Who’s running the show in football?

Leonid Fedun, an owner of the FC Spatak Moscow, has recently assessed a present-day coach’s role in the team’s success, allotting him just 10%, for which he was subjecting to the harshest possible obstruction (and it couldn’t have been otherwise).

However, despite the critics that Fedun found himself snowed under offhand, there is still certain element of truth in his words.

Having changed about dozen of coaches during the period of possession of the most popular Russian football club, he can draw conclusions based on his personal experience. Every coach, whom he met on his way, surely linked the result of the team’s performances with huge sums, spent on football players’ transfers.

And every time he heard that, he was making a pragmatic conclusion that the lion’s share of the team’s successful performance depends on it’s expenditure budget, and a bit of it goes to the coach, who should correctly put those players on the field.

If you look at who is winning various national championships, European Cups, and then compare the distribution of places in the tournament bracket with the budgets of the clubs participating in the competition (and it’s all the same there, with a few exceptions), you will understand that Leonid Fedun isn’t far away from the truth.

Even the toughest coaches like, let’s say, Jose Mourinho, Pep Guardiola and Carlo Ancelotti, with all the stentoriousness of their names, are directly linking the result with the available composition of the team. And this composition should necessarily be one of the variants of the world team.

Tell me, what result would Guardiola achieve in the English Premier League, where he is now coaching the Manchester City, if, let’s say, instead of the Arab Sheih’s favorite toy, he would have headed in this season the FC Bournemouth, which isn’t needy either (actually, there are no poor teams in the current Premier League), but which is still limited in opportunities? Flying into the Championship wouldn’t have been probably regarded by him as a success he could be proud of.

It’s less likely that anyone in FC Bournemouth would have seen ‘tiki-taka’, which Pep is roaming with from one superclub to another, because that style of play, which is a combination of short passing and continuous movement with the ball, aimed at maintaining control over the ball, doesn’t work if team isn’t staffed with world-class players.

Callum Wilson, Joshua King and Harry Arter, with all due respect to those FC Bournemouth players, aren’t up to being the stars, even of purely British football, not to mention the global standard. With such a composition of Bournemouth, Guardiola would have been doomed to play strictly second number, counting on rare counter-attacks and putting through a set play.

Nevertheless, even with such kind of players, some coaches still manage to produce results and sometimes even become champions.

Yes, it could be said that Claudio Ranieri, who has never won anything with his teams, has had a stroke of lucky, when modest FC Leicester, headed by him, suddenly became the champion of England. Whereas now, having the same composition and the same coach, the team is floundering about at the bottom of the standings, calling into question the consistency of coaching success.

However, for example, in European football, there are coaches who regularly show that success in football doesn’t always depend on the size of one’s wallet.

Once upon a time (back in 2008), Jürgen Klopp assumed FC Borussia Dortmund, which was is poor financial condition, and turned it into the champion within three years. And the football players, whom he found and, consequently, bought for pennies, became the celebrities in a couple of seasons.

It’s true that some of them, such as Mario Götze, were the superstars as long as they played under Klopp’s guidance, but that just emphasizes the German’s coaching capacity.

Now, Jürgen Klopp is trying to do something of the kind with Liverpool. Unlike Mourinho and Guardiola, he doesn’t demand from the club owners to make extortionate spending at transfers market (though there is such a possibility), but rather relies solely on the power of his coaching talent and the ability to convince the players that there are no insoluble tasks.

And no one would say adamantly that based on the results of the season he and his team won’t be able to outrun the two Manchester grands.

For some reason, it seems that he wouldn’t have lost heart with FC Bournemouth either, and in 2-3 seasons, he would have turned this club, which is not burdened with glory, into the team that would be reckoned with.

Parallel to Klopp, Diego Simieone, an Argentinian expert in creating exactly the coaching teams, is going his way. His football is less spectacular and more defensive as opposed to what the German is used to demonstrate with his teams.

Nevertheless, if there were a prize to be awarded to the most aggressive team in modern football, it would be surely handed over to Atletico Madrid. This club has built its team play so that there is virtually no division into the players, who drag the piano and those who play it.

Antoine Griezmann, the only superstar in the team, does the heavy work on a par with others. And this is part and parcel of Simeone’s football philosophy. Otherwise, Atletico would stand no chance to compete with two varieties of the World Teams- Real Madrid and Barcelona.

And yet, Fedun is wrong. It’s the coach who makes a team from a set of good or bad players. Or doesn’t make, and then it is believed that the team’s success only by 10 % depends on the coach.

Published: 24.10.2016