Clubs fall flat on succession planning for next manager
Not since the days of the Anfield Boot Room has there been any degree of success with giving job to those on inside
Football talks a lot about succession planning when it comes to appointing managers – but does very little about it. A few years ago the Football Association suggested that Bryan Robson was being put in place as Terry Venables’s assistant with a view to him becoming the England manager. It did not happen.
With Gareth Southgate it has been different, so fair play to Dan Ashworth, who was the FA’S technical director and saw the value of promoting from within after recognising the potential in the former under-21 coach.
Right now the England women’s coach, Phil Neville, is positioning himself to succeed Southgate.
With clubs it is even more unusual and, maybe, inherently more difficult.
Rarely does the assistant, or someone within the organisation, succeed the manager. Not since the days of the Liverpool Boot Room, in fact, has it happened with any degree of success or consistency.
Mostly football clubs go for the opposite of what they did last time. So if the manager is a disciplinarian, go for someone who is more of a man-manager. If the regime is seen as lax, go for someone who works the players harder. But, strategically, it does not make sense.
I call it the ketchup approach – one manager allows the condiment on the menu; the guy who follows him takes it off. And vice versa. This is no joke – it happened at Tottenham Hotspur when Juande Ramos succeeded Martin Jol in 2007 and banished ketchup from the canteen amid a general complaint that the players were not fit enough, which infuriated Jol.
So what is going on at Manchester City, where Giovanni van Bronckhorst is on the payroll as a consultant for the next few months? Over the weekend it was reported that the former Feyenoord coach was the leading candidate to succeed Pep Guardiola and while that does appear unlikely, he is certainly working for the club, although not as a full-time employee, and observing how they do things not just at City but at the City Football Group, which includes New York City, Melbourne City and other investments in Spain, Japan and Uruguay.
It may be that, down the line, van Bronckhorst takes a job at one of those other clubs, goes away and manages elsewhere – and maybe then comes back to City a few years later.
It is not quite the same relationship that City had with Patrick Vieira, who ended his playing career there, was groomed as a possible manager, coached in New York before breaking away to take charge of Nice, but there is a similar philosophy of identifying and helping talent.
Similarly City have helped Frank Lampard, now head coach of Chelsea. Also Roy Hodgson – through his relationship with Brian