Requiring ex-professionals to learn on the job wrecks their prospects for a successful transition to management
I've leapt into the unknown twice in my career. One was at 15 when I set foot on a plane for the first time, flew from Belfast to Liverpool and arrived in a different world. On the Saturday night I'd marvelled at Alan Hansen and Steve McMahon on Match of the Day and on Monday morning I was collecting their kit at Melwood. Nothing had prepared me for the transition but I was allowed to develop with time and patience. Both were lacking after I stepped into management at 37 and without them I fear a generation of experienced ex-players is in danger of being lost to the game.
There cannot be many professions that encourage someone to take the top job without understanding the day?to?day running of the business. Football is one, and today it is a quick?fix industry with clubs reliant on people who have not been prepared thoroughly for the task. Change is needed in the culture of clubs and the dressing room to give players the best possible chance of making it in management.
I admit I consider myself lucky to have landed the Ipswich Town job at the end of my playing career and, like Gareth Southgate, Neil Lennon, Tony Mowbray, Roy Keane and others, I found the offer impossible to resist. But looking back from a distance I can see there were many aspects of the role I was unprepared for. I had my Uefa B licence when I succeeded Joe Royle in 2006 but that does not prepare a player for the economic workings of a club, spreadsheets and board meetings or how to handle the transformation from dressing room to manager's office.
A player leads a very self-centred life. He has to be selfish in terms of preparation and mind-set, and anything outside his bubble doesn't exist. There is a lack of awareness about life outside football but these days you need that. You need to know about business. You need to be a psychologist at times ? the days of motivating players with the carrot and stick routine are long gone ? and you need to know when and what to delegate. When you first take over you want to control everything and one of the most important lessons I learned is that you cannot. Even Sir Alex Ferguson delegates these days.
We all go down the route of coaching badges and the Professional Footballers' Association is strong on education. Through the League Managers Association you can now do a business management course at Warwick University. That is essential but there needs to be a stronger bridge between playing and coaching and the education needs to start at an earlier age.
I was fortunate at Ipswich in that I had tremendous support from a board that understood the pressures of the job and the fallback of being able to bounce things off Joe, George Burley and Sir Bobby Robson. But there is no settling-in period and as myself, Paul Ince, Gareth Southgate and others have discovered, you are out of a job if you don't deliver instant success. I could have easily prolonged my playing career or become a coach alongside a top-class manager but then the opportunity to manage Ipswich may never have come my way. It was a great job to get. We brought stability, increased expectations in the second season when we finished one point outside the play-offs, and in the third season we had a new owner who allowed us to compete financially at Championship level. That raised expectations further, but we finished ninth and I got the sack.
The merry-go-round that was Queens Park Rangers was well established by the time I went there but I was a much better manager after three years than when I first went in. Today I've got my pro licence and am ready to take the right opportunity. I'm also setting up the Magilton Foundation in Belfast, which aims to provide kids with the grounding that most players lack. What concerns me is that so many clubs turn to their most experienced players as managers, the ones who, like Tony Mowbray at Ipswich, are always destined to take that step, but then don't allow them time to develop and learn from their mistakes.
Steve Bruce is probably the most successful of that crop of managers but there are too many others who have drifted out of the game and it is a major loss. You've now got Ally McCoist preparing for the job at Rangers but not before gaining crucial experience of working under a top-class manager in Walter Smith. Most are now asked to learn while on the job ? and that is to the detriment of the clubs, the players and the game itself.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2011/apr/29/jim-magilton-football-management
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