How much impact does a manager have on a player’s performance?

As a manager of a minor non-league side I like to think that when we win it is down to my great skills and abilities as a manager and that when we lose, it is down to the players playing badly.

Blame

Gary Linekar once said that the best thing about being a captain was that when things went wrong the manager got the blame.

I just wonder how much impact the manager or head coach actually has on the performances of the players. France have self combusted at the World Cup and the blame is largely put at the door of Raymond Domenech. England have come close to self combusting and much of the blame is aimed at the team selection and tactics of Fabio Capello.

Humiliating

What made me think about this was the comments of North Korea coach Kim Jong-Hun after his team’s humiliating 7-0 defeat to Portugal. After playing well against Brazil with a 5-1-3-1 formation he reverted to 4-3-3 for the Portugal game.

“As a coach I think it was my fault for not planning the right strategy. In the final match against Ivory Coast we will have to think over our tactics.”

I can’t help but feel the North Korean boss is being a little hard on himself! He didn’t ask his players to get totally out played and out classed, it just happened. Surely it would have happened to a greater or lesser extent even if the manager had stuck to the 5-1-3-1 formation.

Tactics

Coaches and managers are paid to pick the team, formulate the tactics and motivate the players to perform at their best. Every football fan in the world thinks they could do the job but it isn’t that easy. The coach has to select eleven players who will play together as a team rather than simply the best eleven players. He then has to mould that group of players into a well organised unit that know where to be and what to do at any given moment of a game.

On top of that, the manager has to send those players out on to the pitch thinking that they are unbeatable and that they are the best players in the world.

It is that last paragraph that is the most difficult aspect of the job.

Great

The great Brian Clough was once asked about how he got his team practicing for attacking free-kicks. He replied that he told his best headers of the ball to get into the box and then told the player taking the kick to lob the ball in and the others to attack the ball and head it at the goal.

Liverpool legend Bob Paisley was quoted as saying to one of his strikers, “If you’ve got the ball in the box and aren’t sure what to do, just pop it into the net and we’ll discuss it afterwards.”

Those two are obviously extreme examples but they are good examples of managers who trusted their players to deliver the goods without coaching the life out of them. Maybe other managers could have got their teams better organised, but would they have achieved the same levels of success?

Powerless

Having said all of that, once the players cross the white line just before the kick-off the manager is powerless to do anything to help them. Domenech didn’t tell his players to perform badly and Capello hasn’t told the England players to forget how to pass the ball, control the ball or shoot at goal.

Although the manager sets the tone it is the players who are paid handsomely to play football to the best of their ability.

Decent

Can a manager turn good players into bad players or bad players into good players? I would say that he can’t do that. He might be able to get a bit more out of players and form a decent side out of average players but that’s about as far as it goes.

By all means criticise the managers but at the end of the day, if a footballer plays badly or doesn’t give 100% then that is entirely down to the player himself.