Coaches deal with a lot!
Until this past weekend, there was a sharp focus on Orlando Pirates and Malawian international striker Gabadinho Mhango’s absence and his coach Mandla Ncikazi’s reasoning for the stocky forward’s non-appearance in the team.
Affectionately known as Gaba, Mhango had been conspicuous with his absence from the misfiring Bucs team despite the great form he had shown at the 2021 African Cup of Nations held in Cameroon, where he came back with three beautiful strikes and emerged as one of the top strikers in the tournament. Coach Ncikazi drew a lot of criticism for his statement, comparing the DStv Premiership to Afcon, and he even came back to reiterate his initial statement, which is a story for another day.
There was a very interesting comment by coach Gavin Hunt during his match analysis on SuperSport TV about Mhango. To paraphrase the coach’s remarks, he said Mhango is a kind of a player that you don’t want to see during the week. You just want to see him scoring goals on the weekend. Make of this whatever you want, but it would appear that the 29-year-old is a tricky customer to deal with, but he gets the job done on the field. It is a double-edged sword for any coach to have to deal with such because on one hand you are trying to instill discipline and get everyone on the straight and narrow, while on the other hand, you also want to win games. This is, by no means, an attempt to cast aspersions on Mhango or claim to know the real story behind his absence. No one, other than Pirates, knows the real story.
Several coaches have had to deal with tricky situations when dealing with their players, which is why they are called managers and not just coaches. Their job isn’t just about what we see on the field on matchday. It is about the consistency, the application, the discipline and making sure that everyone feels important and treated equally in the team. That means even your superstar player will, from time to time, be brought down to earth so that they don’t forget the important fact that they are who they are thanks to their teammates’ support. Football is not like boxing, golf or tennis – it is a team sport and the coach has to make sure that all the pieces of the puzzle come and fit together. If your top player doesn’t toe the line, you leave them out of the team and sacrifice the results just to get the team right. That’s looking at the bigger picture, and these are some of the things football coaches have to put up with, but an ordinary supporter would never be privy to such information. It becomes an even tougher task when the coach doesn’t have the management’s full support, where management will demand certain players be selected regardless of what the coach feels.
Whether the player was training that week or not, because the team is paying a huge amount of money on the player’s salary and signing-on fee, they feel he can’t not be utilised. As much as that is important for the team, it does have a long-term impact on the wellbeing and morale because other players are watching. If a teammate is not pulling his weight while he is competing with someone who is dedicated and deserves a chance, if they don’t get given that chance it becomes easy for the coach to lose his dressing room. That’s the last thing any coach would want to go through.
If you have a strong technical team with good support from management, no one will get away with misbehaviour.
There are cases where Benedict Vilakazi, for instance, would miss training and only show up on Thursday when he knew only tactical training and possibly a 11-a-side training match would be played. He would then perform well enough to earn a place in the weekend’s matchday squad and even go on to get a starting berth. People laugh at those stories when narrated now, looking back, but at the time they happened, surely there’s a lot of damage that was caused by that behaviour in the team. If one player is allowed to do as they please, then everyone will expect to be treated the same and allowed to do as they please, which is fair enough. That’s why it is imperative for management to rally behind the coach. It is important to trust and believe in people who have been tasked with positions of authority and responsibility so that they can do their job without any interference. It is easy for people to pass judgement from a distance, but they get a completely different picture once they get close enough to the ‘action’. Until you’ve been there, you don’t really know what’s going on. As much as it is easy to criticise,
it is only fair and encouraging for people to be objective in their analysis of situations so that they can consider both sides of the story.
Which coach would just decide to keep his star player on the bench, without a reason? Why would he do that? Thembinkosi Lorch has been arguably Bucs’ best player in recent years, but there was a stage where he was completely out of the picture. He’s back now with a lot of hunger and everyone can see that “Nyoso” is regaining his form and wants to play. That’s the Lorch we all want to see and it happens a lot that a player is not in the right frame of mind, psychologically, and the technical team will be the first ones to notice that. Sometimes it happens because there’s an interest from ‘greener pastures’ or they are dealing with personal problems. All these things, little as they may seem to the naked eye, do impact on the player’s performance and then spill over to the rest of the team’s morale. Any footballer who is unhappy, for whatever reason, will never give their all to the club because they are not at their best.
When coaches make these unpopular choices, we need to try to understand and respect them because they know best. They spend more time with the players and we only see what is on television for 90 minutes. This applies to everyone and not just Mhango. If Njabulo Ngcobo isn’t playing at Kaizer Chiefs, don’t assume that coach Stuart Baxter doesn’t like him or he’s out to destroy the young talent. Try to understand from the coach’s perspective. What role does he want the player to play in his team? What are his expectations from him? Different coaches deal with players differently. There’s no right or wrong formula, but the coach’s decision is final when it comes to team matters. Anthony Laffor and Kermit Erasmus are on the record about their clashes with coach Hunt, but it never got personal. The coach continued to demand what he expected from his players and they responded even if it looked like a broken relationship at the time. That’s just how he handled them and it worked, at the end of the day, which is the most important thing.