morleys_deckchair wrote:
i agree with some of that list, but in modern society, its going to be near impossible to implement anything like that.
We need a coach that inspires, more than one that intimidates.
I agree with duckie's list too, I think you can have high standards without being a bully. But yes it is harder now because of modern society.
The big change is social media, and the relative ease of achieving 'celebrity' status. In the old days, a young player would be a relative nobody, unless they'd made it as an established first teamer. Today just having the status of a professional sportsman, with a good physique, few tattoos and some selfies tweaked with artistic filters on instagram and some motivational quotes, is going to guarantee that a guy is a superstar among his peers. It doesn't matter how much the player has achieved in the game. He will have tons of followers and female attention, most of the public aren't RL fans and so they don't know who is good and who isn't. This makes young players much more narcissistic and cocky, and probably erodes some of the desire to make themselves great, as the easy route is to live through social media and cultivate their following.
Also stuff like facebook, twitter and this forum, allows a route for players' grievances to come out 'anonymously' against a coach who tries to impose discipline on them that they don't like. Even if they aren't spreading it themselves, they moan to family and friends, and stuff gets out online. Remember towards the end of TS time, when we were hearing about how he was stifling certain young players' natural game and so on.
So it's harder for a coach to impose order because also the players can react in a passive-aggressive way by just stopping putting in the effort. They know that losses are the fastest way to remove a coach, and even though players get stick, usually the coach is the lightning rod for most of it.
A coach has to be very skilled at dealing with this and the old "schoolteacher" type is less effective - even in football, look what happened to Van Gaal and Mourinho at United. Sir Alex Ferguson was able to get away with it because he had a track record of success from before the social media era, which made his position unarguable.
I suppose Klopp is a good example now of how to manage players. It comes down to him also being a very good manager who can create a team which looks fun to play in and wins. He then has the leverage of choosing who stays and who goes, so if players don't come in line, he doesn't have to have a big battle with them, he can just quietly move them on, and nobody wants to lose the chance to play for this team right now.
In RL, I think Wane and McDermott would be well placed to impose discipline. They both have track records of winning Super League which gives them authority, and they are both guys who seem like they are good blokes who would look after players' welfare and wouldn't be bullies. But you know that both of them are tough guys who won't tolerate an inch of crap.
