Sir Alex has recognised you as a player that can actually come and do a job for Manchester United and be a part of a side that won the title after 26 years was great.’
George Graham, a highly talented, title-winning contemporary of Sir Alex in management, agrees with Ince: ‘His biggest strength without question is his desire, and age has nothing to
do with desire – you can have it as a youngster, you can have it at middle age and you can have it in your older years. Alex has always had that desire and he’s still got it.
He’s actually built his Manchester United success from scratch and he’s instilled his own personality and character. It’s very, very hard to define that.’ In other
words, there’s no way of bottling and selling what Sir Alex does. But the message is that any leader seeking to build long-term success needs to ensure his character – that is, his
behaviours, values and beliefs – permeate his organisation.
Bill Shankly was another leader with plenty of charisma. Keegan will never forget his first day of training under him: ‘It was the end of the first day. I was just someone they had
plucked from obscurity. Shankly walked over to me and said, “You will play for England,” and just walked off. In that moment, I knew I would.’ In all his dealings, Shankly
communicated a deep affection for the club and especially for its supporters: ‘He would remind us, “You are privileged to play for these people. Everything you do here, you do it
for them.”’ He also communicated a very personal interest in the players: ‘He was unbelievable. He had something special with everyone. With me, I think it was that we were
both miners’ sons. But he was like that with everybody – he didn’t have favourites. He was always going over to people and talking to them and giving them messages. Some would
get it, others wouldn’t. He would go over to someone if he wasn’t very fit and say, “Chocolate is no good for you, son ...” Of course he was actually saying they could
be fitter, they could be a bit slimmer, they could maybe train harder. Little personal cryptic messages.’
This is
not
about the leader declaring himself the best thing since sliced bread. Rather, it is about him using the strength of his character for the good of all in the
organisation.
2. Establish enduring vision and values:
Paul Ince pays tribute to the sheer presence of Sir Alex – a presence created by his adherence to compelling values: ‘It’s the respect and standards that
he has for his club and his players: how they should behave, how they should work in training and respect each other. There is awe about the man, when he walks in, when he speaks everybody
shuts up and that is a great trait to have.’ Of course, Ferguson’s reputation as a match-winner alone goes before him, and helps to establish something special. But to have real
impact on generations of newcomers requires some process – formal or informal – of induction. A player arriving at the club needs to see and feel that he is joining something
special, something bigger than himself. The importance of this hit Sir Alex a few years ago: ‘It was a moment when we came to commemorate the anniversary of the Munich air disaster, and I
realised that some of the young foreign players weren’t aware of it. We showed them a video of the team back then, and Bobby Charlton came to speak about it. The response was amazing
– and I mean the emotional response. And that was a very poignant moment for the football club in terms of players from other countries like Brazil, immediately realising how big a
tragedy it was and how big the club has become since then. So we do more of that now when players arrive at the club, to get them well clued in around how we’ve grown to the famous club
we are now.’
Now that Ferguson has retired, Arsène Wenger is the longest-serving Premier League manager. Like Sir Alex, he has infused his club with his character and has established clear values
that have significantly enhanced performance. He also sets a high premium on vision. ‘I would say a person who is a good leader is a person who has ideas and has a vision of the world. To
have a vision of the world, you have to have a philosophy of the world and values that are important for you. So I must say the first work a leader has to do is analyse what he wants, what is
important to him, and the second step is to make that real. Our job I find very interesting because it’s more than being an intellectual. An intellectual guy is a guy who lives for his
ideas; a football manager is a guy who needs to have ideas as well, but then he has to show that these ideas work and to transform it into a practical aspect. That’s why I find this job
interesting: at the end of the day you can check how good your ideas are. I believe as well a leader can be a fantastic person who can influence other people’s lives in a positive way.
Therefore he has a great responsibility.’ Have the right impact on those lives and you begin to create something enduring.
The values that Bill Shankly lived out at Liverpool would endure well beyond his own tenure. Keegan has a prime example: ‘Possibly his most powerful value of all was honesty. If you
did something wrong you were told: if you had a bad game you knew it, if you’d done well you knew it. So there was a passing on of genuine information and feedback all the time. If
someone was pleased with you, you knew it. But no one said too much. At Liverpool, we never criticised anybody to other people – it’s just not what we did. Then it was all about
Saturday, about winning, about playing for Liverpool: how lucky you were to play for Liverpool, we don’t do that at Liverpool, this is what we do at Liverpool. There was this real buy-in
to how lucky you were, how privileged you were to be given the shirt to wear and run out wearing it in front of the crowd. That’s how it felt and still to this day I feel it.’
The values point is not a new one in itself. What is significant in the context of sustaining success is when the values are established in conjunction with the leader’s character, and
when they are established in such a way that they become a central part of the organisation and they outlive him. Powerful sustaining values are embodied by a leader – and then taken up
with the same intensity by his successor.
3. Ensure your succession:
In his book
Good to Great
, author Jim Collins suggests that one of five traits of a truly great leader is to ensure his own succession. In 1974, Bill Shankly
retired from the role of Liverpool manager. He was loved by just about everyone in English football, revered by the Anfield faithful and profoundly respected by his players. The question
everyone was asking was who could possibly succeed him? Rumour had it that Brian Clough, then manager at Leeds United and future great at Nottingham Forest, would be the successor. But the club
had plans to keep the succession internal. In the manner of a royal family, the role fell to the heir apparent – Shankly’s assistant, Bob Paisley. Keegan recalls that time:
‘The great thing about the transition was the ship just sailed on. When Bob took the job, my first thoughts were, “He’s not a communicator, he’s just a real, solid,
down-to-earth guy.”’
Likeable, knowledgeable – but did he have what it takes to lead a team of champions? ‘From the start with Bob we were all committed not to let him fall. It was a case of:
“He’s too good a guy, he means too much to us”. And then he went on to become so much more successful even than Shanks because that team just grew and grew. I only had a year
with him, and they went on to great things. What he won was incredible.’ The Shankly-Paisley succession was a superb example of a leadership transition. And the key to its success did not
lie exclusively with the outgoing man. ‘If Bob had had an ego he’d have wanted to change things. But he just thought, “OK, I’m number one now: I’ve got my main
players, I’ve got the same staff behind me, Bill’s gone, but we worked together 20 years” – and off he went! Nothing changed in that year I was there, and as far as I
know nothing changed afterwards either. We kept the same training routines, the same fitness pre-season, the same people looking at teams. That’s all very clever because most people go
into a business and think, “I’ve got to make my mark on this, I’ve got to change this” – and sometimes you don’t, especially if it’s successful.
Ego’s the biggest thing.’
Perhaps it is the absence of ego that makes a great leader into a great dynastic leader. Wenger is a firm believer in ego-free succession: ‘I find that above all the club belongs to
the fans, and not just to one person, and it has to be a model that survives you when you go, that survives the biggest players when they go and economically it is just a viable model. That for
me is the biggest part to think that this club will just become bigger and bigger and when I leave I feel a hugely proud moment that this club can go further and continue and get even bigger
and become even stronger.’
At Manchester United, of course, for several years it was the great unanswered question. Who would be able to succeed the great man when he eventually stepped away? David Moyes is the man
tasked with the challenge, but Howard Wilkinson believes that Sir Alex has bequeathed to the club a form of continuous growth that goes beyond Ferguson as an individual: ‘I think
Manchester United can ask no more from Alex than what he has already given. What he’s left there is fantastic. It’s the board’s responsibility to manage that change. They
might ask him to help them, but it’s their responsibility to put in place a strategy for the change. In my humble opinion it would not have been a case of “we need to find another
Ferguson”. It’s surely more around how do we keep steady the ship which has cruised along so well, now that we have a new captain?’
Wherever the responsibility lies, it is a clear challenge: sustained success only translates into dynastic success with proper succession.