Read The Manager: Inside the Minds of Football's Leaders Online
Authors: Mike Carson
The Manager: Inside the Minds of Football's Leaders (15 page)
Gérard Houllier is also enthusiastic about technology – and sounds another interesting warning note about how best to use it: ‘It is nearly 15 years since we started to have
match analysis in Clairefontaine [the French national training academy]. Systems like Prozone helped me a lot when I was in previous clubs because I could assess the effort and the technical
achievements of the players in the game. But I never use technology for negative reasons. I’ve never shown a player “You’ve done wrong, this is where you went wrong” –
I never show that. I prefer to enhance the positive aspect of his game. I would say, “You’ve done that before and there is no reason why you can’t repeat that.” The image is
very important – the image gets into the mind of a player. So if you want to show something, make it something positive.’
From recruitment and routine through technology to personal issues, a high-performing leadership team creates the environment for a high-performing playing team to emerge.
Creating a High-performing Playing Team
Establishing the ideal environment is essential – but in itself is not sufficient. A high-performing leadership team goes on to model and coach the behaviours needed from
the playing side to achieve their shared vision.
The war room and the boot room
People are much more likely to imitate what they observe than to do what someone tells them. If a leadership team wants to inspire high performance among their people, then they
must themselves display the behaviours and set the standards they seek. In Allardyce’s war room, he and Mike Ford fashioned a leadership team that modelled what they needed to see from the
playing team. Allardyce was especially struck by Ford’s thinking on sports psychology, disputing the then commonly held belief that those who sought it were weak. His commission to Ford was
focused primarily on building the leadership team: ‘I told him, “We don’t need you mainly to work with the players – we want you to work with the staff, and we want to build
these goals and dreams that we want to aspire to achieve.” We planned it out while we were growing the staff in each department, so everybody understood where they wanted to go in five
years’ time, what they wanted to be – collectively and individually.’ As well as planning, the leadership team modelled renewal and learning. ‘An important piece was looking
after their own development. Too often in football the people that work for the players are not in a position to go out and improve the job that they do. I made sure the team were given enough time
to go and learn about leadership and other subjects – and they come back refreshed and much revived, instead of the 24/7 that they so easily get sucked into. There is a lack of development in
football while you are working at team level: the 24/7 is looking after everyone else, but not looking after yourself.’
In many ways, Allardyce’s war room is a successor to the famous Liverpool boot room, where successive managers at Anfield somehow combined warmth with mystique, modelling excellence and
creating an environment for high performance that spanned a quarter of a century. Keegan recalls that the boot room ‘was nothing to do with the players! It was Shankly, Paisley, and their
team. Someone told me – and I believe it to be true – that they had a book in there where they wrote down the training they did every day, every week, before every game and the results
of every game. And if they ever lost two games on the trot they went back to look for patterns. I’ve never seen that book though I’m 100 per cent sure it existed. It was kept as a
close-guarded secret.’
The mystique was there all right, but the legendary boot room leadership style was about role modelling and human engagement. Shankly, Paisley, Fagan and many great managers at many great clubs
since have led teams around a set of core principles. There is no definitive list, but there are seven that are commonly talked about:
1. Collective belief
When Keegan arrived at Newcastle United in 1992, the famous Magpies were in the lower reaches of the second tier of English football – a worrying place for a club of
its history and stature. He describes a dangerous downward spiral that had taken place: ‘We had players that didn’t even come through the front door – they were parking their
cars at the back and coming in that way. I had to change pretty much everything really. What happens at a football club when things go wrong is people start to punish each other. It’s
like “we aren’t staying in hotels any more, they don’t deserve that, we’ll travel down the day of the game, three and a half hours ... We’re not washing the kit
any more, they can take it home and wash it ...” This is where Newcastle had got to: some of the players were in black and white stripes and some were in grey and white stripes. The club
was pretty much saying, why should we do anything for them when they’re not performing?’ The collective belief had disappeared and the overriding mindset was one of negativity.
André Villas-Boas strives for collective belief by emphasising the equal value of every individual to the team: ‘My European background has taught me that players should be
treated equally, because the club is always more important than any single individual player or employee. In the European model, the executive board actually comes to training sessions with the
manager, and represents the club with him. I’ve always based my leadership on collective values rather than individual values. At Chelsea and at Tottenham I’ve had to explain that
when I encourage the group it’s not because I don’t want to praise an individual – it’s because you want the players to understand that the group is more important than
anything. Within that, I want them to understand they are all important. The person who scores the goal and wins the game is only as important as the third goalkeeper who never gets to play
– and this value runs very deep for me because it was the way I was educated. Give everything that you have to give for your club, and the club will give everything back to
you.’
2. Selflessness
In a high-performing team, the players play for one another. Keegan puts it like this: ‘There has to be selflessness. All the top players in teams will tell you that
you can’t win European Footballer of the Year on your own. You need five, six or maybe seven good players around you. It’s not an act – you genuinely say thank you for making
me be able to score goals. They are working to make each other successful.’
This applies also to going the extra mile for one another, which for Sir Alex Ferguson is at the very heart of a high-performing team: ‘The essence of a good team is recognising the
qualities of each other, and the weaknesses of each other too. And on a given day I always think if eight players are playing well, then you’ve got a great chance of winning the match
– and sometimes maybe you’ve got to carry one or two players. To ask or expect a footballer in today’s world to play 50 games a season at 100 per cent performance is
impossible – there will always be off days and bad days. Pulling together when that happens is the essence of teamwork.’
Teamwork is another of Gérard Houllier’s four foundational values. He uses it to guide his players’ approach towards one another and the club: ‘I need to think team
first! It’s a collective sport – the team is more important than me. Not just the club, but the team. So that means, “What can I do for the team? How can I do better for the
team?”’ It is also Allardyce’s number one value. He very frankly sees teamwork in his playing team as the most crucial contributor to his own success: ‘If you are going
to have a long career in this game it’s all about results. It’s not about how much money you make or save. If the results don’t back you up they won’t stand up for you
– if the crowd get on your back, you’ll be gone. So it all depends on the players and how they play as a team. So the biggest value that I communicate to the players is how we
should come together to be a team to enjoy what we are doing and deal with the pressure and be all in it together. That way we can achieve what we all want to achieve.’
3. Excellence
When Keegan arrived at Hamburg as a player, he had a tough beginning. But he was struck by the club’s commitment to excellence: ‘I was 27 years of age and I just
relished the challenge. It was massive. Everybody says but you were so successful, and I say the first six months were horrendous. The players didn’t really want to know me. I
couldn’t understand why because I couldn’t speak the language, so I couldn’t ask them. The coach was brought in because he could speak English – they didn’t like
him and they blamed me for that. I got sent off and suspended for about six matches for punching a guy in a mid-season friendly, and I had to go back and apologise to the guy. Plus I was on a
big wage there compared to other players, and the president put it in the papers – here is the guy who will save Hamburg! It was too much about me, and the players just downed tools and
said right go on then.
‘It wasn’t easy. But I knew I could play, and I knew I would get through once I was given a fair chance. But when you win a battle like that, it’s like a juggernaut –
once you turn it around, wow! I learnt the language so I could communicate and have a laugh with them – I could swear at them if I wanted to! Then I saw it was much more professional even
than we were at Liverpool, believe it or not ... The players would do
anything.
Some of our training was ridiculously hard and I think at Liverpool Tommy Smith would have gone in and
said, “Hey you’re killing us!” There they just did it. The German players were very disciplined. The players would run through a brick wall for the coach, almost to the point
where it took away some of the individual. If the coach says it, it is right. So I got very fit, and we won the championship!’
4. Motivation
Excellence becomes in itself a motivation for leaders and their teams. Gérard Houllier is driven by a quest for excellence: ‘If that winning mentality is in
you, then once you have won something it becomes like a drug – you want to win again, and again, and again. I remember when I was managing at Lyon and we knew halfway through the season
that we had won the title. No team had ever won La Ligue in France with more than 80 points. We managed to do it in two consecutive seasons.’
For Houllier at Lyon, the classic upward spiral of high-performing teams kicked in. ‘When you win, of course you create an atmosphere: people work hard, they enjoy their work, they
work for each other. This is the most thrilling experience. It’s more than just working together – it’s truly working for each other.’ Motivation and selflessness would
appear to be closely connected.
5. Personal commitment
In a high-performing team, individual commitment to the team is strong. Keegan sees it as one of the great indicators. ‘What’s the commitment? Are they here for
the benefit of the team or are they here for the journey? Are they here for the money or do they really want to win something?’ More than this – in a high-performing team, they show
it. ‘You sometimes think: “This kid’s not committed,” and then you find three months later actually he is very, very committed; he just hasn’t shown it. [In great
teams] players show a bit more – actually state their case why they should be in the team, why they shouldn’t be sat on the bench.’
Allardyce is single-minded on this issue: ‘The leadership team would sit down and ask, “What does our group look like – staff and players? In the playing team we would have
a good number of what we call Players. These are people the leadership can look to, people who will lead others. Then there are the Followers – people happy to commit to the team and go
with the Players. But then there would be a couple of Saboteurs. These are the ones we had to be careful about – or else they begin to recruit some of the Followers and cause problems.
Generally I am a bit more direct and abrupt with these people. If I find I have one or two recruiting other people, I know I have to get into them to turn them back. Generally the Saboteur is a
good player who just has a bit of a problem. Maybe I’ve left him out for a while, or for some reason had a contract fall-out. If you can’t resolve that, you have to get the board to
get rid of him as quickly as you can. If you can bring him back, then you are doing OK.’ Keeping everyone committed will prevent these disruptive behaviours.
6. Clarity
Great teams have clarity of role and process. Keegan again: ‘Everybody needs to know what’s expected of them, where the parameters are, what they’re
expected to do. At Liverpool it was so easy because you knew what you could get away with and you knew what you couldn’t get away with, so you knew exactly what your job was and what your
fitness levels should be.’
They also have clarity around responsibility. Martin Jol encountered an interesting challenge during his time in England: ‘Just recently I told a right-footed player [player R] to play
on the left, and a left-footed player [player L] to start in the centre of midfield. I did that with a purpose because player L can be very good on the inside with his left and player R is
right-footed so he can change play to the right. And then they changed it from the start! Player R played on the right and player L on the left. So after two minutes I thought what are they
doing? If you leave it, if you let it go, you’ve got a problem – they will do it for the rest of the season. So at half-time I said, “Never do that again, OK? If I tell you to
play on the left, play on the left. Don’t change it!” And he said, “Yes, but player R prefers to play on the right!” I said, “Everything I do, I do with a purpose.
So if I studied the opposition, if I tell you to play on the left, then you play on the left, OK? And maybe at half-time or after a game we can talk about it, and maybe in the next game I could
do something else or change it – but never do it on your own, don’t take these sort of decisions.” I don’t want them to take those sorts of decisions. Players are very
black and white. If you leave it and if you won’t explain why you are doing things, they will think, “OK, this is a manager where I can express myself,” and that is not want
you want.’ The strong leader needs clarity in his message – both in delivering it and in enforcing it.