Wunderkinds and Frauds: A Thread About Managers

Zososoxfan

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Jul 30, 2009
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South of North
Also, I want to say that I find manager changes overrated and ineffectual.

It's like Japanese kabuki, in which a team fires a manager as someone who has failed to deliver results commensurate with expectations, only to turn around and seek salvation among a manager pool that 99.99% consists of managers who have been fired for having failed to deliver results commensurate with expectations.
@Nick Kaufman

Reading the Everton thread, I got to thinking about what managers are out of work and possible options for the Toffees. And I also thought it might be fun to have a thread for general managers/coaching staffs/DoFs and tactics as others see fit/interesting. We can always let it lie fallow if these discussions are more fun to have when they're specific to an opening.

Just perusing Transfermarkt, a few names of unemployed managers jump out (last club in parentheses): Ernesto Valverde (Barcelona); Ole Gunnar Solkjaer (Man U); Nuno Espirito Santo (Spurs); Frank Lampard (Chelsea); Jogie Low (Germany NT); Pirlo (Juve); Koeman (Barca); Favre (Dortmund); Gattuso (Napoli); Jesse Marsh (Leipzig); Fonseca (Roma); Niko Kovac (Monaco); Klinsmann (Hertha Berlin); Celades (Valencia): Rudi Garcia (Lyon); Villas-Boas (Marseille); and of course now Rafa Benitez (Everton).

I know a lot more about some (Valverde, Ole, Nuno, Koeman, Low, etc.) than others (Kovac, Garcia, etc.), but I think this is an eclectic group overall as one would expect. You have lots of older managers who are well-traveled as well as some recently retired legends--a trend that has seemingly picked up a lot of steam recently.

To provide some more details regarding the ones I know more, let me start by discussing Ernie Valverde. Ernie was sacked in January 2020 after a successful but ultimately frustrating stint at Barca for 2.5 seasons. He won La Liga in his first 2 seasons, and the team was second in the table when he was let go. He also won the Copa del Rey in his first season, and lost in the final in his second full season. However, he will ultimately be remembered by most as the manager during the Roma and Liverpool UCL debacles. I note that Lucho was in charge for the Atleti and Juve UCL exits the years following the win over Juve in '14-'15, and the Vilanova-Martino years after Pep also involved exits to Bayern and Atleti respectively. He was succeeded by Quique Setien who basically presided over the true collapse of Barca's footballing status. So in retrospect, I think most Culers view Ernie's reign as one where he was a players' manager, a professional, and tactically astute, but either stubborn or boxed in with respect to squad selection (minimal rotation and key players were running on fumes) and not willing or able to offer aesthetically pleasing football. Ernie has a long career of first division manager experience that began with Bilbao back in 2002 (2 seasons), Espanyol (2 seasons), Olympiakos (1 season), Villareal (1 season), Olympiakos (2 seasons), Valencia (1/2 season), and Bilbao (4 seasons) before going to Barca. He seems mostly at home in Spain and I have no idea if he speaks much English, but I think he's a very high quality manager that can manage a club successfully.
 

Morgan's Magic Snowplow

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Jul 2, 2006
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I have two general thoughts:

The first is that its hard to talk about managers without distinguishing the managerial role per se from the de facto squad-selection/part time DoF role that some managers end up with and others don't. IMO, the single most important thing for any club to have is somebody competent in charge of squad-building who has a true vision for the kind of football the club wants to play and the kinds of attributes that players in each position need to possess to play that football. It's probably better to have this person be the DoF than the manager but having a manager who can work productively with the DoF is obviously important.

Second, if we're just talking about management and not squad building, I once read a quip where somebody said that a good manager can make a team 10% better whereas a bad manager can make a team 30% worse. That basically rings true to me. And in most cases I'd say a truly "bad manager" is that way less because of their tactics and more because they mismanage the squad on a personal level and/or fail to get the squad to buy fully into their project. Nuno Espirito Santo and Rafa Benitez are both pretty obvious cases in point from this season. But I'd say Ole was the same. He was tactically inept but as long as the players bought in he wasn't really bad for United's (short term at least) goals. Once he started losing the players, however, it was all over. We talk a lot about finding a good manager but in some ways what's most important for most clubs is avoiding a bad one or knowing when to cut the cord if a manager starts losing their players.
 

Zososoxfan

Member
SoSH Member
Jul 30, 2009
9,209
South of North
I have two general thoughts:

The first is that its hard to talk about managers without distinguishing the managerial role per se from the de facto squad-selection/part time DoF role that some managers end up with and others don't. IMO, the single most important thing for any club to have is somebody competent in charge of squad-building who has a true vision for the kind of football the club wants to play and the kinds of attributes that players in each position need to possess to play that football. It's probably better to have this person be the DoF than the manager but having a manager who can work productively with the DoF is obviously important.

Second, if we're just talking about management and not squad building, I once read a quip where somebody said that a good manager can make a team 10% better whereas a bad manager can make a team 30% worse. That basically rings true to me. And in most cases I'd say a truly "bad manager" is that way less because of their tactics and more because they mismanage the squad on a personal level and/or fail to get the squad to buy fully into their project. Nuno Espirito Santo and Rafa Benitez are both pretty obvious cases in point from this season. But I'd say Ole was the same. He was tactically inept but as long as the players bought in he wasn't really bad for United's (short term at least) goals. Once he started losing the players, however, it was all over. We talk a lot about finding a good manager but in some ways what's most important for most clubs is avoiding a bad one or knowing when to cut the cord if a manager starts losing their players.
I agree with you on the second paragraph. I think there's also something to be said for the relative skill and pedigree of the squad. Many Real Madrid managers of this millennium struggled despite consistently having among the best squads in the world. When Zidane came in, he immediately demanded respect and buy-in because of his accomplishments as a player. I don't think Zidane is any kind of tactical genius (he probably has one as his right-hand man), but when you get a group of players like at Real rowing in the same direction, that's a lot of the battle.