An article on football, the way the game has changed and managers.
Association football is the most popular sport in the world. Played by over 250 million people around the world and watched by four billion people, football transcends geographical boundaries, religions, skin colours and languages. The game traces its roots back to the Chinese game Tsu’ Chu, which was played as early as 3rd century BC and involved kicking a ball through an open net (FIFA 1). It is the earliest form of football for which there is evidence. The modern game was codified in England on 26th October 1863 and included a set of thirteen rules, known as the ‘Laws of the Game.’ The rules were drawn up by The Football Association (The FA), England’s football governing body. These rules have changed in many ways since 1863 and football today is played in accordance with the Laws. The Laws of the Game are to football what a constitution is to a nation; it clearly outlines what is allowed, what the responsibilities of footballers are and what should be followed to play a match properly. Beyond the Laws, understanding the organisation of the sport and its technical aspects make watching and playing more fun and engaging.
Team football is organised into domestic and international competitions. Teams competing in domestic leagues are known as clubs and play throughout the year. International teams representing particular countries usually have a competition every two years and have few friendly matches (ones which are not a part of any competition) in a given year. Clubs usually participate in one league-based competition and up to three knockout based competitions, which can even be within the best teams in a particular region. The most popular leagues in the world are in Europe and South America and have a fan-following across the world. The biggest international competition is the quadrennial World Cup organised by world football’s governing body, FIFA (International Federation of Association Football). Popular regional competitions include the UEFA European Football Championship (Euros for short) and the Copa América.
Football is played by two teams of eleven players with a spherical ball, whose size is mentioned in Law 2: “the ball should weigh between 410g-450g, with a circumference of 68cm-70cm” (IFAB 43). It is played on a grass field split into two halves at the centre, with white markings indicating the field of play and a ‘box’ which is approximately twenty metres away from the goalpost. The objective is to score more goals than the opposition team in ninety minutes, split into two forty- five-minute periods. Each of the eleven players has different responsibilities when on the pitch and play according to their ‘position.’ Broadly, there are four kinds of positions: goalkeeper, defender, midfielder and forward/striker. The goalkeeper is the only player on the team who can legally use his/her hands but is allowed to do so only in the ‘box.’ The main objective of the goalkeeper is to protect the goal and use any part of his/her body to stop the ball from going past the goal line. Defenders play in front of the goalkeeper and aim to thwart the opposition’s attack by tackling and intercepting and do not often stray into the opposition’s half. Midfielders play in the middle of the pitch and have a variety of responsibilities, depending on their specific position; they should build up the play and get the ball to the opposition’s half, maintain possession of the ball, provide passes which can potentially lead to goalscoring opportunities and “steal”/dispossess the ball from the opposing player and kick the ball elsewhere or to a teammate. Finally, forwards or strikers are the attacking force in a team and play upfront, always in search of goal. Forwards look to receive passes from their teammates and run into the opposing team’s box and take a shot. They are usually quick, tall and have great finishing ability.
There are a variety of positions even within the aforementioned four groups and the manner in which players are organised into these positions is known as a formation. A formation involves placing 10 players (all but the goalkeeper) into the three groups. Some teams prefer playing four defenders, four midfielders and two strikers (known as 4-4-2), while others prefer four at the back, three in the middle and three upfront (4-3-3). Formations can often give deep insight into the kind of football a team is playing (defensive/attacking/counterattacking etc.) and are often instrumental to a team’s success.
The person in charge of setting the formation is the manager (also known as head coach). He/she is responsible for all the tactical and strategic decisions of a football team and his/her responsibilities include selecting the team of players for matches, instructing the players on the pitch, motivating them before and after games, leading training sessions, buying and selling players during transfer windows (periods of time in which clubs are allowed to trade players), and promoting new talent within the youth squad of a particular team. The role of the manager is an extremely high pressure one since he/she is answerable to all the stakeholders of the club; players, fans, club executives and the media. Further, a manager is crucial to a team’s performance and has the potential to make champions out of even the most average teams. It is his/her philosophy, temperament, and vision which can make or break a club. More recently, however, a club’s success is measured not just in terms of results on the pitch but also how it performs as a business.
Football is a lucrative industry and has provided “more and more attractive numbers for investors, shareholders and partners all over the planet” (DIMA 434). The manner in which investments are made “has significantly changed especially over the last 20 years, following an intense procedure of acquisitions and marketing, a process that has brought important sums of money in this industry” (DIMA 434). The emergence of these sums of money has resulted in the number of leagues, competitions and matches played today in club football growing exponentially. The number of opportunities available to the average footballer today has risen greatly due to the evolution of the game into a commercial force and the emergence of the ‘global football economy.’ Foreign investments, multi-million-dollar sponsorship deals, and advertising have completely transformed the attitudes of players, managers, club executives and fans alike, and “many professional football clubs are complex businesses, intrinsically concerned with financial matters” (Morrow 515). Commercialisation has been great for players and fans since they have much more access to professional football. It has been great for the game too since it has helped in making football more global. However, the dark side of this shift is seen in two different ways. Firstly, the development of financial inequalities in professional football leading to a lack of competitiveness in many leagues. Here, Salma Thani writes about Manchester City and Paris Saint Germain (PSG), an English and French club respectively, who were bought for billions of dollars by owners in the Middle East:
Manchester City and PSG’s owners have injected millions into their respective football clubs, turning around their balance sheets and buying some of the world’s best players. Not surprisingly, these investments have brought success. City, formerly considered an underachieving club and the poor cousin of Manchester United, clinched the English championship in 2012, after 44 years, and again in 2014. In 2013, PSG won the Ligue 1 title, after 19 years, and repeated the performance in 2014 (Thani 1020).
Manchester City has asserted its dominance in English football. After their 2014 triumph, they won back-to-back championships in 2017 and 2018, something that had not been done for 10 years. They also won a domestic treble. Before the large-scale investment, Manchester City often finished in the bottom half of the table and was never considered serious title contenders. PSG have been even more dominant in their league since the money has, quite literally, made it impossible for other French clubs to compete. Since 2013, they have won the league every year except 2017. The year they did not win, they bought the best players from the team that did. This has made the league boring and takes the fun out of following it since the champion is already known at the beginning of the season. As Thani says,
though these successes have been won on the back of Gulf oil money, they have come at perhaps a greater cost to the game. The influx of Gulf money has created an elite core of European clubs and players. Smaller clubs and leagues cannot attract sufficient income to compete in the transfer and sponsorship markets with the likes of Manchester City, PSG, Barcelona and Real Madrid (1021).
The second way in which commercialisation has been detrimental to the game has been the great emphasis placed on instant success. For many clubs, it is a short-term world where winning every year means everything and finishing second best is meaningless. Because of this, the expectations placed on the club by fans have changed too. In recent years, the easiest target for a string of poor performances is the manager. “It is one of the oldest adages in football: stability breeds success. And yet Premier League clubs seem no closer to taking that statement to heart… the current 20 Premier League sides have worked their way through a staggering 215 managers in the last 20 years” (Tweedale 1). Even though the article Alistair Tweedale wrote was published four years back, the situation today is no different. In November 2019, the two North London clubs, Tottenham Hotspur and Arsenal, sacked their managers within a week of each other. Three days later, Watford sacked their manager too. Four days after that, Everton’s manager left after just one season in charge. According to an article written in the Wall Street Journal, “that is because no sport fires managers quite like football. The way things go in the Premier League, you’ve got one season to get it right. Otherwise, you’re probably unemployed. The average tenure (for a manager) since 2009 is just 13.5 months” (Robinson 1). Club executives, under pressure from shareholders and fans, see changing who is at the helm as a quickfire solution to the problem. It is indeed the role of the manager to ensure the team plays good football and he/she definitely must be answerable when performances are bad.
However, this unforgiving hire/fire policy which top clubs seem to espouse today seems to suit no one. As Richard Bevan writes, “In football there is an incomprehensible belief that the continued sacrificing of the football manager, the”scapegoat“, and installing another will turn around performance (1).” However, the research on this is decidedly contrary to this belief.
If the motivation behind managerial change is improving performance, that does not happen. Andreas Heuer points out that, “dismissing the coach within the season has basically no effect on the subsequent performance of a team. Changing the coach between two seasons has no effect either” (1). Heuer’s argument is backed by Lucas Besters too: “On average, performance does not improve following a managerial replacement” (335). Numerous studies, conducted across all the big European leagues, have shown that performance either does not change or declines after a managerial change (Besters 336). It is evident that managerial change is ineffective in improving the performance of a football team.
If the motivation behind managerial change is to promote long-term success (in terms of points won, clean sheets kept, goals scored etc.), that fails too. The large majority of clubs which underwent a managerial change saw their points drop significantly at the end of the season (Besters 352,353,354). The stakeholders of a club do not believe this and often point to the immediate improvement when a manager changes and claim that is an indicator of stronger performances. Besters says, “As performance (immediately) after a managerial change is better than before, the perception is that the change was successful” (350). However, the short-term ‘honeymoon period’ soon goes away and the initial problems creep up again. According to Mathew Hughes, “change in the short term leads to a brief reprieve in poor performance only for performance to deteriorate in the long term as underlying weaknesses once again take hold” (571). He terms such effects as illusionary and says, “Despite the illusion of a short-term recovery, weaknesses again take hold and performance deteriorates again” (Hughes et. al. 586).
If managerial change is not motivated by either of the aforementioned factors but by a desire to rid the club of its issues, that is useless and far more expensive too because,
Statistics show that a club is likely to end up worse off when the manager is sacked: they have fewer points, and they are often significantly out of pocket due to compensation and paying up contracts. Short-termism does not work. It is hugely destabilising to a club and its staff, and a new manager wishing to stamp his own mark on the playing squad brings with him the additional cost of the transfer budget needed to do so (Bevan 2).
Furthermore, replacing the manager often serves as a mask since it hides a deeper, more pressing issue a club is facing,
Managers are replaced as a ritual to signal that club executives have taken action to address poor performance. Yet… managers are rarely to blame for poor performance as they do not deliberately make value-destroying decisions. Scapegoating then occurs when the CEO or other executives protect their own positions by blaming and removing certain managers. Changing managers, therefore, does not resolve underlying organizational weaknesses (Hughes et. al. 571).
Consider the case of Liverpool and Manchester United after the 2012/13 season, when United’s most successful and longest-serving manager, Sir Alex Ferguson, retired. Liverpool and Manchester United are historically considered the biggest clubs in English football and the fiercest of rivals. At the time of Sir Alex’s retirement, the club had secured its twentieth league title and was a force to be reckoned with, both in England and Europe. After the 2012/13 season however, Manchester United has been far from their best. They have not won any league titles since that season and finish outside the top four regularly. They have gone through five managers and are currently twenty-two points away from the top. Liverpool, on the other hand, has changed their manager only once. While they did not win a single trophy under their new manager, Jurgen Klopp, for three seasons, the executives and fans stood by him and it paid off; Liverpool won a UEFA Champions League title, thereby becoming the best European club football team, and have only lost one league game in nearly a year. They are currently at the top of the Premier League table with a significant advantage and play an exciting brand of football admired by nearly everyone. The gap between these two historic rivals is only growing and Liverpool continues to be (arguably) the best team in world football. Klopp had the financial backing he required to transform the club and has built a team of winners through smart business in the transfer market. He has been successful, and it’s come about as a result of patience and trust in his methods.
The evidence is conclusive. Managerial change simply is not the solution. Sacking a manager after a season or less simply does not provide the time needed to fully execute his/her responsibilities. With many managers in a short time, the players are confused and constantly underperforming. Having the best players in the world is not fruitful if they have no guidance and direction. As Hughes writes,
“manager change harms performance because replacement events disrupt well-established processes and bring instabilities and tensions that deteriorate performance. The disruptive nature of manager change … further deteriorates performance in the short to medium term” (571).
Furthermore, a season provides no time for a manager to get the team he wants and shape the style of play with his tactics. Quite often, the team a manager inherits needs a lot of time and investment to properly craft into champions and two transfer windows do not provide sufficient time to implement a manager’s vision for the club. Ultimately, the manager can make a huge impact on the way a player performs. He/she acts as the leader of the football team and “there is substantial evidence that team leaders do enhance social processes of problem-solving and team processes and can help teams learn better. Trust in leadership has been found to enhance sports performance” (Kattuman 3). A long-term project improves individual player’s performances and the team’s performance as a whole.
The benefits of sticking with the manager far outweigh the drawbacks. The solution then is simple: club executives should give the manager more time within the club. Managers should receive sufficient time at the helm to demonstrate progress at overcoming the causes of poor performance. Based on all the literature and anecdotal evidence, clubs should give managers a minimum of three full seasons before removing him/her from the organisation. As Hughes rightly says, “the driver of manager change should be managers’ ineffectiveness in tackling organizational weaknesses; otherwise change is simply an act of scapegoating and could result in a vicious cycle developing” (587). Three seasons give the club enough time to judge the manager’s skill and competence in dealing with structural issues and guarantee stability within the club. Further, three years gives the manager enough transfer windows to build a team which aligns which his philosophy of playing and provides the players and the manager to build a strong relationship, which in turn can boost morale and enhance performance. The team and the manager have a bond built on mutual trust and respect and that is beneficial since “trust in leadership has been found to enhance sports performance” (Kattuman 3). Finally, three years is a long time in the football world and any objective a club has can be accomplished in this time. In this time frame, failure to accomplish the club’s objective paves way for managerial change and it would be in the best interest of the club to seek change.
My key assumption when suggesting three years for the manager is that when the board decides to appoint a new manager, it is made carefully and with a lot of consideration. A hasty decision made under duress will not serve the club’s best interests. The board should ensure that the values of the manager are in line with the values of the club and “clubs must take time to recruit a suitable manager, one who shares and can deliver the club’s vision” (Bevan 3). Furthermore, “it is vital for managers and clubs to set clear, mutually agreed aims and objectives” (Bevan 3). Discussing expectations from both sides is the best way to ensure that there is no future disagreement or misunderstanding when it comes to team decisions made by the manager. Hence, when the manager joins a club, there should be trust in his methods, philosophy and tactics, support, financial or otherwise, and no questioning of his judgement when it comes to the team’s performance.
Whether a football club is considered a sports team or a business, success is desirable. Results on the pitch can greatly improve both in the short and long run by giving the manager three seasons to prove his competence and skill. As Hughes says, “long incumbent tenures are associated with performance far above the average” (571). The stability which comes about by adopting such an ideology will lead to greater club success and more exciting football.
Works Cited
Besters, Lucas M., van Ours, Jan C., and van Tuijl, Martin A. “Effectiveness of In-Season Manager Changes in English Premier League Football.” De Economist, vol. 164, no.3, September 2016, pp. 335-356.
Bevan, Richard. “Football’s Short-Term Hire and Fire Approach to Managers Suits No One.” The Guardian UK (Online), 8 Jan. 2011, p. 1. www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2011/jan/08/football-managers-richard-bevan. Accessed 29 October 2019.
DIMA, Teodor. “The Economics of ‘Big Five’ European Football Leagues.” Centre for European Studies (CES) Working Papers, vol. 7, no. 2a, June 2015, pp. 434–442.
FIFA.com. “History of Football - The Origins.” FIFA.com, 2018, p.1. www.fifa.com/about-fifa/who-we-are/the-game/index.html. Accessed 5 December 2019.
Heuer, Andreas, et al. “Usefulness of Dismissing and Changing the Coach in Professional Soccer.” PLoS ONE, vol. 6, no. 3, Mar. 2011, pp. 1–7.
Hughes, Mathew, et. al. “Short-Term Versus Long-Term Impact of Managers: Evidence from the Football Industry.” British Journal of Management, vol. 21, May 2010, pp. 571-589.
IFAB (The International Football Advisory Board). “Laws of the Game 2018/19.” FIFA.com, 1 June 2018, pp. 1-228. img.fifa.com/image/upload/khhloe2xoigyna8juxw3.pdf. Accessed 5 December 2019.
Kattuman, Paul, et al. “Management Succession and Success in a Professional Soccer Team.” PLoS ONE, vol. 14, no. 3, Mar. 2019, pp. 1–20.
Morrow, Stephen, and Brian Howieson. “The New Business of Football: A Study of Current and Aspirant Football Club Managers.” Journal of Sport Management, vol. 28, no. 5, Sept. 2014, pp. 515–528.
Robinson, Joshua. “The World’s Least Secure Job: English Soccer Manager.” Wall Street Journal (Online), 7 Jan. 2015, p. 1. www.wsj.com/articles/the-worlds-least-secure-job-english-soccer-manager-1420561778. Accessed 17 October 2019.
Thani, Salma, and Tom Heenan. “The Ball May Be Round but Football Is Becoming Increasingly Arabic: Oil Money and the Rise of the New Football Order.” Soccer & Society, vol. 18, no. 7, Dec. 2017, pp. 1012–1026.
Tweedale, Alistair. “Revealed: Premier League Clubs Have Hired and Fired 215 Managers since 1995.” The Telegraph, Telegraph Media Group (Online), 11 June 2015, p.1. www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/competitions/premier-league/11667571/Revealed- Premier-League-clubs-have-hired-and-fired-215-managers-since-1995.html. Accessed 29 October 2019.