The Manager: Inside the Minds of Football's Leaders (21 page)

For Warnock, as with Hoddle, Smith and Mourinho, there is something hugely rewarding about spotting talent and embracing it. One of the marks of a great leader is the willingness and confidence
to look for, identify, embrace, sponsor and flourish genius – even at personal cost. Football leaders then set about uniting the team around embracing the talent. This requires a clear
understanding between manager and player around behaviours, boundaries and commitments; the courage to trust that the player will not let you down at either the level of performance or the level of
behaviours; and a strongly held belief from all parties that the team is always greater than the individual, no matter how talented.

Allowing the Genius to Flourish

Great talent needs a stage. If the leader can help create one, then it is likely to flourish. Without a stage, it can become self-destructive.

Arriving at Chelsea for the first time, Mourinho confronted the players with their own talent: ‘At the time I don’t think they needed another type of leadership – I think they
needed confrontational leadership. They needed a leadership to fit their motivation and fit their ambition every day. I cannot be happy by winning two matches, three matches, no – we need
more and more and more. I think sometimes you are a leader and always a leader, but sometimes you can be a different kind of leader. I adapt my leadership and there I was a confrontational leader
because I felt that was what the team needed at the time.

‘I don’t remember exactly the words, but I remember saying clearly to Frank Lampard, “You are one of the best players in the world, but nobody knows.” In one of the
seasons Frank was a finalist in what is now the Ballon d’Or, and I think he didn’t win because he was not a European Champion. Between 2004 and 2007 he became for sure one of the best
players in the world. So we motivate people also with individual challenges, and for him, for sure, that was a challenge we put there and he understood and he was ready for it. It was a brilliant
phase. I learned so much with them, and I think they learned a lot with me too. If Frank’s 2012 Champions League had come before, he would have been voted the best. Chelsea were stronger in
2004 and 2008 – but that is the magic of football.’

The blend of individual and team motivation and behaviours is at the heart of what Mourinho does best. ‘For any new player arriving, the integration is about getting him to understand we
are organised in every aspect and he has to follow us – times, tactics, routines – he has to do it, he has to adapt. We will not change to him, he has to change. So it is about making
him feel and understand that he is a special talent, yes – but before him we were a special team ... and this special team wants to improve and needs him in order to improve.’ Get it
right, and the mutual dependence of individual genius and high-performing team becomes a winning formula.

Howard Wilkinson and Eric Cantona

Howard Wilkinson has the distinction of being the last English manager to win the English league – with Leeds United in 1991, the final season of the Football League
before the introduction of the Premier League. He had already created a team of distinction when he seized the chance to introduce to English football the mercurial genius of Eric Cantona. The
context was not straightforward: ‘When I brought him on loan to Leeds United, he had just been rejected after trialling at Sheffield Wednesday. At that point, I think he’d had something
like ten clubs in his native France. His departures from some of these clubs had been, shall we say, “colourful”.

‘Because of our loan agreement with Marseille, there came a point towards the end of our Championship season when we had to decide whether to buy him for £2.2 million or return him
to France. Ironically, the Saturday before that decision was due, he came on in a home game at Elland Road and scored a wonder goal. The crowd were ecstatic. The chairman, who was to pay the fee
out of his own pocket, and I discussed this decision at great length. Given Eric’s history, it was a huge risk but his behaviour up to that point with us had been exemplary and we decided to
complete the deal. But our next season started very poorly and we couldn’t get anything away from home. We were due to play an away game at QPR and on the Saturday morning I decided to leave
him out of the team and told him so before lunch. By one o’clock he had left the hotel and we had no idea where he’s disappeared to. Eventually we found out he was back in France and I
then received a transfer request from his lawyer stating that he wished to leave Leeds United and stipulating that he wanted to join Manchester United, Arsenal or Liverpool.

‘In the end it was right for both parties that he moved on from Leeds – for a number of reasons. At Manchester United he found a different environment, different culture, different
players, different manager and a spiritual home. He became an icon, a god.’ Genius needs the right environment in which to flourish, and for Eric that environment was Manchester United.
Similarly, Gordon Strachan, who I bought from Alex three years before, had become an icon and a god at Leeds United. Just like Eric, his move from Manchester United and Sir Alex Ferguson to join me
at Leeds United had allowed him to find his spiritual home. That’s the nature of football sometimes.’

Across at Old Trafford, Sir Alex remembers Cantona with almost fatherly fondness: ‘Eric had a presence about him. He knew he had come to the club of his birth. When I signed him I decided
I was going to forget all the stories from his past and allow him to free himself from the inhibitions that were surrounding the boy. What he really wanted was to be loved. He wanted to come to a
club that played to his style and I think he got that with us. He was a fantastic player. I remember we played Sheffield United at Bramall Lane in the FA Cup and the home supporters were giving him
stick. So he chipped the goalkeeper and then turned to them to say, “That’ll teach you.”’

If the trick to diffusing the capacity to harm others is to invest in the player and integrate him into the team, it seems that the self-destructive question might have a similar solution. The
genius can flourish in a solid team environment. This may take considerable effort from the leader: confronting, nurturing, appreciating, encouraging, challenging. It will also take considerable
effort from the player – which not every player is willing to devote – yet another challenge to the leader of genius. The greatest talents of all, of course, work hard and selflessly
put their talents at the disposal of the team. But then, as Ancelotti says, there are precious few of those.

Embracing the Expectation

In the world of José Mourinho, there is always expectation. The world expects much of him and his players; he and his players expect much from each other. For him, it is
a source of energy – and one of the things he loves most about English football: ‘The Barclays Premier League is an incredible competition. I feel very fortunate as a coach and as a
manager because I have now worked in four countries – Spain, Italy, England and Portugal. The good thing is to have the chance to compare the different emotions and the experiences of
different competitions. We can always discuss the qualities of the football in the different countries, but not about the emotions of the game or the atmosphere as in England. The atmosphere, the
intensity and the emotion in England is something you cannot compare with other countries and for somebody that is really in love with the game, as I am, this is the place where you enjoy it the
most.’

When Mourinho arrived in England in 2004, everything came together in one huge wave of opportunity: ‘Chelsea was a moment in my career where the expectations were in the right moment for
myself, and I think they were in the right moment for that group of players and I think we met each other in the right moment in our careers. I was coming from Porto – European Champions and
so on – but English culture demands more. It demands you are successful here. Not there, here! This is the country of football. OK, you won the Champions League. You can have it. But come in
and do it again now here.

‘So I was there in the right moment. And for the boys – people are calling them some of the best in the world after we win; but when I arrive, people in England know Lampard is good,
Terry is good, this guy is good, that guy is good, but no impact abroad because before they [had] won nothing. It was like a collision of moments and I needed at that time this kind of (go for it)
mentality. The guys desperately needed to make the jump from potential to real, and I think they needed the kind of leader I was. I called it confrontational leadership: confrontation not just
inside, but also outside. We make a confrontation between us and the others – this sports confrontation of which one is the best, which one is going to win ... We were not afraid to say we
are the best, we were not afraid to say we are going to win, or we are special, we are going to prove that we are – so it was perfect. So that season [2004–05] was a season for them to
say, “We are the best in this country,” and it was the season for me to say, “I’m not just very good in Portugal, I’m also very good here.” So it was like an
explosion of motivation on both sides.’

Mourinho doesn’t just embrace expectation – he deliberately goes out to create it. By extending his confrontational leadership beyond the bounds of the club, he forces the genius of
his players to emerge onto the big stage. That is an offer that talent cannot refuse.

Throughout his roller-coaster management rides, Mourinho continues to learn and adapt. ‘My big learning at Chelsea the first time was the main idea of motivation of the group [through
confrontation]. At Inter it was about the kind of mistake many leaders make, but which here I didn’t: older players must not feel that you are there to end their careers. They must feel they
have a lot to give till the last moment they are there, and probably the last period of their career will give them what the best years of their career didn’t give to them. Why not? The
problem comes when people are not able to make the oldest players feel that they are very important. That’s why I say you have to understand everything about them: frustrations, ambitions,
doubts. You have to understand a lot and work with them.’

Alex McLeish and Franck Sauzée

The story of Alex McLeish and French international sweeper Franck Sauzée brings together the themes of embracing talent and setting expectations. McLeish was manager of
Edinburgh club Hibernian, and wanted to create the sort of team the fans loved: ‘exciting teams with flying wingers and all that’. Sauzée was a player of exciting pedigree who
had won the Champions League with Marseille in 1993. Believing the now Montpellier player had all the talent to light up Easter Road, he courted him in his own back yard – by setting clear
expectations. ‘Franck was never the quickest player in the world, but he was brilliant, brainy, he could see pictures before you could even see it from the side. He could hit a 60-yard ball
and land it on a 50-pence piece – just an amazing individual. When I spoke to him about the possibility of coming he had fallen out of favour with the Montpellier coach and I said,
“Look, Franck, I know your career inside out. I know you played for Atlanta, you went to Italy, I played against you with Scotland against France in Paris; you are a quality player. I want to
bring gifted players to the club. I want you to not only be a great individual performer, but also to inspire the other ones and maybe get them to raise their game a little bit.” I thought at
a Scottish Premier League level the Celtic players were maybe going to be a bit too nimble for him – but give him the ball and he’ll do something, so we adopted a pattern of three at
the back and I played Franck in the centre of them. He was the master of all he surveyed and he ran the show from there. We had a brilliant season – we went to the cup final and lost to
Celtic. Our conversation went:

‘We still keep in touch. Franck is a legend in Hibs folklore. The fans absolutely adored him and we had a great footballing team with Franck in the starting
line-up.’

Where there is real talent, expectation properly handled will act as fuel. Sauzée wanted nothing better than to show his paces for delighted supporters; Mourinho and his players seized
the opportunity to show the world they had something special. This dimension of the winning mindset is hugely powerful. It stops short of arrogance; it takes pride in its ability.

Captivating the Talent

At the Royal Shakespeare Company, Michael Boyd commented: ‘It’s one thing to build such an ensemble from scratch. The trick is keeping it together. Some actors will
want to work in film or television. Others will want shorter contracts. There will be those who want to be bigger fish in a small pond, getting bigger roles.’

How then to captivate the talent you’ve assembled? Boyd reasons: ‘People will stay as long as they feel that they are growing with the company, and as long as the work is good, and
they feel it gives them a profile and as long as they don’t feel that their individuality is being ironed out or homogenised.’

Mourinho focuses on personal motivation and passion, reasoning that a motivated side is a stable side: ‘To lead a side you must motivate it, and to motivate you must be yourself motivated.
I motivate people with my own motivation. If you are fully motivated, if you show them that, if you make them feel that you have that, they will do well. If you are not a guy with motivation, with
passion, how can you make other people feel passion for the game? After that I think you learn with experiences. The moment that you learn that every person is a person, that’s the point you
become a better leader, especially in a group like ours, in football, with very gifted people.’