I have always been under the impression that, in general, coaches don't make that much of a difference at the proffessional Division 1 level. This belief was reinforce after reading a chapter in Soccernomics about how coaches make very little statistical difference in the performance of their teams and that the main differentiator between a good team and a bad team was market value. They concluded that Sir Alex Ferguson (who many people believe is one of the best coaches of our time) is nothing special and that statistically, Man U performs at the level they actually do based on the talent that they have. The same is the case with Real Madrid. With Mourinho or without him, Real Madrid should be the second best team in spain. Manchester City has not improved over the last years because of coaching and Reading is not in the bottom of the table for the same reason. This rule can be applied to just about any team. I think a coach can make a good team underperform because of bad decisions. However, I think it is very rare to see the opposite occur, at least for a prolonged period of time. Barcelona plays exactly the same without Guardiola as they did with him. I don't think Guardiola's Bayern will perform any better than they do now (unless his signing leads to singing better players). I also think that if Guardiola started coaching a team like Mallorca, they would perform as well as they currently perform. What do you guys think?
The difference between a top coach per tier and the bottom is worth about half a goal swing per game. If Soccernomics idiots say otherwise, it's just a further proof of them being idiots.
Link/Proof? I have also been under the impression that it doesn't make much difference. There are exceptions, when a manager is just a terrible match for the players and it creates personality conflicts and/or gets into disputes with upper levels of management within a club. Those special cases will tend to sink any team, but generally speaking it doesn't seem to make a great impact in the long term (maybe first few weeks with a new manager, the team might get a boost).
You're a Boca Juniors fan? Go through their coaching history and see if there are differences between Pastoriza, Tabarez, Bianchi, Brindisi and Russo. Or you can look at Russia under Hiddink and Capello vs. Romantzev and Yartzev, Argentina under Maradona vs. Sabella vs. Batista vs. Pekerman or Columbia under Pekerman vs. Rueda vs. Gomez and make your own conclusions.
This doesn't prove anything. Some years Boca simply had better players than other years. Again, this is not proof of anything. It's anecdotal. You mention Russia under Hiddink. Yes, they did well in Euro 2008. Nothing historical, but better than you'd expect with the players they had. But then he failed to qualify for WC 2010 which is worse than expectations (lost to tiny Slovenia in the playoffs). Then failed to qualify for Euro 2012 with Turkey. The reason I think the impact managers is overrated is because all managers eventually disappoint. For e.g. you have a situation like DiMatteo with Chelsea, where the team punched far above their weight for about 2-3 months. But then Chelsea sucked in the Champions League this season under DiMatteo, even though he had better players to work with. And I bet you after DiMatteo manages 4-5 more teams, things will even out even more. Managers simply can't stand the test of time. Eventually it always seems to even out.
I am not sure "anecdotal " is apropos here., so I'll introduce a few more statistical bits that might be useful to curious observers - when Marcelo Bielsa took over Chile's job, the country was ranked 38th by Elo. When he quit following a 32-12-20 record, they had risen all the way to #9. Under his successor - and an ex-Boca coach Borghi, who went 11-5-11 - they slipped back down to #21. You can make your own conclusions about this.
I dont know enough about the Chilean team, but can we make the assumption that Marcelo Bielsa had the same level of talent as his predecessor? If not, like BocaFan said, it is really hard to establish causality. But I do think there is an important point to be made and one that is more pronounced on the national level: maybe a coach´s most important influence is in scouting and not so much in on-the-field coaching. This is more prevalent on the national team level where coaches have a large pool of players to pick from but you can also see it in the club level where the new coach demands certain players to be signed for him. If this is true, then it begs the question: isnt better to hire coaches that are excell more at scouting than tactics?
Why are you guys ignoring this notion? Plenty of professional athletes in different sports have already come out and said this. The consensus between various athletes that were asked this question has always been coaching was very extremely important during their youth and beginning of their career, but they were already formed players it got in the way more than helped.
It's pretty safe to assume Claudio Borghi had the same level of talent as Bielsa. I am ignoring it because it doesn't follow the money.
Coaches get paid a lot less than Athletes, and the money only follows the coach when they are a commodity. Even so, they are still heavily underpaid in comparison to athletes. So right there it kind of tells you that the players are worth shit tons of money more than the coaches.
Yes and no ... 1- Arsene Wenger proved he never needed "worldclass players" in his team to play good football. 2- Scolari twice turned a "bad form" team into champions (Braxil WC02) or close (Portugal Euro04) 3- M.Laudrup did a great job at Swansea now 4- Last and not least: Guus Hiddink many times turned many so-so teams into BIG TEAM in BIG occasions: - S.Korea to 4th WC02 (1st time ever in semi WC) - Australia to 2nd round WC06 (lost unfairly by a pk diving) for very 1st time - Russia to Euro08 semifinal - PSV to UEFA cup 88
My belief is that generally coaching matters less than people think, as most coaches are fairly average in quality, but there are exceptionally good or bad coaches that will raise or lower their team's level. For example, I doubt anyone could argued that with a more balanced coach than Maradona, Argentina would've lost 4-0 to Germany, or that without Sir Alex Ferguson, Aberdeen would've won the SPL. It is impossible to know for sure, but I think there are also certain environments in which a coach works better than others, and that can have a significant effect on the team; Mourinho revolutionized and raised the level of every team he went to with his managerial Midas touch, but that didn't work with Madrid. In conclusion, for the most part, coaches matter less than most factors, but there are certain coaches that are exceptional and extraordinary, or do exceptional things in certain environments that work for them (see; Villas-Boas at Tottenham or Jurgen Klopp at Dortmund). And there are also certain coaches that are exceptionally poor and lower the level of the team. But for the most part coaches are often victimized or made great by other factors, like the talent of their team (Rikjaard and arguably Guardiola at Barça).
Actually, Mourinho and Guardiola will be making more than any particular player with Real and/or Bayern respectively. Ferguson would be at the top of ManU, with perhaps only RvP and Rooney making more. Wenger is probably the best paid Arsenal employee. Hiddink makes more money with Anzhi than anyone with the exception of Eto'o. BTW, the poster above me brought up Jürgen Klopp. In four years preceding his run with Dortmund, these were team's finishes : 07-08 - 13th 06-07 - 9th 05-06 - 7th 04-05 - 7th Since he took over in July, 2008 : 08-09 - 6th 09-10 - 5th 10-11 - 1st 11-12 - 1st Now, make a case that Klopp's accomplishments are due to luck and nothing else. I dare you.
whole picture now, instead of just throwing things out there... They were great in the 90s up until early 2000s, then the club almost went bankrupt during that time period you're mentioning 04-09 because they became a public traded company and was completely mismanaged. Every year they would struggle to pay their players and turn almost no profit, and all of their top players would either leave on free transfers or get sold in order for the club to make a profit (traded teams have to turn profits) When Klopp came in 09-10 he finished 5th as you mentioned, and the following season 10-11 he fielded a very young team that nobody really expected to do well, and those players were actually pretty good. But even on the 10-11 season those young players won the Bundesliga and got trashed in the Champions. Last season they were a bit more experienced, won the league again and are doing better in the Champions League. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that paints a better picture of what really happened there. Not just the magic touch of a incoming manager, but getting a new young talented group and having their president save them from bankruptcy. I don't know the intricacies and details of which players left and which players are fairly new to the team, you probably know that better than me. But you can't deny that the team looks very different
You're roughly correct. Except for that Klopp was the pusher of that whole "focus on young talent" policy. Any fool can buy young, cheap, underrated talent, its another thing entirely to mould them into class players, make them a part of a coherent philosophy, and to make sure to get the under-the-radar talent which hasn't been looked into yet. So many of their players were discarded on frees, 1-2 mil transfer purchases, and just not rated at all by lesser clubs. No one was heralding Gundogan as the new Schweinsteiger before Klopp began moulding him. You can't just buy a bunch of youth with management and say "perform", like you sound like here. Klopp and Dortmund made Sahin a superstar who never succeeded anywhere since. Why could he succeed at Dortmund but not at Liverpool? Because of the system which Klopp formed allowed him to succeed at Dortmund better than he could in Rodgers' Liverpool. It is not just different players, it is a different philosophy altogether; unless management taught Dortmund how to do a good high offside trap, unless management taught Dortmund how to press as a team, how to play attacking football without compromising defence? Or did the players, being from all different backgrounds, clubs, and having all different playing styles, instinctively mesh and do all this? The management was the same guys that were faltering, that were grasping at straws and blindly swinging about in the transfer market and playing a very different style before Klopp. Why does their club look so different now, with widely-envied, well-developed players that play very good football and beating sides such as Madrid and Bayern, from the bunch of green-faced, non-rated, wide-eyed youngsters that arrived at Dortmund, the product of a desperate and cash-strapped management which were out of options? I think a huge part of the answer lies in the person of the eccentric, unshaven Jürgen Klopp, and is one of the greatest managerial success stories of the decade.
yet he couldn't do it at Mainz 05... I believe that a coach can put the players in the position for the to thrive, but a team with better players will almost always win. Also I think coaches that are successful are the ones with a really good eye for spotting talent and known exactly what kind of player fits his system the best. So moving from a smaller team to a bigger club with a much larger scouting network proved to be what took him from small manager to big time genius right? Because he could have been taking those discarded players and transfer purchases at a smaller team since it was cheap, but he wasn't doing i. I do believe a coach can compromise a team and disrupt a whole lot more than a coach can turn a bunch of bad players into winners at the pro level. At the amateur level or even the youth level, I think those guys are indispensable and worth way more than a pro coach.
Like I said, different environments lead to different outcomes based on various factors even with the same coach. Also, a player is only as good as the system, which is developed by the coach, allows him to be. For example, Nasri at Arsenal was a beast because Wenger allowed him to play in his natural CAM position and fit in the team because he was used correctly in the system Wenger played. Nasri at City was a glorified utility man because Mancini played him in all sorts of cockneyed half-baked positions, including as a winger in a 4-4–2, which was clearly uncomfortable. A coach's job is to develop the system based on the players he has and the players he buys, and if you buy the, IMO, reasonable premise that a player is only as good as the system allows him to be based on its conformity to the attributes of the player, you have to therefore conclude, because the system is developed by the coach, that the coach is therefore important. So yes, the team with the better players in conformity with the system almost always wins. For example, Chelski won the CL because they had a system developed by Di Matteo which fit the superior physicality and defensive attributes of the likes of Lampard, Terry, etc. and the energy of Ramires and Cole, and the aerial ability and pace of Drogba in order to compensate for their technical inferiority to Barcelona and Bayern. If Di Matteo had chose to instead develop an open system built around technique and passing, Chelski would've gotten destroyed because that system didn't fit the players he had and both Bayern and Barça had better personnel to fit that kind of system. Therefore the coach is important because the coach builds the system, which in turn determines the effectiveness of the players based on their attributes, no?
I am not saying you are wrong but ... remember what I said in response to Solid444 ... a good coach vs. a bad coach under the same circumstances is worth around half a goal a game. Dortmund went from a -12 GD under Thomas Doll to +23 the year Klopp took over and to +55 in their 11-12 Championship season and that is a 67 goal turnaround in a 34 game German season or 2 per match. These types of drastic changes are rare. I don't think Pep will up Jupp by 17 goals next season unless FC Hollywood spends oodles and oodles of cash to bring in new superstar players. Dortmund's spending under Klopp, on the other hand, has been very moderate.
But even 0.5 a goal a game, that's an huge difference! most strikers will not give you half a goal over other strikers and people pay dearly to upgrade that position. but putting players on the right position to win doesn't seem like a hard thing to do, most veteran players, anybody even on this forum, already know what's his best position to play at and where in the pitch the player thrives. Especially strengths and weaknesses of veterans. this is more along the lines of what I think a manager does for a team, gets players that fit his system, but even so, he's getting players he knows they will fit on his system and not mold veterans into being part of his system. Remember Guardiola pretty much got rid of the whole team when he took over, in order to implement his own system with players he was more familiar with. But this is also adds to the idea that a coach can screw up a team more than he can add to it. If Di Matteo had came in and decided to change the philosophy of the team and the players which were built around that team, he most likely would fail. I'm interested to see what Guardiola will do in Bayern, because on his first press conference he was already talking about taking Neymar from Barcelona, which means 2 things, Bayern likely has plans for big spending and Barcelona has not secured Neymar's service past the WC2014 as it's believed.
If you analyze the various hirings and firings, you can occasionally see a pretty big improvement - Roy Hodgson over Laurie Sanchez at Fulham, Harry Redknapp over Juande Ramos at Tottenham, Jürgen Klopp over Thomas Doll at Dortmund. However, most coaching changes are like-for-like with minor variations - Louis van Gaal over Jürgen Klinsmann, Jupp Heinkes over Louis van Gaal, Felix Magath over Ottmar Hitzfeld, etc., so when you hire one experienced and accomplished coach to take over the other, the results often come down to a little luck and, more importantly, the player acquisitions and departures. You do see major differences on the national level where normally the talent is what it is. If you are missing an important position, you can't go out and buy somebody to fill it. That means most coaches will work with the same personnel their predecessor did. Despite that, the results can vary greatly. I will mention a few names and places - Radomir Antic (Serbia), Marcelo Bielsa (Chile), Fabio Capello (Russia, England), Cesare Prandelli (Italy), Guus Hiddink (South Korea, Australia, Russia) - and let the interested parties do research for the results of these coaches and teams before and after their "terms in office".
Haven't read the book, but that sounds plausible to me. Money spent on players is what counts the most. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704407804575425523276093124.html If you want to be viewed as a coaching genius, figure out a way to spend your entire career at teams who can buy their way to success.
85% of a possible 3 pointer is still only 2.55. Over the 38 match EPL schedule, that's 17 points per season. The last Premiership season, 17 points was the difference between the first (Man City) and 3rd (Arsenal, 19 points back) or between the relegated Bolton (36 points) and 8th place Liverpool (52 points). In 10-11, 17 points would have dropped you from the winner ManU (80 points) to 5th (Tottenham, 62) or turned a relegated Brummies into a Europa League contestant (Everton, 7th with 54 pts). If those Soccernomists don't think 17 points matter ....
By the way, a while ago, I linked to this piece by Carlo Ancelotti (that was then translated into English by my paisano Steve Amoia). Read and then watch the 20 min PSG - Dynamo Kiev match highlights, which show how board tactics evolve into a game plan and then into a game itself. http://www.soccertranslator.com/2012/12/scouting-analysis-of-opposition-by.html
This is an eye opener! I have never read Soccernomics, but to sit here and say that a coach has no impact on a team is insane. I've played D1, professional soccer in Europe, and coach in college now. Coaches make a huge difference. Players, are crucial, that is a given, but a coach can escalate or decimate a team. I have saw/played in teams where one coach departs, another comes in and the side changes radically in performance. Aspects like trust, belief, confidence, and attitude make a huge difference to teams. There is a reason Sir Alex turned Aberdeen in to Scottish Champions and Cup Winners Cup Champions. There is a reason that he was close to the sack with United, but managed to turn them around and dominate English football for 2 decades. He knows what he is doing. He buys wisely, trusts his players, instructs them on how he wants them to play, and then allows them to do that! The highlight to this was Celtic's Lisbon Lions who won the European Cup in 1967. A team all born within 30 miles of the stadium and coached to a phenomenal level by Jock Stein. They were good players, yes, but they were coached well! Same as Ferguson's United. But after 9 consecutive titles, and 10 points clear going for a 10th, Stein was in an horrendous car crash, which meant he was out of commission for the rest of the season. The team managed to through the league away. Coincidence? In short, if you think a coach doesn't make a noticeable difference....you are clueless!