Taking Football into Business

Taking Football into Business

 

I’ve always compared football to business management, for me the two go hand in hand. With this thought in mind I thought I’d have a look on the internet to see if anyone else had the same views. To my surprise I wasn’t able to find anything; I’m sure someone else has had these views though.  

So just where do I get the idea that the elements of football can be taken into business? To start if a Football team fails then it’s the manager who takes the flak, the same can be said in business, if KPI’s aren’t being met then it’s the line manager who has to provide the answers.

Picking your team is also no different than that of the team on a football pitch. First of all you have to think which team member suits which role. You wouldn’t put your best striker in goal just like you wouldn’t put a member of staff who is nervous and doesn’t like speaking to customers into a complaints department. This is just suicide. If you want your team to perform at their best then you need to put round pegs in round holes.

For me the positions in football are very similar, in football you have Defence, Midfield and Attack. These are the rules that can be applied to business.

The attack is the sales team, without sales you don’t have a business just like in football if you don’t score goals then you don’t win games.

The midfield is the supply chain and sales assistance

The defence, this is your aftersales department. If you don’t support logistics, sales and your products then the business falls down.

People would say that your defenders do occasionally score goals and do help out with the attack. The same can be said in business. When pitching to a potential new customer you may tell them about how good your aftersales support is or about how you always delivery the finished goods on time. It’s these factors that could clinch the sale.

The manager of a football team also has to deal with individuals with multiple personalities the same as a business manager. There will be staff who have big ego’s and know everything but may not be as good as they think. There may be a member of staff who has a skill that even they don’t know about yet but the manager can see it in them and has to nurture this out of them.

Some staff/players respond to being addressed directly and sternly, some need an arm put around them. I remember being a young footballer and playing with someone who was far more experienced than me and a far better player than me but he only knew one style of dealing with players and that was to shout at players. I explained that it doesn’t always work and that although in football this method may get the best out of certain players it doesn’t all. What he said next shocked me; he simply said “what do you want me to do? Put my arm around him and tell him everything will be ok?” I told him YES if that’s the way to get the best out of him!

This showed that to be a good manager you need to be able to adapt to an individual’s personality.

I’ve recently been learning about management at college and one particular theory is McGregors X and Y theory. Although I don’t agree with the theory in principle it teaches that to be a good manager you have to be an X and Y manager, some people simply cannot be trusted but can work to deadlines as long as you keep on top of them but within the same team you may have someone who can be left and trusted. You will get the same results but with different methods.

I remember reading a story about Jose Mourinho and Mario Balotelli. Jose Mourinho is famous for his ability to manage individuals and players have said that they don’t know how but he always seems to get the best out of them, however even he stuggles.

Jose Mourinho

“I remember one time went to play Kazan in the Champions League. In that match I had all my strikers injured. No Milito, no Eto’o, I was really in trouble and Mario was the only one.

"Mario got a yellow card in the 42nd minute, so when I go to the dressing room at half-time I spend about 14 minutes of the 15 available speaking only to Mario.

"I said to him, ‘Mario, I cannot change you, I have no strikers on the bench, so don’t touch anybody and play only with the ball. If we lose the ball no reaction. If someone provokes you, no reaction, if the referee makes a mistake, no reaction.' The 46th minute, red card."

This shows that even the finest man managers in the world struggle at times and that at times you cannot be an X manager or a Y manager, you have to constantly slide the scale to get the best from that individual when required.

There are other examples that can be given as to why my Theory works and I don’t doubt there are people who question my theory just like the way I question McGregors. However to be a successful manager you have to have a successful team just like in football, as I’ve said a many business meetings, there’s no use being the top goal scorer in the league if your team gets relegated.

We must always remember what team stands for

 

Together

Everyone

Achieves

More

 

Thank you

It's only a game

As the great Bill Shankly once said “Some people think football is a matter of life and death. I don't like that attitude. I can assure them it is much more serious than that”. Even as a Man Utd fan I still respect what Shankly did as a manager, however sadly he was wrong. Football is just a game.

I love football as much as the next person and during pre season I feel like my life is empty. I’ve been a mascot for Port Vale and shed tears over United; I love the banter that happens in football. I loved it when Roy Carroll dropped the ball against Tottenham and was so far in the net even the fishermen of England felt the ball. I argued that it never crossed the line even though I know it did, winding people up and singing “we’ll do what we want”. However I take it as much as I give it and being a United fan from Stoke, believe me I get it. So why do I think Shankly was wrong?

It is only a game, I still go work on Monday as do the majority of football fans because football is a working class sport. We live for Saturdays whether we’re playing or watching but nothing winds me up more than when I hear songs about the Munich air disaster, that really makes my blood boil. There’s simply no need what so ever. 

On that terrible day in 1958 there were no Man Utd players on that plane, there were no Man City fans there were simply human beings who had all come together for the beautiful game. Twenty three people died that day including the ex Man City goalkeeper Frank Swift. Do these sick idiots who sing the songs at United fans realise that? There were a total of 10 people who weren’t affiliated with the club who died that day, again a stat that always gets lost.

Another example of why the football is only a game is the tragedy of Hillsborough. On that sad day in 1989, there was 96 Liverpool supporters killed, there were 96 people who supported Liverpool, they were people first, Liverpool supporters second. I’ve loved the last few season watching Liverpool struggle, they are our old enemy but I would never dream of making any sort of jokes or chants regarding what happened on that day. Innocent people died that day and hope that one day there will be justice for the 96!

Racism is another reason, I can never understand how “supporters” can cheer foreign players one week then shout racial abuse at them the minute they put a national shirt on. I’d love to know how the human mind works because this baffles me, we all bleed red blood regardless of our colour, and personally the minute we kick racism out the better.

At the end of the day nobody should hear chants about disasters or racism. These players and fans are human beings and the minute people recognise this, the game will become even more beautiful.

Thank you for reading

Bloody Overpaid Footballers!

Reading the headline you may think that I'm having a rant about footballers wages. However it's the opposite, I'm defending footballers wages, the title is just the most common sentence I hear regarding footballers wages.

Every time a footballer signs a new contract and the papers "guess" at the reported wage the player will be getting (which is usually wrong) everybody pipes up "he doesn't deserve that!". There's nurses working 60 hours a week earning less than he makes in 3 days!

Now please don't think for one minute I'm knocking the hardworking staff of Britain, I'm not, nurses, soldiers, police, firemen and many other important services all deserve more money than they get. However just because Cristiano Ronaldo gets a reported £230k a week this doesn't mean he doesn't deserve or earn it because he doesn't save lives.

Britain's biggest export is Financial Services. We don't have the vineyards that France and Spain have, we don't have the weather to grow grapes, oranges etc. What we sell is knowledge and as the saying goes "knowledge is power". Footballers are a commodity, they are no different than knowledge. Footballers earn business's money and that's a fact. When Cristiano Ronaldo made his move to Madrid the fee was to be reported at £80 million, with a £12 million a year contract over 5 years. Meaning before bonus's and any other extras Ronaldo would cost Madrid £140 million. Now that might be Lord Sugar's pocket change but ultimately it's a lot of money. What was more interesting though was that Madrid estimated they could make this figure back in less than 6 months through merchandise! Technically meaning Ronaldo had cost them nothing.

Looking closer to home and being a Man Utd supporter when Wayne Rooney kicked up a fuss and was sent packing to America, I jumped on the band wagon, let him go, who does he think he is? To answer that question he'd simply discovered his own value. Wayne now earns a reported £11.5 million pound a year. Last year Man Utd won their 19th title, they reached the final of the Champions league where they lost to arguably the greatest football team ever. However had United triumphed on that day it would have meant that the Reds had earned an estimated £21.1 million pound in prize money alone for winning the Premier League and the Champions League. This is before TV deals, merchandise and the many other ways football clubs use to bring in money. This would have covered Rooney's wages alone!

Hopefully by now you are starting to see that football players are just an investment, they are no different than buying shares in a company. If that player performs well and so does the team then the business earns more money.

Also what you have to remember is that they are just human beings, If another company offered me double my money would I leave? YES of course I would. If someone is willing to pay Wayne Rooney £11.5 million pound a year why would he not take it?

For me though we have to look at the bigger picture also. Football is a high profile sport, sorry to any Rugby, Cricket fans but this is true. However compared to other high profile sports footballers get paid a lot less that other sports men. What about film stars and musicians? Nothing ever seems to get said about them? Below is a list of high earning sportsmen, movie stars and musicians. I will aim to rank this so that you can see the difference.

Sources are various websites and figures may vary.

Oprah Winfrey	£181.25 Million
Bon Jovi	£78.13 Million
Leonardo Di Caprio	£48.13 Million
Howard Stern	£47.5 Million
Fernando Alonso (F1)	£26.75 Million
Matt Ryan (American Football)	£20 Million
Alex Rodriguez (Baseball)	£20 Million
Rashard Lewis (Basketball)	£12.5 Million
Cristiano Ronaldo	£12 Million

I've tried to look at the highest earner from each area, as you can see Ronaldo does rub shoulders with a Basketball player but after that he's not even close. For me I really don't see what talent Oprah has and Howard Stern has just used shock tactics to bring in radio listeners, again no real talent just right time right place.

So as you can see, footballers are very well paid, however most have a gift, they have to work hard to get where they are and to stay there they have to work equally as hard. They earn money for there companies. However in the grand scheme of the "celebrity world" they are not well paid, they are actually amongst the lowest paid and too rest my case even more, JEDWARD earned £3 million each in 2010!!

Thank you for reading.

Chay

Grass roots. Now that’s entertainment.

I brushed upon grass roots football in my previous blog Support your local team and it's something that I have a massive opinion on.


I love to play football and always have done. For me it's the greatest sport on the planet, I remember school holidays and playing for 12 hours a day, we didn't need feeding, football was our food! My friends and I played in all weather, it didn't matter to us, as long as we had a football and goal.

My dad took me to lads and dads when I was 7 and we formed a team called Kestrels, every team had an animals name, god only knows why. We were rubbish though, why? because we were young. I remember losing games by margins of 20 goals, I've cried after losing and I wasn't the only one! Did we quit? no! and why? because we loved the game so much! as time went on we grew older and a little wiser and went through a season losing only one cup game, we were giving out the 20 goals now.

 

Back then there was no over protective health and safety rules, we carried wooden goals to the pitch and if someone got a splinter, our parents did call a solicitor they just took it out! Unbelievable to think a problem like that could be solved so easily! I continued to play football all through high school and our team only split up due to us being too old for the league.

I love grass roots football and I still play now. It's gritty, real and there's no pampered superstars. These players play for the love of the game, they don't get paid to play, in fact it's the opposite WE PAY to play! This morning I went to watch two different Sunday league matches. Two of my old Sunday league teams, one won 4-1 and the other lost 4-0. 3 hours of football and I'd seen 9 goals! how much did it cost me to see this? NOTHING this entertainment was free! there's no worrying about finishing 8th instead of 7th because it'll cost a million pound to the big fat chairman in his big fat office. These lads give their blood, sweat and tears and then go to work on Monday.

Fans want goals, it's a fact of life, big money changes hands for goal scorers and why? because goals win games and winning games wins trophies! Football isn't rocket science. With grass roots you'll get what you want. Sadly my new Saturday team lost 8-1 yesterday, bad for me but fantastic for a neutral wanting to kill time on a Saturday afternoon.

I'm not saying don't watch the Premier league, Championship and other professional leagues. What I am saying is if your at a lose end, go to your nearest grass roots ground and if they sell pies, buy one, if they charge £2 to get in pay it. why? You may ask. The answer is simple, because the more money we pump into grass roots the stronger our national side will become! It doesn't take a genius to work this out. If we invest in the clubs they can invest in better training facilities, more coaches can have their coaching badges paid for.

For me this is what supporting your local team really means and by supporting grass roots football we can make our national team strong again. 

Thank you for reading.

Supporting your local team

Support your local team! That’s all I ever hear. It seems to have become a fashionable jibe as witless football fans look at ways to attempt “banter” with football fans that don’t support the team of their city.

However as the old saying goes, never judge a book by its cover. There are reasons why people support the team that they do. I personally support Man Utd and I’m from Stoke-on-Trent. Why? Is the question I’ve always been asked. Simply because my uncle did and he influenced me at a young age.  I have no idea why he supported them but what we have to remember is that kids are impressionable!

Glory hunter, the biggest thing I hear and if I’m honest it’s the one dig that does get under my skin a little. I have supported Man Utd since I was around 5 and during this time Liverpool were dominant. I was 11 when United won their first Premier League title.

But what exactly does “support your local team” actually mean. I played for a Saturday football team for 8 years which was ran less than 1 mile from my front door. Does that not mean I support my local team more than others?

Taking Stoke-on-Trent as a classic example, there are only 2 professional football teams in the 17^th largest city in the UK. One now sells out weekly and the other struggles to get 5000 fans. As my other blog stated what an amazing job Pulis has done it’s no coincidence that Stoke’s ground now sells out every week. However it was only 5 years ago that they struggled to get 15 000, which always leads me to the dig, “did you buy your Stoke shirt before they got promoted or after?” So where have the other 12 000 “supporters” come from? I personally have no answer to this question!! Maybe they’ve done the wrong thing and switched across the city from Vale Park to the Brit.

But what about the others? Kidsgrove Athletic are a semi professional football team from Stoke. I found it interesting to read that in 2001 Kidsgrove had a population of 24 112. For arguments sakes let say that 70% of this town don’t like football or are too young to go. That means there are 7233 Kidsgrove fans available. However in the 2009/2010 season Kidsgrove had an average attendance of just 157!! So where exactly are the other 7076 football fans! They probably support another team. However it is these hypocritical fans that are to blame for killing grass roots football. There is nothing wrong in supporting Stoke, Man Utd, Port Vale, Liverpool etc but most people can’t get to their teams games, or if they do attend their home games can’t get to away games, so why not get down to Kidsgroves ground and get behind your “local” team!

Before everyone jumps on my back, I still continue to play Saturday football and when I’m free I try to attend Port Vale games as I can’t afford to go to Manchester . You can also find me around other Staffordshire County Senior League grounds watching and getting behind grass roots football.

This for me is evidence alone that people are hypocrites and do not support their local team, even ones that claim that they do! At the end of the day we all love and support the team we do; does it really matter why we support that team? I think not. In my honest opinion I think we should support who we do whatever the reason and get behind our grass roots team!

Thank you for reading

Are Stoke City killing the beautiful game?

Growing up a Man Utd supporter in a working class area of Stoke-on-Trent 2 miles from the Victoria Ground, meant that I was often made to feel about as welcome as a bad smell in an astronaut suit! I still wore my red shirt with pride.

Back then Stoke were a 3rd division team and believe it or not Port Vale were the dominant local side (my 2nd team) only dreamers would have imagined a 27'500 all seater stadium and playing in the top tier of English football. Well it was once said, "If you haven't got a dream, how are you going to have a dream come true?" well for the Stoke faithful that dream came true in 2008 and the once League Cup champions were back in the top flight, but how?

I personally have always been a fan of the Clough philosophy of football and often quote the great man “If God had meant football to be played in the air he would have put grass in the sky” I love to watch the way Barcelona pass the ball and move around the pitch as if they were floating on air.

However this is a far cry from the way that Stoke play. Tony Pulis is in his second spell at the club and I remember "die hard" fans slagging "TP" and calling for his head, that was until that glorious day in 2008. Since then they have lost to Man City in the Fa Cup final and now playing in Europe.

I hate the way that Stoke play and make sure I let every Stoke fan I know aware. However the respect and admiration I have for Puils is massive. His team lines up like a military front line. They are strong, organised and most importantly united. The team ethic that has been drilled into that club is immense and maybe something Mr Wenger could install into his team!

Are Stoke a dirty team? No not in my opinion, are they are strong, physical team? Yes and is there anything wrong in this? I don't think so; Allardyce did this for years at Bolton and nobody really made a big deal out of it? Stoke haven't got players that are capable of playing football like Barca and Man Utd, so why would he try to make this team do this? Sun Tzu said in the art of war "Know your strengths and weaknesses and play to your strengths"

This is exactly what Pulis has done, with the bomb like throws by Delap causing chaos in the box, two wingers with great delivery and a back for all over 6 feet tall it's no wonder the ball spends more time in the sky than the sun. Why would it not.

This is the reason Stoke are in the top flight, because there manager is a master tactician! He plays to his strengths and doesn't let weakness get in the way. Pulis once turned up late to a game the day his mother had died, if this is the act of a committed man then there isn't one.

Reading this anybody who knows me may not believe what they reading. Any chance I get to criticise "the mighty potters" I take and with a big grin on my face. However at the end of the day football is just a game and life does go on, we should salute people who are tacticians as tactics are still an art within the game and beauty lies within the eye of the beholder.

To answer my question. No stoke aren't killing the beautiful game and Tony Pulis I salute you.

Why the demise of Arsenal could help England

“Imagine the worst situation – we lose Fabregas and Nasri, You cannot convince people you are ambitious after that" Arsene Wenger.

As "the professor" appears more like an apprentice and the majority of his best player gone, how can he convince fans that he's still got his eye on the Premier League? Van Persie will be happy to have been made club captain but as he looks around the changing room he must see ghosts of glories gone by.

Last season it was Arsenal's attack which meant they finished 4th. The defense was a sham and a far cry from the glory days of the Dixon, Adams, Bould and Winterburn with more holes in it than a pack of polo's.

So what now? Missing all the creative flair in midfield a lot falls onto their one shining light. Jack Wilshere, this could be a massive season for the highly talented midfielder and it's probable that the longer Fabregas and Nasri stayed the more it would have stunted his progress.

With Wilshere set to come into his own and Cleverley looking already like he's been in Man Utd's first team for years the future of Englands centre midfield already looks strong.