Putting On a Show
Manic managers on the touchlines
It may be difficult to believe now, when observing the latest outbreak of managerial pitch-side pyrotechnics, but there was a time on match days when a club’s manager appeared to be the calmest man in the ground.
Dressed like the chief clerk from a local bank, in a sober, often cheap looking suit, white shirt and plain, dark tie, with the seasonal addition of a well-worn mackintosh, or – and this always gave him the roguish air of a second-hand car salesman – a sheep-skin jacket, he would emerge from the tunnel sometimes up to five minutes after his team had taken to the pitch.
With a steady, but purposeful, walk he would move along the touchline to the dugout – as what would later become the ‘Technical Area’ was then known – with the occasional brief, almost embarrassed, acknowledgement to shouts of support from the crowd.
Once in position in the often semi-subterranean box, he would remain seated for the entirety of the first half, haunted eyes constantly following play; accepting with a resigned stoicism any perceived injustices which befell his team. Occasionally he’d share a thought with his trusted assistant alongside him, and, if the game was going their way, crack a thin, tired smile at a presumably blokey aside.
At half-time, again without fuss, he’d accompany his players down the tunnel, and when they returned ten minutes later the same routine would be followed once more. At the end of the match there’d be a civilised and seemingly sincere hand-shake with his opposite number, followed by a pat on the back for each of his players as they passed him on their way to the dressing room. Then, without so much as a backward glance, he’d disappear into the tunnel, away from the crowd’s view.
So how did we get from these essentially conservative men, used to carrying out the majority of their work in the privacy and seclusion of the training ground, to the performance artists who now stalk the touchlines at almost every level of the game? What causes them to behave in such a way, and just what do fans think of their actions? And, finally, when chair- men are assiduously studying CVs for their next big appointment, where exactly does ‘Match-day Pitch-side Theatricals’ appear on the list of skill-sets required?
The boom in the public’s interest in football after England’s World Cup success in 1966, and television’s sudden awakening to the fact that the people’s game could pull in audiences to rank alongside their offerings of variety programmes like Sunday Night at the London
Palladium is an obvious starting point. As programmes built around football expanded from straightforward highlights of a single match, and the broadcasters endeavoured to bring a back story to each game, they looked to those involved to add colour and appropriate comments.
Players were, in many cases, unable to articulate succinctly; referees weren’t allowed to talk; chairmen and directors considered themselves far too important, and had little, if any, respect for a medium which they regarded with deep suspicion; fans were considered uninformed, their opinions worthless, apart from the occasional simplistic five second sound-bite; and so, almost by default, the managers became the face of their clubs. These men, who, in some cases, were only just slightly more capable than the players in expressing themselves coherently, were thrust into the TV spotlight, their views given all the gravitas of a Prime Ministerial address to the nation, or the musings of the foremost philoso- phers of the day.
Slowly, the character manager began to emerge. Sir Alf Ramsey was deified for a brief couple of years following ’66. But he was undemonstrative on the touchline and ill at ease in front of the cameras with his clipped pronunciation and occasionally bizarre phraseology, and perhaps because of this, or maybe the restrictive attitudes so prevalent at the Football Association, he didn’t become a regular talking head, either during or after his England tenure. However Bill Shankly,
Tommy Docherty, Malcolm Allison and Brian Clough, followed later by Terry Venables and Ron Atkinson, were all beloved by the media for their ability to produce the pithy one-liner, while Don Revie was, rather like his Leeds side, grudgingly respected but very rarely television gold.
Although still a long way removed from the behaviour we witness on a regular basis today, they were all far more expressive during and after matches than their predecessors had been – as well as many of their contemporaries – and were therefore important stepping stones in the evolutionary process which leads to the current crop of touchline thespians.
To further reinforce television’s culpability in so markedly changing the behaviour of managers in general, the multiplying of television cameras within grounds – with one at each match seemingly dedicated exclusively to broadcasting every reaction and nervous twitch of the men in the dugout – served only to accelerate the rate at which managers viewed themselves as important a match-day performer as anyone on the pitch.
Some outpourings were purely celebratory, and very clearly of the moment; witness Bob Stokoe’s Usain Bolt-in-a-mac sprint across the Wembley turf in 1973, or David Pleat’s 1983 pixie-like galloping and hopping on the Maine Road pitch. But as football approached the Premier League era a number of managers in England were ready to move on from frantic gesticulating and gruff bellowing to the kind of touchline behaviour which, up until then, had been sniffily regarded as something favoured only by the ‘Continentals’. All they needed was the appropriate platform to guarantee maximum exposure, and Sky’s ‘Whole New Ball Game’ handed that to them.
With television cameras at every match in the brand new Premier League, and with far more games being broadcast live, FIFA decided that now was the time to play their part in presenting managers with a more suitable stage for their increasingly flamboyant behaviour. In 1993 they defined the dimensions of the newly re-christened ‘Technical Area’. This simple action of officially establishing a zone in which managers could strut in full view of the whole stadium provided the final impetus in their transformation to full-scale entertainers. Laurence Olivier may have been the greatest theatrical actor the world has seen, but if he had had to perform with his back to a large section of his audience, while seated inside a small bunker half-sunk into the stage, it is unlikely that he would ever have received his due recognition.
With the stage in place, and a worldwide audience of millions looking on, nowadays it remains only for managers to decide which
theatrical persona they should adopt. Should they follow in the style of Arsene Wenger? Arms folded and contemplative, with a deathmask-like expression, but supplemented by sporadic outbursts of geeky celebratory fist waving, and very occasional moments of despairing, foetal position crouching a la Basil Fawlty. Or perhaps the ‘look-at-me, look-atme’ of Jose Mourinho, as personified by his touchline sprint and on the pitch wrestling with jubilant players following Demba Ba’s goal against PSG last season; an action he later described as tactical rather than attention seeking. Maybe Alan Pardew’s crazy, naked aggression, followed immediately by an almost Catholic acceptance of guilt and the punishment to come, would be more suited to others? Or, finally, the note-taking, studious-looking Brendan Rodgers, forever jotting down reminders during games to pick up milk and bread on the way home.
Fans are ambiguous in their feelings towards these touchline performances. They obviously deride the dramatics of opposing managers, believing them to be over-reacting show-offs who are simply trying to con referees; but paradoxically the vast majority appreciate and support the technical area antics of their own man, deeming any over-the-top behaviour to be born out of a deep pas- sion for their club. Very few would admit to being embarrassed by their manager’s histrionics during the course of a game, unless, of course, results start to go against them, when suddenly he becomes a preening narcissist, more concerned with self-promotion than with the team.
The perception that passion is only truly demonstrated by players crassly kissing the badge, or managers whipping themselves into a slavering, face contorting frenzy at the side of the pitch, appears to be seeping from the stands of stadiums into the boardrooms, as chairmen and directors buy into the concept, possibly to appease the more vociferous element of their supporters. As this unspoken principle gains a disproportionate importance in the higher echelons of clubs, out of work managers who are perceived as not having displayed acceptable levels of ‘commitment’ from the technical area of their previous employer could begin to see their chances of re-entering the profession becoming ever slimmer.
Football already inhabits a crazy, illogical planet, where behaviour which would be considered excessive and inappropriate in almost any other workplace is routinely accepted, and often encouraged, as a sign that the player or manager has an emotional attachment to his club which is as intense as that of the most zealous supporter. Perhaps now is the moment for all involved to step back, take a deep breath and look objectively at the message that their conduct conveys. Passion, it was once said, makes idiots of the cleverest men; not understanding that passion is a complex set of emotions which isn’t exclusively displayed by theatrical posturing can make the same clever men look even more idiotic.