Revealed: Harry Redknapp’s philosophy on what makes a good football manager
Putting a smile on players’ faces helps them shine in the simple game, veteran tells me in our new book
W hen the opportunity arose to work with Harry Redknapp on his new book, the one overriding motivation was to gain a privileged insight into the thinking and methods of a manager who has been among Britain’s most successful across 32 years and almost 1,400 games.
Personal anecdotes duly flowed, ranging all the way from Sir Stanley Matthews and Bobby Moore to Frank Lampard and Gareth Bale, but it was on the journey back from our last meeting that the penny dropped.
Just as after every visit – and amid tangents in conversation that could veer between his love of animals to how he grew up socialising in the same East End pubs as the Kray twins – I had left with a smile, a spring in my step and more energy for the project than when we had begun talking. “Make people feel good about themselves; tell them what they can do, not what they can’t,” he would repeatedly say.
It is a maxim that made you not want to let him down. Apply that to footballers and it soon became obvious how, in four of his six managerial jobs (Bournemouth, West Ham United, Portsmouth and Tottenham), Redknapp inspired players to highs that were unmatched in the club’s recent history.
Yes, those successes were also underpinned by an ability to judge players and balance a team, but it all still largely came back to a different quality: the intuitive manmanagement of a group of young men.
John Williams, a rugged old centreback at Bournemouth, put it best. “He could be cutting with what he said but he also made us laugh. He made me feel like the best player in the world.
“It’s a cliché but I would run through a wall for him.”
None of this is to overlook the inevitable list of mistakes and disappointments but, more than ever, Redknapp’s insights do challenge what we are sometimes now persuaded to believe is important. After all, being able to walk into a dressing-room and make people like Williams feel as they did is surely worth rather more than writing the dossier or delivering the presentation that might appeal to people giving out the jobs.
Yet the chapter on tactics may surprise those who caricature Redknapp as simply a motivator or wheeler-dealer. It was fascinating to get him talking about systems and how he was influenced by great trainingground coaches such as Malcolm Allison and Ron Greenwood, even if all his feedback from those who played under Brian Clough, Bill Shankly and Sir Alex Ferguson was that manmanagement rather than tactics was the foundation for their successes.
One repeated message from Redknapp was that he deliberately did not over-elaborate on tactics or the strengths of an opponent because he had seen too many players inhibited by an excess of information. He felt that was behind the negative approach of many teams at Euro 2016. Which all brings us to the Football Association and their flawed appointment of a series of England managers.
Take men like Greenwood, Steve McClaren, Roy Hodgson and perhaps now Gareth Southgate. Are they really the choices most likely to galvanise players and make them excited about meeting up for England? The current bandwagon for Southgate – who had not managed a senior team since being sacked by Middlesbrough in 2009 – is hard to fathom. His appointment certainly sends a strange message to Sean Dyche, Steve Bruce, Eddie Howe and, yes, even Redknapp.
Yet this genuinely is not about advancing Redknapp’s case. He quite cheerfully says that he has “no chance” and is clearly enjoying the slower pace of life. The physical and emotional toll of football management was another theme that shone through. His annual mileage would exceed 70,000 and he actually looks younger since stepping out of the day-to-day firing line.
His pure love of football at any level is unwavering – he is happier watching his grandchildren than a top Premier League game – as is his overriding message about the game’s basic simplicity. “It’s about knowing a player and getting the best out of them,” says Redknapp. “Fans and journalists overestimate managers. They actually think we are much cleverer than most of us really are.”