The stories of goalkeepers becoming successful managers are far and few between. Strange coincidence or are there deep psychological reasons?
Name five goalkeepers who have made the transition into successful football managers?The question that stumped me and my team at a local Quiz night - and we are all goalkeeper crazy! We did manage to get Dino Zoff who won the UEFA Cup with Juventus in 1990 and was of course only denied Euro 2000 success in the dying seconds of the final against France.
We also got Raymond Goethals who led Marseille to European Cup glory in 1993. Walter Zenga of Steua Bucharest and Red Star Belgrade fame got us a third tick in the box but we then fell foul of fourth choice Neville Southall on the technicality of the word 'successful'! One game in charge of the Welsh national team (lost 2-0 to Denmark on 9th June 1999) does not apparently constitute success. My confused quiz mates then gave up and we never got to hear who their fifth candidate would be.
We have since racked our brains here at MINDSi HQ and Jessica gets the credit for coming up with current Twente manager Michel Preud'homme who won the Belgian league First Division with Standard Liege in 07-08 and the Belgian Cup with Gent in 09-10. Goalkeepers as managers on the continent is less of an issue it would seem.
Successful goalkeeping managers in UK football is a rarity, arguably never happened. England stopper Tim Flowers is giving it a go at BSN relegation contenders Stafford Rangers. Record so far: seven games, seven defeats. Looks like he's going to conform to type!
Scottish keeper Bryan Gunn looked to be about to break the mould when he took over at Norwich and led them to a 4-0 win over Barnsley. The infamous 1-7 start of the season defeat to Colchester saw the end of his short tenure. Twenty one games and ten defeats with a 28.57% win ratio. Not good enough. Gunn took the hint and is now a director of business development for a Great Yarmouth based digital phone company. Par for the course in UK football.
So what is it that marks out the psychology of goalkeepers and makes them rare candidates for success in football management? David James is on the case. Currently doing his coaching badges, he has been told by backroom staff that he must become good at understanding his strengths and weaknesses and learn to delegate. Tough lesson for keepers that. Years of solitary control and detachment from the team ethic. What Peter Schmeichel called being 'one on one. Me against the strikers. More like being tennis players than team players. Solitary combat.' You can see how that doesn't bode well for man management! ' I'd be good at bawling them out in the dressing room half time when they've played like a bunch of pandas but how the heaven am I going to teach them to dribble?'
It's a fair point. James says that football for goalkeepers is very black and white. 'Whereas an outfield player can make a bad pass and expect to get covered (unless he plays for England perhaps?), a goalkeeper has no margin for error. He must learn to become very singleminded to succeed.'
No hope for James and Flowers then in UK football? Neville Southall's eccentric career as manager of Dover and Margate would suggest not. Jock Wallace did ok for a while for Rangers in the Seventies but Psychology Today's recent study shows goalkeepers to have highly developed pre-frontal cortex. Makes them good at tunnel vision and concentration and also presumably gives them an edge in penalty shoot outs against strikers with poorly formed pre-frontal cortex who just hit and hope! Not going to make them good in the man management/delegation stakes though. Not here in the UK at any rate, where perhaps we are also more likely to treat things in a black and white way.
Incidentally, Jose Mourinho's Dad was a goalie!
Gavin Wilson
MINDSi SPORTS PERFORMANCE
www.MindsiOnline.com
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