A recent academic article summarizing the economic literature on managers distinguishes between people managers and project managers. People managers are those adapted to a technology where individual workers can be monitored and their task and outcomes can be separately measured. Then a people’s manager main tasks are the selection of individuals and setting appropriate incentives. A project manager manages teams, where it is impossible to separate the contributions of individuals. It would be counterproductive to base incentives on individual measures.
Football (soccer) managers or coaches are clearly project managers. Their main tasks are to coordinate and motivate a team of players. Their task vector also includes player selection. The main mechanism for coordination is tactical choice. Good football coaches are rare. In general, player talent contributes much more to success than managerial talent.
But, as Peeters and Van Ours explain in a contribution to an IEB Report, those very few managers that do make a difference can be decisive, especially in contexts of great equality, usually at the top of tournaments. In the economy in general, as argued by Van Reenen and others, good managerial practices contribute a lot to explaining productivity differences among firms.
An example that coaches usually do not make a difference is that, on average, it is imposible to distinguish the change in performance of a team that sacks the manager after a bad streak (Koeman, in the example of Peeters and Van Ours), from the performance of a team that sticks to the same manager (Valverde).
It is hard to predict who will be a good football coach for a given team. A good coach in one team may be bad in another one (ask David Moyes). In a firm, a good sales worker may not be a good plant manager. A good player may not be a good coach (ask Lampard, Rooney) as a good horse does not make a good jokey, but sometimes it could (Guardiola, Zidane). Even when statistical evidence or case studies identify clear success stories, it is difficult to explain exacty why a given manager has been successful, given the multiplicity of contributing factors and the multidimensionality of managerial tasks.
Hansi Flick in FC Barcelona and Luis Enrique Martínez in PSG are recent cases of clear contributions to team success. They inherited teams with individual players of the same quality or worse than the teams of their failing predecessors, and they improved the results significantly.
Both have several features in common, like their attacking style, the pressure of their teams on the other side of the pitch, and their long, learning careers. Flick was many years number two of the managerial staff at the German national team, before winning the Champions League as the head coach of Bayern Munich, to fail later as number one of the national team. Luis Enrique started at the second team of FC Barcelona, then failed in AS Roma, went to Celta de Vigo, coached the first team of FC Barcelona to win a Champions League (with Neymar, Messi and Suarez in their best years), and had a mixture of successes and failures with the Spainsh national team.
Both have managed to coordinate and motivate a multi-national, multi-ethnic, pluri-lingual coalition of players, including some of amazingly young age. They have put the collective before the individual stars. Both have used old ideas in new forms: systematic off-side trap, free positions (individual freedom in a collective design: what is the position of Hakimi, Démbélé or Doué?),… There are also differences: they have notably different styles in front of the media.
The future will tell if they can sustain this level of excellence for several years, or will see new examples of failing to use golden years to prepare for a sustainable era of success.
