The Manager: Inside the Minds of Football's Leaders

by Carson, Mike

  2. Take a step back:

  The balcony offers a route to a healthy perspective – especially if a leader can get on to his own balcony. Rodgers got on to his balcony and understood that he had sacrificed his philosophy against QPR. Villas-Boas got on to his after he left Chelsea, and took a route back through learning. Mancini gets on to his balcony and apologises when he’s wrong.

  3. Take the broader view:

  A sense of perspective will tell you that when you’re in it it’s a tragedy, but when you’re looking at it it’s a comedy. For a leader, understanding that your work and role may only be the most important of all the small things in life is a sure route to restoring balance. So is the practice of remembering your wider goals and so is an attitude of gratitude.

  4. Take time for renewal:

  Whether through writing, routines, family and friends, time out or even time in, renewal must be a high priority for a leader. However, it is easier said than done. What works for one leader doesn’t come close for another. Ron Atkinson can relax with the team after a narrow defeat, Redknapp can’t; Mick McCarthy takes time out, Redknapp takes time in.

  In summary, the leader who can get on the balcony, look at his circumstances and be grateful for them will reduce his own anxiety, regain perspective and function effectively once again as a leader. He will make better decisions and get better results. The fearless leader probably does not exist, but the thankful leader does.

  PART FIVE

  The Great Challenges

  CHAPTER NINE

  CREATING SUSTAINED SUCCESS

  THE BIG IDEA

  Success – especially in football – is fleeting. True sustained success is rare in almost every occupation. The world has its great institutions, from the British monarchy to the United Nations, and its centres of excellence, from NASA to the Kirov Ballet. Many have received sustained public investment to help them, and despite this, most have endured periods of foundational challenge. Their ability to weather the roughest of storms in part defines them and their success.

  The great challenge to a leader in business is to create sustained success, to create an organisation that ultimately defines the market in which it operates, something that investors treasure and competitors aspire to. In football, the daily challenge to the leader may feel different, but the nature of it is essentially the same: he needs to manage the daily pressures while also conceiving of and implementing something lasting. Those who can do this are the toast of their profession.

  THE MANAGER

  Sir Alex Ferguson is one of the giants of the global game. In a football leadership career that has spanned some 40 years, he has broken records and achieved heights that bear comparison with the greatest in any field of sporting endeavour. He announced his arrival on the football management stage with an astonishing spell at Aberdeen between 1978 and 1986, taking a club with a 25-year trophy drought to sustained success and a famous defeat of Real Madrid to win the 1983 European Cup-Winners’ Cup.

  In 1986, he joined Manchester United. Very quickly seeing the need for radical rebuilding, Ferguson embarked on the parallel tracks of short-term, high-impact methods and long-term foundational transformation. He quickly achieved stability, but when in his fourth season there was no obvious evidence of sustained improvement, a public assumption grew that he would not last in the post. Victory in the FA Cup in 1990 changed all that, and three seasons later United were champions of the newly constituted Premiership. Perhaps even more significantly, the now-legendary United youth side of 1992 had emerged: Ferguson had created a pool of talent and strength that would be the source of much of the club’s sustained success for years to come.

  He guided United to a further 12 titles in the first two decades of the Barclays Premier League, finishing no lower than third on any occasion. In this era they have become perhaps the most powerful global brand in football. They have been champions of Europe on two occasions and FA Cup winners four times, winning the extraordinary ‘Treble’ of European Champions League, Premier League and FA Cup in 1998–99. In that same year, Ferguson was awarded the KBE by Her Majesty the Queen for services to football. He announced his retirement from football management in May 2013.

  His Philosophy

  Sir Alex has a simple philosophy of leadership in football: that no one is bigger than the club. This hard-fought principle, often quoted

  in football circles, is at least in part responsible for the consistency of Manchester United. Where other clubs might break some rules or at least bend them to accommodate a star player, United does not. Stars are created at Old Trafford, or they are imported – almost invariably they shine brighter as a result of their stay at United. But ultimately they come and go; and after quarter of a century of achievement and growth, the club’s fortunes show no real sign of waning. At some level, Ferguson has embodied the club. He is one of a select group of leaders to become so synonymous with a global organisation that it has become unclear which one has shaped the other.

  His achievements at Manchester United stand alone in the history of English football. No manager has remained longer at a single club; and no manager has achieved such consistent excellence. This extraordinary success has come through a dynastic set-up in the playing staff.

  The Challenge

  Building something to last has always been difficult; doing it now in a world where crises abound, where short-term gain is king and where individualism is rampant would seem almost impossible. Very few football clubs can be said to have achieved sustained success across generations of footballers; fewer still can be said to be dynastic – ensuring a succession that enables continuous achievement beyond the career span of specific individuals. To do so requires commitment and strength of character from key players, consistently good financial and resource management and a leader’s clear vision of long-term success.

  Two of the very few clubs in recent times to have achieved sustained success at the highest level in England are Liverpool and Manchester United. For 30 years Liverpool could reasonably claim to have established a leadership dynasty; while Manchester United, under one very powerful and talented leader, have at least established a dynasty of star players – recreating a winning line-up generation after generation. Only in exceptional circumstances will even the longest-serving outfield player deliver 20 years at the highest level: Ryan Giggs at United and Paolo Maldini at AC Milan are salient examples. Ferguson was at Manchester United for over a quarter of a century, overseeing wave after wave of talent.

  Paul Ince is himself a professional manager, and a player who achieved great success under Ferguson. He ascribes the dynastic effect at Manchester United to Ferguson’s great force of character: ‘People forget how many teams that he has actually built. He has gone through transitional periods, but has produced four or five great teams since 1986. I don’t think that there’s another manager in world football that could do that.’

  It’s not that Sir Alex Ferguson has all the answers, nor that the wisdom of the unforgettable Liverpool managers can be bottled and sold on. But what they have done is exceptional, and bears a second look.

  Solution Part One: Build for the Long Term

  Unsurprisingly, where one of the primary challenges is short-termism, leaders who achieve sustained success build with one eye on a longer-term horizon. Peter Schmeichel observed that Sir Alex always planned for the four- to five-year time frame. The Liverpool football club of the 1960s, 70s and 80s was famous for its long-term thinking – expressed most obviously in the continuity of its leadership. Kevin Keegan was one of the most celebrated of Liverpool’s array of attacking players that graced the 1970s: ‘Typically, if the manager goes now, then all the staff go with him. When I went there we had Shanks, and then we had Bob Paisley, really as a physio and assistant manager (he wasn’t even fully qualified as a physio!), then we had Joe Fagan, then we had Ronnie Moran and then Roy Evans as reserve team coach – so five of them. And you always had one or two heroes around – Ron Yeats, I
an St John and Tommy Smith were still at Anfield when I went there. They weren’t playing much – in fact they had pretty much finished – but before they left completely and went to other clubs they stayed for a good while ... So you had this sort of boot room, then you had these older players who had younger players learning from them to carry on that legacy. It was very powerful.’

  The work of Sir Alex at United and of Bill Shankly and his successors at Liverpool would suggest five principles to enable long-term building:

  1. Make strong and rapid decisions:

  Ferguson attributes his long-term success in no small part to his ability to make decisions. He began his football management career with East Stirlingshire at the age of 32. Like many managers, he did not have a career mapped out in front of him. Nor did he have any clearly articulated long-term goals: ‘I don’t think that when I started at 32 you could say I had any leadership qualities in the sense of where I was travelling in life. I think what I brought to it as a 32-year-old was I was always a good decision-maker. I was always prepared to make a decision – right or wrong – so I had that in my favour.’

  The decisions the young Ferguson was making were quite different from the ones he made in recent years as manager at one of the world’s leading clubs. Decisions now are about how to grow players’ careers, how to motivate, how to shape and mould a team, how to create balance across a squad, how to balance the needs of Premier League and Champions League – amongst others. Decisions then were around how to garner a team at all! ‘When I started out as East Stirling manager I was part time. I managed to gather 13 players by mixing free transfers with young players. My first match was a friendly against Kettering and then the following week we played against Tranmere Rovers, with Steve Coppell playing centre forward for them ... Quite an introduction! Looking back, it was easy to work with 13 players, it had nothing like the complexity that I faced at Manchester United in recent times.’

  The ability to take tough decisions under pressure is one mark of a great leader. Walter Smith worked as assistant manager to Sir Alex first at Scotland and later at Manchester United. He observes, ‘Alex is prepared to make difficult decisions and that demonstrates his strength of character.’

  Ferguson goes further: ‘I’ve enjoyed taking decisions. It probably all goes against my thoughts of 25 years ago when I believed I could do everything. That’s the unfortunate thing about being young; you think you can do everything. So the lessons have got to be learned on the way and today, past 70, I’m still looking to make changes.

  ‘My job was to manage United and to produce results. In that way I’m no different to any other manager. I’ll not be regarded in the same way if I’m not successful. Everything to me is black and white: if it’s on the football field and I see something that I feel is a retrograde step for the club, I have to act and make decisions. In management you have to build to make decisions. Sometimes you’re not right, but that doesn’t concern me too much because the important thing is being able to do it.’

  If he is famous for his ability to focus on the next horizon, then it is the strength of his short-term decision-making that creates the space for him to do that.

  2. Build a great store of knowledge, and share it:

  Sir Alex has always believed in the value of a great store of knowledge. Roy Hodgson firmly believes this is what lies behind Ferguson’s greatness as a football leader: ‘What makes him successful first of all is his knowledge of football, and it comes through putting in such a lot of hard work. He has an encyclopaedic knowledge of players. He knows so much on so many different aspects of football – both today and delving way back into the past. He would be an ideal partner on any football quiz!’

  Gérard Houllier also believes Ferguson’s knowledge is his bedrock: ‘People talk about him as a reference. Even Laurent Blanc, who was the national team coach of France, refers to him. I remember attending a few coaching sessions with him in Scotland and everything he says is immediately written down by those on the course. What he says is always common sense, which is a combination of knowledge and experience. And he likes to share. He is known as a person who is outstandingly successful, but also someone who is accessible regardless of his level of standing within the game. His expertise, his work attitude, loyalty and enthusiasm make him practically the best in the world.’

  Leading without knowledge is difficult. Deep knowledge of the core of the business earns respect and enables accurate decision-making. Deep knowledge shared suggests a different level of leadership – where someone is investing in the long-term health of an organisation and even of the wider environment in which it operates.

  Deep subject knowledge is both impressive and essential in a good leader. There is no substitute – people are too canny. A leader can get away for a while on native intuition, but as the saying goes: ‘You can’t fool all of the people all of the time.’

  3. Focus on people, but avoid sentimentality:

  While Houllier agrees on the knowledge point, he also draws attention to Ferguson’s legendary people focus: ‘He has great expertise – he knows football inside out. He also has a great expertise in man management and knows how to deal with people, which is very important. Over the years he’s seen a lot of difference with players and the mentality and change of attitude, but he has adapted himself to that. He’s a very loyal person: loyal to his players and loyal to his friends. His mixture of enthusiasm and enjoyment is apparent. I would imagine that enthusiasm is infectious to his players.’

  Ferguson always has a goal in mind – whether better working conditions when he was a trade union official in Govan or winning the Premier League again in his final season as manager of Manchester United. In his tenacious pursuit of his goal, he will decide whom he can rely on and he will confront destructive behaviour: ‘It’s a horrible thing to say, but you can’t be sentimental in this job.’ And it has nothing to do with a player’s public profile. In his dealings with people, Sir Alex will do what it takes. But he is nothing if not a shrewd judge of people – and he gets it right time and again, choosing great players and leading them to great achievement. ‘I love the players that I’ve had and I’ve been very, very fortunate to have had great players who’ve come through my career with me.’

  A young Alex McLeish felt that touch at Aberdeen: ‘I was always quite a vociferous character when I played the game, even in school. Even playing with my mates at home I was loud and rough. I carried it on through juvenile football and into professional football, and at Aberdeen I encountered other guys of the same ilk – Willie Miller, Stuart Kennedy, Gordon Strachan, Mark McGhee. There were some really strong characters and then we ended up with a certain manager, and this incredible man met us head-on, took charge of that group of boys and moulded us into a European trophy-winning team.’

  Elsewhere, the Liverpool boot-room focus on people was expressed through respect and professionalism. One of Keegan’s most vivid memories is of how players were treated when eventually their time came to leave the club: ‘When players left they were never shoved out the door. When it was time to go, the manager would always sit down with them and say exactly the right thing. It might have been something like, “You can stay here – everyone likes you in the group and you’re a good footballer – but you need to play football and you’ll get more football elsewhere.” He found out from the manager instead of finding out from a second or third person, or from a phone call. The manager was – and still is – very important to a player: he needs to sit down in a room with his man and paint a picture of where he sees it. Because the way he sees it is probably the way it is going to go. The level of communication in the group at Liverpool was far higher than today. Now we have all the means of communication, but it’s far less personal. Players get emails and texts to say, “Go and talk to somebody if you want to leave ...” People aren’t talking face-to-face.’

  In the context of task, team and individual, this is about dealing with individuals in the framework of th
e task. Sir Alex, like Bill Shankly and Bob Paisley in years past, focuses on his people; but always in his mind is the task. The overriding question is: ‘Which players are going to win us the matches that will earn us the titles?’

  4. What got you here won’t get you there:

  Speaking to the BBC shortly before the end of the trophyless 2011–12 season, former United goalkeeping legend Peter Schmeichel summed up the widespread admiration of the manager: ‘Sir Alex Ferguson’s achievement this year is one of his greatest. No words can praise him enough. For someone of his age to keep moving with the times and understanding what makes these players tick is incredible. He always looks ahead.’ Schmeichel has put his finger on another critical attribute of the dynastic leader – the wisdom to move on and try something new. When Tiger Woods had won his first major at the age of 21, he did not rest on his laurels. Instead he worked with his coach to deconstruct his swing and rebuild it again, this time better and stronger. He had the humility to realise that what he had – world-class though it was – would not get him to sustained world leadership in golf.

  When the 45-year-old Ferguson arrived at Manchester United in November 1986, he inherited a club that had not known real success since the George Best years and the European Cup of 1968. Living in the shadow of the other great north-western dynasty that was Liverpool FC, they had started the season poorly and were second to bottom of the First Division. By working on – among other things – the basics of fitness and discipline, he took them to 11th at the season’s close. But, as Brendan Rodgers would discover more than 20 years later at Reading, instant results are not easy to come by – not when you’re trying to build for the future. And in December 1989, United ended the decade just outside the relegation zone. Sir Alex would later call this ‘the darkest period I have ever suffered in the game’. Public and press were calling for his dismissal.