Football (Soccer) Thread

[Josephus]

It's hard to compare the women's game with the men's game.

I mean, it's hard not to recognize LGBT + in the women's game.

[The Larch]

So, Barcelona have finally fired Koeman after today's defeat against Rayo Vallecano. I really wonder who they're going to get now, it's kind of a poisoned position at the moment, albeit with lots of potential if you can manage to turn the team around.

[PDH]

I think that with my past FM experience I could run Barcelona into the ground even faster were I to be chosen.

[FunkMonk]

I will gladly offer my services. I have extensive experience in management, mainly my hundreds of hours in FM. I also captained and managed my college intramural soccer team and I was my team's top scorer in my U16 youth club side.

Thank you for your time, Barcelona. I await your decision.

[Liep]

So it's Xavi. It might work, he has a lot of coaching experience from a similar league.

[celedhring]

So it's Xavi. It might work, he has a lot of coaching experience from a similar league.

I love Xavi, but winning a bunch of trophies in Qatar is barely a cut above FunkMonk's qualifications for the job.

[The Larch]

So it's Xavi. It might work, he has a lot of coaching experience from a similar league.

I love Xavi, but winning a bunch of trophies in Qatar is barely a cut above FunkMonk's qualifications for the job.

Yet he's basically the anointed one that will come down from the heavens to pull the team for its misery. 

[Josquius]

When a team is in the shitter the smart move is not to bring in a thoughtful manager for the long term but to bring in a people-person who can smack some heads together and get the team's moral up and make the best of the existing players.
I know nothing of Xavi as a manager but this is something where managers from lower leagues can often shine. Being a former star in the recent past for the club in question doesn't hurt either.

[The Larch]

When a team is in the shitter the smart move is not to bring in a thoughtful manager for the long term but to bring in a people-person who can smack some heads together and get the team's moral up and make the best of the existing players.
I know nothing of Xavi as a manager but this is something where managers from lower leagues can often shine. Being a former star in the recent past for the club in question doesn't hurt either.

The thing is that, due to Barcelona's situation, it's not really clear what their short term objective should be. Clearly you can't ask them to challenge for big titles (League and Champions League), but you at least need the team to be competitive and ensure CL qualification (otherwise the economic situation would deteriorate even further).

Koeman was already meant to be a transitional coach in some way, and given his personality he was the right guy to be a hatchet man and clear the dressing room a bit. He was underwhelming but not terrible last year (won the cup, ended up 3rd in the league, round of 16 in the CL), and he was getting some of the younger players ready for regular 1st team play (Pedri being the brightest case, but also Mingueza, Dest & Moriba last season and Gavi, Nico González & Demir this season), but this season so far has been a disaster and he seemed to have completely lost the team.

[Sheilbh]

Yeah. I think there is something about managing the big clubs with the big players that is generally closer to being an international manager. A large part of the job is dealing with players with big entourages and lots of people around them and convincing them to do roughly what you want and the man management etc.

But Ronaldo is not going to listen to Rafa on how to do his job; Neymar, Mbappe and Messi are not going to be the type of hard-running, pressing attack that Poch likes. So I think for those clubs it often makes sense as Tyr says to get a man manager in, which is why Ancelotti still does very well at this level.

With Barca at the minute though - I'm not sure that's where they are, that those are the players they have or that's what they need.

[The Larch]

Yeah. I think there is something about managing the big clubs with the big players that is generally closer to being an international manager. A large part of the job is dealing with players with big entourages and lots of people around them and convincing them to do roughly what you want and the man management etc.

But Ronaldo is not going to listen to Rafa on how to do his job; Neymar, Mbappe and Messi are not going to be the type of hard-running, pressing attack that Poch likes. So I think for those clubs it often makes sense as Tyr says to get a man manager in, which is why Ancelotti still does very well at this level.

Yeah, managing big egos is a huge part of coaching at the top, as you say some coaches like Ancelotti have made their entire careers based on that, as it's not as if they're exactly tactical wizards. Zidane as well, in a way, due to his stature as a legend of the game, he has the respect of his players (and also the media, not to forget about them) basically by default, and he gets away with stuff that coaches with a lower profile can't.

There are a couple of anecdotes about the season in which Zidane replaced Benítez at Real Madrid that reflected on that different status between the coaches. One of the changes that Zidane established was starting Casemiro every single game to give the team a defensive balance, something that Benítez was lambasted for when he tried to do the same as he was accused of being too conservative. Zidane got away with a basic change that Benítez just couldn't implement due to his lesser status (and it's not as if Benítez is a nobody).

With Barca at the minute though - I'm not sure that's where they are, that those are the players they have or that's what they need.

That's the pickle about Barcelona at the moment. What is it that they want short term? I assume that the mandate of any new coach, be it Xavi or anybody else, will be: Get the team into the CL next season, try to be as competitive as possible within the circumstances, avoid the club any huge embarrassments, try to rehabilitate the club's big names if possible (ie, get Coutinho to be a reasonable player again to see if he gets any offers), and get as many kids as possible to establish themselves as part of the 1st team or to become transfer assets.

[celedhring]

It's not a problem of having superstars buy in - we no longer have superstars 

We do need somebody that embodies a bit of a winning culture though, Koeman was terrible at this. We are already defeated before taking the pitch. His tactics were always really conservative, too, and even in our diminished status we don't really have the mentality or the players to get away with that.

[The Larch]

It's not a problem of having superstars buy in - we no longer have superstars 

You might not need Messi's go ahead anymore for a new coach, but it's not as if the team is a bunch of nobodies.  At the very least you need somebody being able to see people like Piqué, Busquets or Alba face to face, something that Xavi, for instance, can do by default.

I wonder how this will affect players like Memphis, for instance, which was a very personal bet by Koeman as they had a good relationship from the Netherlands national team. It might also mean the end for Luuk de Jong's Barcelona tenure as well, I doubt that he'll be wanted by any possible new coach.

We do need somebody that embodies a bit of a winning culture though, Koeman was terrible at this. We are already defeated before taking the pitch. His tactics were always really conservative, too, and even in our diminished status we don't really have the mentality or the players to get away with that.

Yeah, that feeling was already there since the beginning of the season, with Koeman saying that the team couldn't compete for titles right now and players, even the new kids, saying that Barcelona has to always be competitive and aim for the top. The disconnect between coach and players was pretty clear.

[Sheilbh]

We do need somebody that embodies a bit of a winning culture though, Koeman was terrible at this. We are already defeated before taking the pitch. His tactics were always really conservative, too, and even in our diminished status we don't really have the mentality or the players to get away with that.

As Alan Ball famously said, "once Everton has touched you nothing will be the same.

[The Larch]

By the way, the necessary stature of a possible new coach is also something that I've seen discussed for however replaces Solskjaer at Man United. I heard one of the possible names being discussed for a replacement was Brighton's Graham Potter, who apparently has a growing reputation in the UK, but his name was immediately followed by a "good luck getting Ronaldo to listen to him" kind of sentence. This was contrasted with guys like Conte, who could get away with, for instance, benching him.