The Manager: Inside the Minds of Football's Leaders

by Carson, Mike

  Mourinho focused on uniting the genius at his disposal, creating for them a challenging, but realistic goal. At the end of his second season in charge, Inter won the UEFA Champions League beating Bayern Munich 2–0 in the final. By winning the Italian league and cup, they also became the first ever Italian side to win the coveted treble.

  Glenn Hoddle and Ruud Gullit

  Glenn Hoddle was undoubtedly a gifted player in his own right. When he arrived at the pre-Abramovich Chelsea as manager in 1993, he was still playing. The Chelsea of that era were not yet the European or even the national force they would become a decade later, and Hoddle set out to make a difference – not least by attracting major talent. ‘Ruud Gullit had been World Soccer Player of the Year three years before I brought him across. He had played for AC Milan – and we were Chelsea! And it wasn’t the Chelsea of today – it was the Chelsea of no money at all.

  ‘We had a big running track around Stamford Bridge – it wasn’t the most attractive of stadiums – so I made sure that Ruud didn’t go anywhere near the stadium or the training ground! At the time if he’d seen that, I don’t think he would have signed, frankly. But Ruud was a smashing player so I took time to find out what he liked in his life outside football. I wanted to be able to talk to him about things and show that I respected him, the talents that he had and what he’d achieved in football. But he also needed to know that I couldn’t make a special case for him off the pitch. My message to him was, “Once you are on the pitch I want you to perform to the highest level you can – but the ethos of the team has to come first.” Fortunately Ruud is a really solid guy. He knew his talent: he knew he was one of the best players in the world, but he has this real ability to laugh at himself. So he was really easy to talk to and work with – but I didn’t know that when I first worked with him. Then, once we got on the training pitch with everyone else, I treated him just like the others. If there was something to be said that he wasn’t doing right I would tell him. I told him what I wanted him to do for the team and he was absolutely first class, he was brilliant.’

  Hoddle invested time in getting to know the genius; then used the talent to unite the team. The model would work for him multiple times: ‘With other players, you might have a big problem if they are arrogant – but for me the one-to-one approach always worked. I brought players into the team who had exceptional talent, and I knew they weren’t going to let me down on the pitch, but you have to make them play within that team frame. The only way to get that balance is to spend time breaking through into that character and finding out more about him as a person. He will then respect you in the end because the conversation will flow and you will end up opening yourself out to him and he to you. I even remember a couple of players who were really into racehorses. I wouldn’t know one end of a racehorse from the other, but I started to look up a bit about racing and talk to them a bit about horses and suddenly it just broke barriers down. We had something in common outside football that we could talk about, and I could see them change.’

  Neil Warnock and Adel Taarabt

  Neil Warnock was 62 and manager of QPR in the English Championship when he says he first encountered genius. He describes it as ‘the biggest plus of my career’.

  ‘In my first training session, the staff from the previous management team were there, telling me who was who. They pointed to this Adel Taarabt and told me, “This Moroccan guy – he will get you the sack. The last two managers bombed him out as he never tried a leg, and you will too because otherwise he’ll get you the sack as well. He’s just a luxury.” I watched the practice match and I could see what he had, and we didn’t have goals and I knew he would get us goals. There were only about 12 games left in the season, and we needed to get to safety. I remember I pulled him over straight after the game. The conversation went something like this:

  Me:

  Will you get me the sack if I play you? I understand you are a nightmare ...

  Adel:

  No, that’s not right.

  Me:

  Well, I’m told that you get every manager the sack because you don’t train.

  Adel:

  Of course I train!

  Me:

  OK, I am going to play you every game between now and the end of the session and if you play bad I’m going to play you the next game, and if you play even worse I’m going to play you the next game. Do you understand? You are going to be my little jewel in the crown.

  Adel:

  No, I don’t understand.

  Me:

  I am going to make you a player.

  Adel:

  Why?

  Me:

  Because I believe in you and you are going to do well.

  ‘I did that and he did repay me. We stayed up and then I signed him permanently from Tottenham.’

  Taarabt was a stunning success at QPR that season, and went on to become Football League player of the year. Indeed, in a calculated bid to get the most from his star midfielder at QPR, Warnock decided to make him captain. He recalls, ‘The challenge for me then was to get all the other players on board that here we had a match winner, when on certain days of the week he looked like he simply wasn’t trying. But I asked them to trust me when I said he would get us promotion to the Premier League, which would benefit everyone. I knew what this lad could do, and they came on board. I told the five lads who could have been captain that they were really worthy captains, but if they went with my decision I might get another 20 per cent out of him, and that 20 per cent would get us promoted.’

  With Taarabt as captain, QPR went on to win the Championship. Warnock is rueful, but happy: ‘I had to change all my philosophies because he was a luxury at times. I had to change, even at my age, because I never thought I would employ a player who didn’t give 100 per cent every game, every week. That’s how I thought football was, but I just felt there was something special about him. And in his own way he was giving 100 per cent – just in an English way he wasn’t! He was born like that, he wanted to play football and caress the ball from when he was a kid. To take him on board in the first place was the biggest thing, as I knew it was something most of the players wouldn’t want.’

  And what about this whole question of integrating the genius into the team? ‘A player wants to know what his teammates are going to do. Everybody is a cog in the wheel. With Adel, you didn’t know from one day to the next! If someone passed to him in our half, he’d just nutmeg an opponent and lose the ball in a dangerous place ... So we limited him. I banned everyone from passing to him in our half and fined them if they did! And it worked so well. To see him named player of the year was a huge reward.’

  For Warnock, as with Hoddle, Smith and Mourinho, there is something hugely rewarding about spotting talent and embracing it. One of the marks of a great leader is the willingness and confidence to look for, identify, embrace, sponsor and flourish genius – even at personal cost. Football leaders then set about uniting the team around embracing the talent. This requires a clear understanding between manager and player around behaviours, boundaries and commitments; the courage to trust that the player will not let you down at either the level of performance or the level of behaviours; and a strongly held belief from all parties that the team is always greater than the individual, no matter how talented.

  Allowing the Genius to Flourish

  Great talent needs a stage. If the leader can help create one, then it is likely to flourish. Without a stage, it can become self-destructive.

  Arriving at Chelsea for the first time, Mourinho confronted the players with their own talent: ‘At the time I don’t think they needed another type of leadership – I think they needed confrontational leadership. They needed a leadership to fit their motivation and fit their ambition every day. I cannot be happy by winning two matches, three matches, no – we need more and more and more. I think sometimes you are a leader and always a leader, but sometimes you can be a different kind of leader. I adapt my leadership and there I was
a confrontational leader because I felt that was what the team needed at the time.

  ‘I don’t remember exactly the words, but I remember saying clearly to Frank Lampard, “You are one of the best players in the world, but nobody knows.” In one of the seasons Frank was a finalist in what is now the Ballon d’Or, and I think he didn’t win because he was not a European Champion. Between 2004 and 2007 he became for sure one of the best players in the world. So we motivate people also with individual challenges, and for him, for sure, that was a challenge we put there and he understood and he was ready for it. It was a brilliant phase. I learned so much with them, and I think they learned a lot with me too. If Frank’s 2012 Champions League had come before, he would have been voted the best. Chelsea were stronger in 2004 and 2008 – but that is the magic of football.’

  The blend of individual and team motivation and behaviours is at the heart of what Mourinho does best. ‘For any new player arriving, the integration is about getting him to understand we are organised in every aspect and he has to follow us – times, tactics, routines – he has to do it, he has to adapt. We will not change to him, he has to change. So it is about making him feel and understand that he is a special talent, yes – but before him we were a special team ... and this special team wants to improve and needs him in order to improve.’ Get it right, and the mutual dependence of individual genius and high-performing team becomes a winning formula.

  Howard Wilkinson and Eric Cantona

  Howard Wilkinson has the distinction of being the last English manager to win the English league – with Leeds United in 1991, the final season of the Football League before the introduction of the Premier League. He had already created a team of distinction when he seized the chance to introduce to English football the mercurial genius of Eric Cantona. The context was not straightforward: ‘When I brought him on loan to Leeds United, he had just been rejected after trialling at Sheffield Wednesday. At that point, I think he’d had something like ten clubs in his native France. His departures from some of these clubs had been, shall we say, “colourful”.

  ‘Because of our loan agreement with Marseille, there came a point towards the end of our Championship season when we had to decide whether to buy him for £2.2 million or return him to France. Ironically, the Saturday before that decision was due, he came on in a home game at Elland Road and scored a wonder goal. The crowd were ecstatic. The chairman, who was to pay the fee out of his own pocket, and I discussed this decision at great length. Given Eric’s history, it was a huge risk but his behaviour up to that point with us had been exemplary and we decided to complete the deal. But our next season started very poorly and we couldn’t get anything away from home. We were due to play an away game at QPR and on the Saturday morning I decided to leave him out of the team and told him so before lunch. By one o’clock he had left the hotel and we had no idea where he’s disappeared to. Eventually we found out he was back in France and I then received a transfer request from his lawyer stating that he wished to leave Leeds United and stipulating that he wanted to join Manchester United, Arsenal or Liverpool.

  ‘In the end it was right for both parties that he moved on from Leeds – for a number of reasons. At Manchester United he found a different environment, different culture, different players, different manager and a spiritual home. He became an icon, a god.’ Genius needs the right environment in which to flourish, and for Eric that environment was Manchester United. Similarly, Gordon Strachan, who I bought from Alex three years before, had become an icon and a god at Leeds United. Just like Eric, his move from Manchester United and Sir Alex Ferguson to join me at Leeds United had allowed him to find his spiritual home. That’s the nature of football sometimes.’

  Across at Old Trafford, Sir Alex remembers Cantona with almost fatherly fondness: ‘Eric had a presence about him. He knew he had come to the club of his birth. When I signed him I decided I was going to forget all the stories from his past and allow him to free himself from the inhibitions that were surrounding the boy. What he really wanted was to be loved. He wanted to come to a club that played to his style and I think he got that with us. He was a fantastic player. I remember we played Sheffield United at Bramall Lane in the FA Cup and the home supporters were giving him stick. So he chipped the goalkeeper and then turned to them to say, “That’ll teach you.”’

  If the trick to diffusing the capacity to harm others is to invest in the player and integrate him into the team, it seems that the self-destructive question might have a similar solution. The genius can flourish in a solid team environment. This may take considerable effort from the leader: confronting, nurturing, appreciating, encouraging, challenging. It will also take considerable effort from the player – which not every player is willing to devote – yet another challenge to the leader of genius. The greatest talents of all, of course, work hard and selflessly put their talents at the disposal of the team. But then, as Ancelotti says, there are precious few of those.

  Embracing the Expectation

  In the world of José Mourinho, there is always expectation. The world expects much of him and his players; he and his players expect much from each other. For him, it is a source of energy – and one of the things he loves most about English football: ‘The Barclays Premier League is an incredible competition. I feel very fortunate as a coach and as a manager because I have now worked in four countries – Spain, Italy, England and Portugal. The good thing is to have the chance to compare the different emotions and the experiences of different competitions. We can always discuss the qualities of the football in the different countries, but not about the emotions of the game or the atmosphere as in England. The atmosphere, the intensity and the emotion in England is something you cannot compare with other countries and for somebody that is really in love with the game, as I am, this is the place where you enjoy it the most.’

  When Mourinho arrived in England in 2004, everything came together in one huge wave of opportunity: ‘Chelsea was a moment in my career where the expectations were in the right moment for myself, and I think they were in the right moment for that group of players and I think we met each other in the right moment in our careers. I was coming from Porto – European Champions and so on – but English culture demands more. It demands you are successful here. Not there, here! This is the country of football. OK, you won the Champions League. You can have it. But come in and do it again now here.

  ‘So I was there in the right moment. And for the boys – people are calling them some of the best in the world after we win; but when I arrive, people in England know Lampard is good, Terry is good, this guy is good, that guy is good, but no impact abroad because before they [had] won nothing. It was like a collision of moments and I needed at that time this kind of (go for it) mentality. The guys desperately needed to make the jump from potential to real, and I think they needed the kind of leader I was. I called it confrontational leadership: confrontation not just inside, but also outside. We make a confrontation between us and the others – this sports confrontation of which one is the best, which one is going to win ... We were not afraid to say we are the best, we were not afraid to say we are going to win, or we are special, we are going to prove that we are – so it was perfect. So that season [2004–05] was a season for them to say, “We are the best in this country,” and it was the season for me to say, “I’m not just very good in Portugal, I’m also very good here.” So it was like an explosion of motivation on both sides.’

  Mourinho doesn’t just embrace expectation – he deliberately goes out to create it. By extending his confrontational leadership beyond the bounds of the club, he forces the genius of his players to emerge onto the big stage. That is an offer that talent cannot refuse.

  Throughout his roller-coaster management rides, Mourinho continues to learn and adapt. ‘My big learning at Chelsea the first time was the main idea of motivation of the group [through confrontation]. At Inter it was about the kind of mistake many leaders make, but which here I didn’t: o
lder players must not feel that you are there to end their careers. They must feel they have a lot to give till the last moment they are there, and probably the last period of their career will give them what the best years of their career didn’t give to them. Why not? The problem comes when people are not able to make the oldest players feel that they are very important. That’s why I say you have to understand everything about them: frustrations, ambitions, doubts. You have to understand a lot and work with them.’

  Alex McLeish and Franck Sauzée

  The story of Alex McLeish and French international sweeper Franck Sauzée brings together the themes of embracing talent and setting expectations. McLeish was manager of Edinburgh club Hibernian, and wanted to create the sort of team the fans loved: ‘exciting teams with flying wingers and all that’. Sauzée was a player of exciting pedigree who had won the Champions League with Marseille in 1993. Believing the now Montpellier player had all the talent to light up Easter Road, he courted him in his own back yard – by setting clear expectations. ‘Franck was never the quickest player in the world, but he was brilliant, brainy, he could see pictures before you could even see it from the side. He could hit a 60-yard ball and land it on a 50-pence piece – just an amazing individual. When I spoke to him about the possibility of coming he had fallen out of favour with the Montpellier coach and I said, “Look, Franck, I know your career inside out. I know you played for Atlanta, you went to Italy, I played against you with Scotland against France in Paris; you are a quality player. I want to bring gifted players to the club. I want you to not only be a great individual performer, but also to inspire the other ones and maybe get them to raise their game a little bit.” I thought at a Scottish Premier League level the Celtic players were maybe going to be a bit too nimble for him – but give him the ball and he’ll do something, so we adopted a pattern of three at the back and I played Franck in the centre of them. He was the master of all he surveyed and he ran the show from there. We had a brilliant season – we went to the cup final and lost to Celtic. Our conversation went: