The Manager: Inside the Minds of Football's Leaders (6 page)

The Leader at the Centre

In the maelstrom that is top-flight football, the most successful leaders are intentional in their dealings with their stakeholders. They know how to approach them, and they
spend time getting it right. Five mindsets and skills emerge as valuable.

THE BIG IDEA

At the heart of leadership lies an ability to inspire people. We hear powerful speeches and rallying cries, which might convince us that inspiration is all about motivating
great crowds. For sure, that can be part of it. But at its most basic, inspirational leadership starts with individuals. Leaders are only leaders if they have followers, and followers – real
followers – are inspired most of all by personal connection.

Think for a moment about the great leaders of recent generations. Nelson Mandela is good with a crowd, but it’s when you meet him that you know you are in the presence of greatness. Former
US President Bill Clinton is a man who has inspired millions. But according to all who have met him, his power lies in his ability to inspire one-on-one.

The challenge in football is no different. For football’s managers, the players are the most significant expression of their leadership. One inspired player can lift a team. Remember David
Beckham playing for England in the critical World Cup qualifier against Greece in 2001? More than his sublime skill, his sheer energy proved decisive as he covered every inch of the pitch from one
penalty area to the other, desperate for victory, an inspiration to his teammates. The individual is key to the team. Equally, a disenchanted player can drag everyone down. With the pressure on and
the minutes ticking away, one player dropping his head can hurt the whole team effort. And off the field, football teams like any other kind of team are undermined when cliques form.

Great football managers know how to deal with disappointment and resentment in their team, with cliques and with open revolt. And, as most will tell you, it begins and ends with individual
relationships: the one-on-one.

Carlo Ancelotti is best known to the English public as a highly successful but short-lived manager of Chelsea, whom he led to the famous English league and cup double in 2010.
But that is only a part of his story. His playing career spanned 16 years from 1976 to 1992, during which time he represented his native Italy in the 1986 and 1990 World Cups, and was a mainstay of
three great Italian clubs: Parma, Roma where he won a league title and four Italian Cups, and the legendary Milan side of the late 1980s with whom he won two league titles and two European Cups in
five years. Since then, his achievements as a manager have surpassed even those great honours. Growing in experience over five years at Reggiana, Parma and Juventus, he struck gold at Milan.
Beginning in 2001, he led them to multiple honours, crowned by two Champions League titles in 2003 and 2007. By the time he arrived at Chelsea, his credentials were beyond any doubt. And his
appointment to Paris Saint-Germain in 2012 placed him at the cutting edge of one of club football’s biggest growth projects.

His Philosophy

Carlo Ancelotti is a man with a simple philosophy: understand every player. He practically defines the art of one-on-one. This is the foundation of his leadership, and he sticks
to it like a terrier. It’s obvious, he says, ‘In football you may have an idea. The only way to bring this idea to life is to explain the idea to other people, and they have to go on
the pitch and show this idea. For this the relationship between manager and players has to be the best.’

The Challenges

Football is a strangely territorial business. We, the fans, make it so. We define our club by our commitment. And for many, the club defines us. People look at you differently
when you declare which club you support. Similarly, when a player joins a club, he takes on a kind of mantle. The club pays him well, and in return demands not just skill, but loyalty. Fans at
clubs around the world hold up banners demanding passion and commitment from their players who they see as ‘one of us’.

Capturing the players’ loyalty

The manager is a key focal point for player loyalty – or player dissatisfaction. And rarely does a manager get to build this from scratch. Except for rare instances of
extreme team rebuilding, managers inherit a going concern. They step into a club to take charge of a team-in-being, with its associated track record, its expectations and its attendant maze of
relationships. The players on the team – as well as the fans – will invariably represent a wide range of opinions and expectations of the new man, from high hopes (‘he’s
exactly what we need and he’ll get us out of jail’) to resentment, based often on change (‘he’s no better than the last one’ or ‘he’ll never match up to
his predecessor’).

A defining moment for Ancelotti was his arrival at Roman Abramovich’s Chelsea. José Mourinho had left in September 2007, despite leading Chelsea to successive Premier League titles.
In the two seasons that followed, three managers of significant professional stature had taken their turns in what was proving the hottest seat in European football. Neither Avram Grant nor Luis
Felipe Scolari survived a full season, and Guus Hiddink, despite huge popularity and an FA Cup trophy, had a prior commitment to Russia. The playing staff that Ancelotti inherited had in the main a
deep-seated loyalty to the inspirational Mourinho, and a sense of loss at the departure of Hiddink. Many of the players had loved José Mourinho – and still did. A less secure man than
Ancelotti might have tried the ‘new broom’ approach: change everything until the place looks like me. Or he might have decided to transfer-out the big Mourinho fans, to ensure no direct
comparisons could be made. Or he might have distanced himself from the day-to-day running of the team, taken on the aura of a demi-god. Instead, Ancelotti chose a different path: he would get in
amongst it. He would invest time in his playing staff. He would get to know them as professionals, but also as people. ‘It is not easy to build these relationships – but it is
important. I needed to stay on the same level as the players: not above, but not behind. I believe that players are real men with real problems, and I think to have a good relationship is the best
way to have results.’ Eight months later, Chelsea were champions of England.

They are people too

Ancelotti makes an excellent point. Players are not just assets – they are human beings. Human beings have emotions, priorities, beliefs, perspectives, needs and fears.
Just uncovering these can be a serious task; working with them is another thing entirely.

Take an example from Milan. One usually very successful player was off his game. There was no apparent reason – but Ancelotti knew that something wasn’t quite right. ‘Then he
came to me and said, “I have a problem”. The player “had” to go and get married – but he was saying he didn’t want to go! We talked about it, and in the end I
said he had to decide what he felt and do that. I was very happy that he could come to me. In the end, he didn’t marry this woman, and we are still friends today.’ Ancelotti made
himself approachable, and it worked. Simple advice and availability made the difference.

Ancelotti treats each player as an individual, and respects the way they like to operate. ‘All people are different. John Terry is very open, Frank [Lampard], Ashley [Cole] are more
conservative and quiet. My relationship with Frank improved during my work there. At the beginning it was more conservative, but at the end it was good. At the end of my time with him, we had
dinner together – we had a party together, we had a very good time together. It was very good.’

The football cauldron

Leaders the world over – in business, politics, sport – find their greatest challenges lie in relationships. Building them, maintaining them, growing them, saving
them. Most business leaders will tell us that their most pressing and time-consuming challenges are human ones. The main difference in football is that these challenges are frequently lived out
under intense public scrutiny. A conversation between José Mourinho and Cristiano Ronaldo over the player’s contract becomes international news. Carlos Tevez appears to refuse Roberto
Mancini’s instruction to warm-up in Germany and it makes headlines in Singapore. Sir Alex decided to leave Beckham out of a crucial match against Leeds in 2000, after the star player had
failed to turn up for training on the Friday. With masterful understatement, he comments in his autobiography
Managing My Life
that, ‘Because of the hype that constantly surrounds
David, my decision to leave him in the stands became a bit of a drama.’ It is difficult to nurture relationships in a goldfish bowl.

For Ancelotti, the tougher relationships work when the manager is fully supported by the club. ‘It is very difficult. Sometimes a player causes problems for his manager. But if he
doesn’t understand what his manager needs, then he knows he cannot play at the top level. We managers have a possibility to leave players out. But if you take a strong decision you have to
have the support of the club. If you don’t have that support you are dead. If you make a mistake, you have to have the support of the club and until the last day you have to be the number
one. The players know if there is no good relationship between manager and president or owner. It’s very easy to break the dressing room. I had a good example when I was at Juventus. I felt
that I was really the number one, and the club had a lot of trust in me. Eventually they sacked me because I wasn’t good enough. This was OK, but until the last day, there was no problem. The
players knew this very well. This is the key to keeping good relations when times are tough.’ The board’s actions and statements can either accumulate or relieve pressure for a leader.
The same is true of almost any governing body in business or sport, and a resilient leader will be prepared for it. With their every decision being scrutinised from all angles, support from the
board gives managers a stronger platform on which to build their one-to-one relationships with players.

The world around is changing

Leading footballers is increasingly difficult. The generation gap between most managers and their players is no new thing – indeed it exists for leaders and their teams in
most walks of life. But the automatic respect that age commanded in the days of Shankly, Busby and Mercer is no longer there. Leaders have values and behaviours that their players don’t
necessarily share. Neil Warnock illustrates the issue perfectly: ‘When I get off a bus – Premier League or Championship – players will go into the dressing room, big earphones on,
music blaring, walk past the crowds. I get off last and when I get off I take my own pen out and I go round the bus and for 20 to 30 minutes I sign autographs. I’m happy doing that, rather
than going into the dressing room and listening to that head-banging music which I’ve no time for. I’d rather talk to people.’

Without deliberate mentoring, footballers are unlikely to model something better than the society in which they live. Sir Alex Ferguson points to societal changes that have reduced resilience in
players. ‘The human beings that we deal with now are more fragile than they ever were. They are cocooned – brought up differently. They are often protected by parents who live their
lives through the success of their kids. Then we have kids and parents wanting more and more, so they turn to agents much earlier. We are seeing more and more agents getting involved in a
footballer’s career at 16 or 17 years of age. I know there are some cases where they have an influence at maybe 14 or 15 – even direct access without parents, which is not allowed. So I
found that when they got to me they were certainly more fragile because they are cocooned in a different way.’

Tony Pulis echoes this observation and its impact on professional football: ‘From when I first started out in management to where I am now, the characteristics of society have changed
enormously – and my own leadership approach has evolved accordingly. I spend a lot more time now speaking individually with players. When I first started and I had to say something to a
player in front of the rest of the team, then I would just say it without flinching, even if it was detrimental. Today 90 per cent of the times when I need to sort out an issue with a player, I
will take a player out of the group situation and talk to him individually. I think players – possibly reflecting society in general – take things more personally than they did 20 years
ago, and it’s important as a leader to adjust your skill set accordingly.’ The art of one-on-one, according to Pulis, is now more important than ever.