The Football Tragic

Most people with an interest in football have, by now, read the recent comments by Jorge Valdano on the Liverpool v. Chelsea Champions' League semi-final.

Valdano, who has long been football's self-appointed poet laureate, may have a point about the football that these two clubs produced. And he is certainly not alone in his distaste for Jose Mourinho.

But to state that their approach stems from their lack of success as players is, I believe, an oversimplification (at best). Nevertheless, this tendentious claim has been leapt on by plenty of axe-to-grind pundits...including, erm, guess who.

To deal with my old friend first:

The reality is that a playing career at the top is a significant advantage in becoming a successful coach, a point that Australia needs to recognise and enshrine in our coaching systems.

Craig, it already has been. Once again, a smidgen of research would have helped.

In passing, I wonder how he manages to square the following statement:

...our own coaching culture has never valued the top level playing career as a precursor to a high-level coaching one...

...with the fact that both our current national coach and three A-League coaches are former Socceroos. But I digress.

The question of whether it is necessary to have been a player of consequence in order to coach effectively at a high level is an old one. Certainly, experience at a professional level as a player is a huge advantage. But there have been enough examples over the years of coaches without a significant playing CV to show that it is not essential. But that is not really Valdano's point; he claims, rather, that these theorist coaches demand rigid tactical discipline and lack of imagination because of their thirst for vicarious glory.

I don't buy it.

Arsène Wenger is a shining counter-example. Both at Monaco and at Arsenal, he has favoured positive, progressive football, and given plenty of licence to genuinely creative players, such as Glenn Hoddle and Dennis Bergkamp. Wenger, of course, never made it big as a professional player.

Who was it who gave Italian football a shot in the arm in the late eighties, encouraging Dutch-style pressing tactics and entertaining football? Former shoe salesman Arrigo Sacchi, who famously replied to an interviewer who questioned his credentials as a coach, "You don't have to have been a horse to be a jockey."

Even further back in history, the man who, some would say, laid the groundwork for continental (as opposed to British) football as a whole, was never a professional. Hugo Meisl, coach of the great Austrian national team of the thirties, and pioneer of the short-passing game, was a bank clerk before becoming involved in football administration (and later coaching).

On the other hand, there are the Mourinhos of the world. And the Helenio Herreras. But there are also the ex-player managers who rely heavily on organisation and control. Such as one of Valdano's former team-mates, Daniel Passarella, and another World Cup-winning player, Jackie Charlton.

There's enough room in football for the jockeys. Especially those who are kind to their horses.