THE MANAGER
Inside the Minds of Football's Leaders
Mike Carson
Bloomsbury
297 pages; Rs 499
Sometime during the latter stages of the 2012-13 English football season, Richard Bevan, the chief executive of the League Managers Association (LMA), made a pertinent point about managers being sacked: "It's embarrassing for the game that all of those sackings are unfair dismissals. The volatility is undermining the profession." Mr Bevan made these comments following the sacking of 103 managers and coaches in 2012-13.
The pressure-cooker nature of a football manager's job cannot be stated enough. Every week, decisions are scrutinised by the media, fans and experts and it is the manager who - rightly or wrongly - has to receive the brickbats. Maybe that's why the LMA commissioned management consultant Brian Carson to write a book on football managers. Titled The Manager: Inside the Minds of Football Leaders, the book tries to show how football managers cope with the pressures and demands of their coveted jobs - the larger objective is to show how their experiences could be relevant to corporate management.
The book, aptly, contains chapters titled "Seeing the Bigger Picture", "Creating Sustained Success" and "The Art of One-on-One". Mr Carson speaks to 30 active and retired managers to understand what it takes to manage a football club - he tries to get "inside their minds".
Mr Carson does a thorough job of collecting information on various issues by interviewing managers such as Sir Alex Ferguson, Arsene Wenger, Jose Mourinho, Carlo Ancelotti, among others . These stalwarts give their opinions on subjects as varied as handling the media, man-management, managing talent, building legacies, and so on. Some of the insights are genuinely fascinating - such as when Mourinho says that he prefers sitting in economy class with his players if they don't get business class seats. Or when West Ham manager Sam Allardyce points out that "the kit man is the most important person at a football club".
But the corporate subtext is hard to miss. The Manager is a book sponsored by Deloitte, which produces the annual Football Money League rankings, and Barclays, which sponsors the English Premier League. It is, therefore, obvious that the focus has to be on "business management" talk. This is precisely the problem; it encourages Mr Carson to pepper the narrative with such truisms as "at the heart of leadership lies the ability to inspire people".
But, in a sense, the equation with corporate management also reflects just how big a business football has become. Players earn incredible wages, owners are billionaires who treat clubs as their plaything, and clubs have become marketing juggernauts.
Perhaps it's my personal gripe, but it's painful to see football becoming a commercial vehicle for billionaires. It would be naïve for anyone to think that, with billions of dollars riding on the sport, it won't become a commercially driven entity. But then, all things commercial do not have to be "corporatised".
Liverpool's legendary manager Bill Shankly believed that football was a form of socialism. "The socialism I believe in is everybody working for the same goal and everybody having a share in the rewards. That's how I see football, that's how I see life," he once remarked.
Mr Carson, however, views it differently - and since it's a sponsored book, you can't blame him. And why blame Mr Carson alone? Players, owners and managers are all adopting some sort of corporate-speak. Players joining new clubs talk about "how exciting this project is". Project? Really? Managers talk about "philosophy", instead of style or formations - Liverpool's current manager Brendan Rodgers loves to talk about his "philosophy".
From a manager's point of view, it must be said that Mr Carson has raised many critical issues. It's often said that every football fan thinks he can do a manager's job. That's probably why Pep Guardiola doesn't get enough credit, in my opinion, for turning Barcelona into this machine that literally killed other teams with its beautiful passing game. After all, how difficult could it be to win when you have the likes of Lionel Messi, Andres Iniesta and Xavi Hernandez at your disposal, the popular thinking goes. But managing talent is an art, and a precious one in sport.
Mr Carson highlights the pressures managers face, and the managers tell you how they cope with it. He talks about the triumphs, despairs and everything that comes, and doesn't come, with the job description. For this reason, management students might like the book. Students of the beautiful game, however, will be disappointed for two reasons: one, there aren't enough unknown facets or facts that the managers reveal; and, two, there is an overdose of corporate-speak.
Football clubs might have become like those multinational corporations where managers are "employees" and fans are "customers." But that's not something the fans want to know, hear or read, even if it's dressed up as sophisticated, high-powered corporate talk.
