I believe 'the Art of Coaching' comes down to three areas- tactics (creating an on-field plan), player identification (assessing & acquiring players to implement that plan), and man-management (the ability to convey that plan to your players, & have them believe).
Jose Mourinho's recent performance in the UEFA Champions League, masterminding victory for Inter Milan over Barcelona, has magnified his mastery of 'the Art of Coaching' in each of those areas. Simon Barnes of the Times also believes that a coach can influence a match in the three areas I mentioned, and writes of how Mourinho's foundation of success is built on those areas.
What does a coach bring to a sporting operation that a mere player can’t? He operates in three areas simultaneously. The first is strategy. In club football, that’s acquiring and offloading players and developing the chosen style of football. Mourinho is doing that at Inter, a continuous Forth Bridge task.
The second is tactics: the decision on the way each match should be approached, who should play and what assignments they should take on. Inter’s two-leg semi-final against Barcelona was a tactical masterclass. The first leg in Milan, which Inter won 3-1, involved two separate game plans, each scrupulously carried out.
The second leg was always going to be defensive; after the sending-off of Thiago Motta, it became almost parodically defensive.
Mourinho’s tactics worked triumphantly. Barcelona were restricted to four chances, Messi to just one. Of these chances, Messi’s was brilliantly saved, another was disastrously muffed, one produced a goal and the last a goal that was disallowed for a rather unlikely handball. Mourinho’s skill was in restricting his opponents to those four chances — luck bore a part in what came of them. That is often the way of things in football.
Strategy, yes, tactics, yes. But there is something else. There is the third area of expertise — the talent that lies a little way beyond the scope of definition. The existence of this elusive third way was summed up for me for all time when I asked for directions in India: “Continue until the road divides. Then take the central bifurcation.”
Trying to pin down the essentials of the central bifurcation is like the ancient experiment in weighing the human soul. A dying person was set on a bed that was also a weighing machine, so that the instant he died, it registered the sudden decrease in weight as his soul left his body.
The reason that Mourinho’s long-term strategy and his short-term tactics bore fruit so spectacularly in the two matches against Barcelona came down to that third element. To defend for an hour with ten men is a hard task; to do so against the best club side in the world is all but impossible. It required great tactical organisation, it required great fitness. But it also required a great willingness.
Inter won because Mourinho’s players were willing to run themselves into exhaustion to bring off a battle plan they believed in totally. Only at the end, when they were knackered, did Barcelona get close to them. That willingness, that soul, that spirit was ultimately the difference between the sides — that, and the iffy handball, the slice of Napoleonic luck. And that spirit, that third thing, is ultimately the work of the coach.
Jose Mourinho's recent performance in the UEFA Champions League, masterminding victory for Inter Milan over Barcelona, has magnified his mastery of 'the Art of Coaching' in each of those areas. Simon Barnes of the Times also believes that a coach can influence a match in the three areas I mentioned, and writes of how Mourinho's foundation of success is built on those areas.
What does a coach bring to a sporting operation that a mere player can’t? He operates in three areas simultaneously. The first is strategy. In club football, that’s acquiring and offloading players and developing the chosen style of football. Mourinho is doing that at Inter, a continuous Forth Bridge task.
The second is tactics: the decision on the way each match should be approached, who should play and what assignments they should take on. Inter’s two-leg semi-final against Barcelona was a tactical masterclass. The first leg in Milan, which Inter won 3-1, involved two separate game plans, each scrupulously carried out.
The second leg was always going to be defensive; after the sending-off of Thiago Motta, it became almost parodically defensive.
Mourinho’s tactics worked triumphantly. Barcelona were restricted to four chances, Messi to just one. Of these chances, Messi’s was brilliantly saved, another was disastrously muffed, one produced a goal and the last a goal that was disallowed for a rather unlikely handball. Mourinho’s skill was in restricting his opponents to those four chances — luck bore a part in what came of them. That is often the way of things in football.
Strategy, yes, tactics, yes. But there is something else. There is the third area of expertise — the talent that lies a little way beyond the scope of definition. The existence of this elusive third way was summed up for me for all time when I asked for directions in India: “Continue until the road divides. Then take the central bifurcation.”
Trying to pin down the essentials of the central bifurcation is like the ancient experiment in weighing the human soul. A dying person was set on a bed that was also a weighing machine, so that the instant he died, it registered the sudden decrease in weight as his soul left his body.
The reason that Mourinho’s long-term strategy and his short-term tactics bore fruit so spectacularly in the two matches against Barcelona came down to that third element. To defend for an hour with ten men is a hard task; to do so against the best club side in the world is all but impossible. It required great tactical organisation, it required great fitness. But it also required a great willingness.
Inter won because Mourinho’s players were willing to run themselves into exhaustion to bring off a battle plan they believed in totally. Only at the end, when they were knackered, did Barcelona get close to them. That willingness, that soul, that spirit was ultimately the difference between the sides — that, and the iffy handball, the slice of Napoleonic luck. And that spirit, that third thing, is ultimately the work of the coach.
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