What two things do the following three managers have in common? Brian Clough, Jose Mourinho, Ian Holloway.
The first thing is that, in their different ways, all of these managers are very enjoyable to watch: Brian Clough had that ability to come up with a line or two that makes people smile at his conceitedness, Jose Mourinho has a swagger about him, always looks overly relaxed whilst Ian Holloway seems to speak with an honest and genuine passion for the game. Also, all of these managers, Holloway debatably, have been successful.
What I want to raise a question on, is why aren't there more eccentric and quirky, some might say, people involved in football management? I feel like there must be a psychological correlation between a manager being interesting to watch/humourous in interviews, and them gaining the respect of their team.
All of these managers are known for understanding how to motivate their teams, and get them playing perhaps better than the sum of their parts. It may be linked to being able to get people's attention, the aforementioned people were/are fantastic at doing that in press conferences, and I think that talent can transfer into man management skills in the dressing room.
You get some managers, like Mark Hughes being the example I'd use, who you can guess roughly what they'll say and over time they become a little predictable, and you don't want to listen to them. It might just be my opinion, but I think there's a strong link between a manager being charasmatic, and a manager being successful.
Involved in that link is an understanding of how to motivate people, how different players minds' work and, what I think is a very underrated part of being a football manager, which is knowing how to get your players to want you to like them. Jose Mourinho in particular was fantastic at that at Chelsea, because he built up close working relationships with his players. This doesn't always work if there isn't some sort of barrier of respect, but crucially, players wanted to play under him. Let's have a look at what the likes of Clough, Holloway and Mourinho have achieved during their careers, their media-handling style and how that may translate into the way they motivate their players...
Brian Clough
Old big 'Ead is arguably the greatest manager ever to have graced the game, and is certainly the most charasmatic. His unprecented achievements with Derby County and Nottingham Forest - taking them from the second tier of English football to winning the first division title and in the case of Forest, winning the Champions League twice in succession - is a feat no manager has ever been able to do since, and unless a club gets a mega-rich chairman, they will probably never be able to do so.
Clough's confidence, which in many people's eyes trod a thin line between confidence and arrogance, clearly inspired his teams to achieve what they did. The fact that he flourished at both Derby and Forest means it was certainly no fluke. I accept that on both occassions, he had a fantastic talent-spotter in Peter Taylor and his spell at Leeds proved he couldn't succeed on his own- Taylor was fantastic at finding the pieces for Clough's teams, particularly with the find of Dave Mackay as a sweeper, but Clough's motivational skills meant he could put those pieces together and make the team work. He did that by transferring his confidence, which we have seen so often in his interviews, into his players.
It's no coincidence that Clough is considered one of the greatest managers of all time, yet is also the most captivating. His presence must have played a part in the way he built up the confidence of his sides and it must have been used as a way of motivating players- clearly to great effect. He signed players such as Roy MacFarland at Derby, from the lower divisions and turned them into world-beaters. You can't do that unless you are an amazing motivator, and Clough was.
Ian Holloway
I could quite easily spend a couple of hours looking through videos on YouTube of old Ian Holloway interviews. He's often labelled as 'mad' by some, with the quotes that he comes out and says, but I think there's a human quality to him, and a lot of what he talks about resonates with me. Whenever he speaks on subjects like the amount of money footballers are being paid, how he wants to lower the ticket prices and develop the youth system at his club I really admire that, because he's kept what he truly values throughout his football career. He comes up with a lot of metaphors and unusual sayings to illustrate the point he's making, but surely that's more a sign of intelligence than madness? I've got a lot of admiration for him.
Now, I'm open to arguments from people saying that he relegated Leicester and left Plymouth in controversial circumstances. I would defend him personally, because he's referenced it in the past that he made a big mistake leaving the Pilgrims and you've also got to take into account that he was a relatively young manager, in his mid-40s at the time. After that, what he did with Blackpool was unbelievable. He had quite a small transfer budget and took the Seasiders from being favourites for relegation from the Championship, to promotion to the Premier League, and they very nearly stayed up on the last match of the season. The season after that, many expected Blackpool to finish midtable, but Holloway lead them into the play-off final and they narrowly lost to West Ham.
He might not have a CV as good as Clough's or Mourinho's, but his achievements with Blackpool were extraordinary. Let's not forget as well that Crystal Palace, the club he manages at the moment, are currently 2nd in the Championship and 3pts clear of 3rd place- he can achieve promotion with them. On the whole, I think Holloway is a very good manager and probably needed the experience he had at Leicester to learn from. I think he's got a chance of becoming an established Premiership manager in the next 5 years, which I'd love to see, because he's probably the most enjoyable one I've ever listened to.
Jose Mourinho
With short-term successes at Porto, Chelsea, Inter Milan and Real Madrid, Mourinho has the most varied managerial CV in the world and no-one can deny that he is a world-class manager. Personally, I don't necessarily take to his arrogance. In his first press conference as Chelsea manager, he dubbed himself 'the special one'. It seems a bit of a bold statement to make when you're the new manager of a football club, and 99% of people in that situation would have taken the line of: "I'm delighted to be here, I think Chelsea is a great club, hopefully we can achieve things here and win trophies." But the laid-back approach Mourinho took was quite surprising.
A few years later in his career, I watched matches in the last couple of seasons between Real Madrid and Barcelona; you'd see Pep Guardiola being very composed, folding his arms on the touchline and having a thoughtful look, whilst Mourinho would be running up and down, jumping, berating the officials and sulking. I think if any other manager had that level of eccentricity they'd be sacked immediately. If the Gillingham manager behaved like Mourinho did in a drab 0-0 draw with Port Vale, they would look weird and would lose the respect of everyone. Mourinho's brilliance makes up for it though, he can get away with it. Because he is a great manager, he can afford to call himself 'the special one' because he is the special one- and he's got the management skills to prove it.
What he's won in his career is staggering: all of the domestic league and cups in Portugal, England, Italy and Spain plus the UEFA Cup with Porto and the Champions League with Porto and Inter. You just can't argue with it, he's got so much charisma, love him or hate him you have to acknowledge that he is one of the best managers in the world.
All of these managers, in rather different ways, share the common ground that they're always enjoyable to listen to, and due to their respective successes, I'd be confident in saying that that translates into their ability to motivate players to want to play under them.
What I don't understand, is why there aren't more of these types of managers? The majority of football managers are often very bland, straightforward, to the point, but you get one or two characters over the course of time, like Clough and Mourinho, who step in with a massive personality, and they take clubs to immediate success. These types of managers are incredibly rare, but also incredibly talented. What I would question is, why these characters are so uncommon?
Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that almost all managers are ex-footballers- the way footballers tend to be brought up, particularly in this country, is not to show any emotion. In dressing room culture, emotion can be seen as a sign of weekness, so maybe footballers may train themselves to blot out any interest they have in reading or any kind of arts, because there's a fear of judgement, so they aren't taught to nuture their own intellect.
Interestingly, Jose Mourinho wasn't a footballer, instead he was born into quite a well-off family in Setubal and went to study Sports Science, so he wasn't raised in a particularly competitive-male environment. Having said that, one wonders where the likes of Clough and Holloway were able to develop their mind, to be able to come up with the sayings they have, as they were both brought up in Council Houses, and neither were particularly academic.
On the whole, I'm of the opinion that it'll only be once the somewhat negative and discouraging environments within groups of lads at football clubs changes (which it may never do) when boys are encouraged to branch out more and expand themselves intellectually, then we'll see more and more 'interesting' managers in the Premiership, as oppossed to those who say what they think is expected of them, and aren't as comfortable being interviewed. At the moment, the likes of Clough, Holloway and Mourinho have been/are very much one-offs, but one can hope that if the cultural expectations within younger men is changed in the long-term, then we'll see more of these kinds of managers, and moreover, more of these kinds of people.
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