The Manager: Inside the Minds of Football's Leaders (33 page)

Football is a game of high stakes and narrow margins. One goal would have changed it. Is it wrong to feel that somehow the fates have conspired against you? Perhaps not, but it is almost
impossible to avoid. The critical issue as a leader is not whether these thoughts come into your mind. It’s what you do with them that counts.

Staying Centred around Setbacks and Upsets

Leading football managers have to have strategies to deal with the knocks. Some have their preferred approach that clicks in whenever the punches come. For others, it is
entirely situational.

Take ownership and responsibility

One of the great temptations when things go wrong is to blame everyone else. Psychologists call it externalising. It’s the referee’s fault, it’s the
board’s fault, it’s because of the injury list. The act of blaming has two effects. First, it tends to alienate others and sacrifice the support and sympathy they might otherwise offer.
Second, it immobilises the victim – the person making the excuses. As long as a leader is trying to convince himself and everyone else of his innocence, he is not focusing on taking steps to
solve the problem.

World-class football leaders internalise responsibility. In February 2012, McCarthy took Wolves down to London to play QPR. McCarthy was in his sixth season at Wolves, and his second successive
Premier League campaign. Achieving stability in the most competitive top flight in the world is not easy when resources are limited, and McCarthy achieved it in significant measure by the standards
of the club. However, the season was tough and Wolves were in the bottom three. A week earlier, after a 3-0 defeat against Liverpool, club owner Steve Morgan had personally given the team a
dressing-down – a move that McCarthy now admits undermined his leadership. On the day at Loftus Road, an inspired substitution by McCarthy saw Kevin Doyle score the winner within a minute of
running on the field. Wolves were out of the bottom three, and the BBC called it a ‘huge win’. But eight days later, it all went wrong. Wolves conceded five goals at home to local
rivals West Bromwich Albion. McCarthy apologised for the performance, and within 24 hours was sacked.

McCarthy’s reflection on this incident is unquestionably that of a centred leader: ‘It’s sad, of course, but I look at myself and I had a role in it. I don’t blame all
the players and the chief executive and everybody else. I’ve signed the players; I’ve worked with them. There are mitigating circumstances in and around that, but of course I’ve
had a role to play in it. The trend was simple: we were going in the opposite direction to the one we wanted. But that was who we were as a team. I had eight players in the team that got us
promoted from the Championship who I’d signed from Luton, Leicester, Bohemians, Hearts ... Frankly, we were a bottom-eight team, always going to be scrapping against relegation. I thought I
was going to keep them up because I’d done it for two years previously. It was sad, but I didn’t walk away with any bitterness. I generally don’t because I know I had a role to
play. So I’ve left on the best terms – and that is true of every time I’ve left a club.’

McCarthy’s broad shoulders are inspirational. Too many leaders are ready to blame everyone except themselves. This affects both their own view of the world, and everyone else’s view
of them. At tough moments, great leaders take ownership, and the world applauds. It’s not easy though. In 1999, McCarthy’s Ireland needed to beat Macedonia to qualify directly for the
European Championships of the following year. They conceded an equaliser in the 93rd minute of the match. ‘I didn’t sleep a wink that night. I was in bits. Not a wink. I watched the
telly all night and I knew the press were waiting for me. I got up and put my best suit on and I went downstairs. I looked a million dollars – chest out, chin up, and I looked them all in the
eye and said, “I believe we have a press conference this morning, lads – do you want to see me?” They were all like “yes please!” So I arranged it, did it, knocked
them out, talked about it. I was dying, but they didn’t know that. I looked them all in the eye; they were blown away by it. They asked me afterwards, “How did you do that?” I
said I just did – they didn’t know I was dying. I smiled at them all and did it all. Shook all their hands and I think that rubbed off on everybody else that day.’

Control the controllables and quickly move on

One of the key features of managers who take responsibility is their focus on what they can control. The line McCarthy took with the press after the Macedonia match is typical:
‘As usual we now are in the play-offs, playing against Turkey. I can’t do anything about last night – that’s done, so we’ve got Turkey to play. Yes, we should have won
– it was a bad goal to concede, but is me crying about it going to change it? If I talk about it for the next 20 minutes, are we going to be in the European Championships? So I’ll go
and watch Turkey now and get on with that. I will deal with the things I can.’

In a very similar way, Carlo Ancelotti learns lessons then moves on to where he does have influence – which is usually the next match: ‘We have a problem today. We lost a very
important game last night. But today is not a time to regret, to think about what happened yesterday, the last game ... Instead, we have to focus for the next game. That is the only way you can
do.’

There is an old proverb that goes: ‘The past is a thief – it steals the present and the future from us.’ Leaders who dwell too long on their – or others’ –
mistakes find that they lose their mastery of the present.

After a defeat, no matter how big, McCarthy refuses to dwell in the place of pain: ‘Once I’ve seen the players on Monday and we’ve trained, I’m back at it. So Monday
might be a dull day, and I think it is for any of us that have been beaten, but it doesn’t carry on for the rest of the week. I’d have the staff in early and we would sit on the static
bikes and watch on the big screen. So we are watching and at the same time we get an hour’s exercise on the bike and chat about the game – four of us generally, five with the analyst.
So I might arrive on a Monday morning, badly beaten and thinking we were crap. But when I’ve watched it, I’ve got it clear in my head and I’ve taken the positives. We’ve got
a lot right, and we’ve analysed that. Then we move on. We’ve lost that game. No point crying over that one, let’s get on to the next one. The only way we can prepare for the next
one is getting over that one.’ Leaders must get the subtle blend of learning from their mistakes without becoming defeatist or despondent.

Go back to your belief wall

Warnock’s response is not to dwell on thoughts of victimhood and injustice. He picks himself up quickly, and self-belief cuts in. What goes through his mind is something
like: ‘I’ll show them. I’m not done yet.’ And even when his next club after the Sheffield episode, Crystal Palace, went into administration, the self-belief was strong
enough for him to continue, and he moved on to QPR.

Self-belief is a critical part of an elite athlete’s make-up – and it’s essential for a leader also. Olympic gold-medal swimmer Adrian Moorhouse, writing with performance
psychologist Professor Graham Jones, defines it as: ‘An unshakable belief in your ability to achieve competition goals’. They suggest it is all about understanding the unique qualities
and abilities that make you better than your opponents. Many elite sportspeople use the concept of a ‘belief wall’ – a mental construct built of the bricks of undeniable
achievement. Thus a runner might look left and right to his opponents in the starting blocks, and say to himself ‘I have beaten every one of you over this distance before.’ That is a
brick from his wall. The stronger and more solid your wall, the more powerful your self-belief and the more it takes to knock you off balance.

Choose optimism

One of the most powerful characteristics of a football leader is optimism. This is not a Pollyanna-style refusal to accept reality. It is a rational, almost forensic approach to
charting the best possible route. Warnock’s approach is an almost dogged version of this. He admits he is a man for whom hurts remain. He is not the best at letting go. But he does lift up
his eyes and set his jaw: ‘I do look back at QPR and think, “Two years of my life to get where I wanted to be, taken away.” It is unfair, but my philosophy has been when one door
does close it’s a new opportunity and a new part of your life. Exciting things are often just round the corner – and it’s not very often that they crop up when I’m low. I
know what I’m good at – I enjoy management and I love making people happy. So I look the world in the eye, and never give up.’

Ancelotti shares this approach: ‘I am optimistic in life. It is very important – especially in football. I prefer to wake up in the morning and think about the good things and the
sunshine – to wake up with a smile. I think sometimes people create problems, but for nothing.’ Optimistic leaders do not ignore reality – but they are careful not to exaggerate
existing problems or to invent new ones.

Look for the win

Perhaps the most powerful of all the strategies is to apply the aikido principle. In most martial arts and other combat sports, the main idea is to block what your opponent does
and then punch back. In negotiation, this is equivalent to saying: ‘No – you’re wrong.
This
is how it’s going to be.’ However, in aikido the philosophy
suggests you take the punch your opponent is offering and use the energy to your own advantage – and to others’ benefit also. In negotiation, this is like saying: ‘Now
that’s interesting! I wonder where it might lead us?’ Applied to the arrows of life, this is the difference between painful resistance and open-minded enquiry.

Except for the extraordinary Anfield dynasty of Shankly, Paisley, Fagan and Dalglish, British football history is not littered with examples of successful transitions from assistant to manager.
After Souness left Rangers, the chairman turned to Walter Smith whose task was made even tougher by new UEFA rulings. But Smith saw the situation as an opportunity: ‘Looking back on it,
UEFA’s introduction of a “three foreigner” rule actually helped me. The majority of our “foreigners” were English, but they still ranked as foreigners – so we
had to change the staff quite a bit. Graeme and I had been planning to do that in the summer anyway, and everybody at the club from owner down knew it was going to happen. We were going to be
allowed a couple of seasons domestically to make the change, but we knew the time was now – no doubt influenced by our European prospects. After winning a couple of titles in a row and
heading for a third one, you really wouldn’t want to make that many changes – but I knew we had to do it. In the end, it went very well. We had one or two disappointments at the start
– normal when you’re changing and trying to form a new team – it takes a little bit of time for them to settle in. We had two or three months of up-and-down results and then we
settled and went on a fantastic run.’ Smith’s positive mindset had resulted in a neat aikido move – taking the problem and turning it to his advantage. He now had a team that he
could call his own.

Put the setback into context

The past may well be a thief, but this can be true of the future too. An optimistic view of the future can be powerful, but a leader who faces the future with fear will find it
hard to overcome the challenges in front of him. The key is to avoid catastrophising – the sort of thinking that says: ‘This is the worst thing that could possibly have happened to
anyone, now it will all go downhill and there’s nothing I can do about it.’ José Mourinho has a good way to re-frame defeats: ‘I always say a defeat must not be a start of
a period; it must be just the end of a great period. So when the defeat comes you cannot think this is the first of some, but just the end of a period of victories and good moments.’ This
theme recurs time and again among good football leaders.

McCarthy took over at Sunderland in the final quarter of a campaign to avoid relegation from the Premier League. ‘My start at Sunderland was terrible. I lost the first nine games because
we had to play to win every game – draws wouldn’t be enough for us to avoid relegation. I’m not sure that filled everybody with confidence in a manager who’d never been in
the Barclays Premier League. We actually played well in many of the games, but we weren’t good enough. Worse was to come – I lost the first two games in the Championship, 2-0 to Notts
Forest and 1-0 to Millwall. So by now I’d lost the first 11 games on the bounce, and we were playing Preston away who had a great home record. If we’d have had a loss we’d have
got the record for the most consecutive defeats, and we went and played great and beat them 2-0. We finished third that year, lost out in the play-offs.’ The Preston victory enabled McCarthy
to recover his naturally positive mindset.

Wenger’s Arsenal travelled to Manchester United in August 2011 and were beaten by the startling scoreline of 8-2. Even Wenger was shocked. ‘We were titanically bad, but we managed to
get the boat over the iceberg. We come back to values and ideas, because nobody can predict a football game. I’ll give you a recent example. If you go to 100 people and ask them before the
semifinals what will be the 2012 final of the Champions League, most of them would have said Barcelona against Real. But it was Bayern Munich against Chelsea. That shows you the unpredictability of
a game and you have to accept that as a manager as well. And therefore at some stage you cannot base your career on the way you see the game and on individual results. You have to base it on ideas
and values that are important. When I go through a difficult period, I think how can I improve the results – but my checklist is more, “Am I in line with what I think is important in my
job?” That’s why I think it’s important to not just think about winning the games, but also think about what is important to me in this job, in the way I see the game. Because
when you go through crisis periods, that is what will help you survive.’

David Moyes’ career low point came during Everton’s European campaign of 2005–06: ‘We had lost to Villarreal in the Champions League that year and dropped into the UEFA
Cup. We went to play Dynamo Bucharest in Romania. I think we were 1-0 down at half-time and we weren’t doing a lot wrong – then we lost 5-0. For me that was probably as bad as
I’ve felt because we were out of the European competitions that we had worked so hard to get into. I didn’t question myself, but I did need someone to help me get going again. I
don’t know that there is anyone that every now and again doesn’t need someone to give them a pick-me-up and get them going again.’