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Karl
Senior Member
USA
914 Posts |
 Posted - Mar 06 2006 : 08:58:54 AM
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Allardyce unrivalled in eye for detail
By Oliver Kay
SAM ALLARDYCE ROCKED BACK IN HIS chair, took a deep breath, leant forward and began talking in hushed tones about England's right-sided conundrum. “The biggest problem we have in this country is that people shut the right side of their brain off,” he said, perhaps to the relief of David Beckham. “That's your creative side, but there's too many people in this country who don't engage it.”
Bolton Wanderers have at times been accused of lacking creativity, but flair and imagination of another type abound at the Reebok Stadium. Allardyce has talked often enough about the expertise of his vast backroom staff and the various innovative techniques they employ — computer data analysis, motivational videos, sports psychology, ice baths, tai chi, even Chinese medicine — but the theme of the day is creativity, not in the Jay-Jay Okocha sense but in terms of what can be achieved in football by thinking outside the box.
Discussion of the England job is off-limits beyond his repetition that “everyone knows I'd like the opportunity to be interviewed and that's as much as I want to say”, but if the FA is prepared to invite him to Soho Square, it will find a candidate with far more to recommend him than a British passport to pacify the John Bull factions who never warmed to Sven-Göran Eriksson.
Allardyce's public profile may be all about the “Big Sam” persona — gruff, uncompromising, opinionated — but far more important are the big ideas and the grand vision that he would hope to sell them. “I don't just manage footballers, I manage people,” he said. “That's my strength. And I get the best out of them.”
And he has done, not only reviving the careers of Okocha, Youri Djorkaeff, Iván Campo, Kevin Davies and others who had fallen on hard times, but also transforming a hot-headed youngster named Kevin Nolan into a captain as well as an excellent midfield player, Ricardo Gardner from an erratic winger into one of the best left backs in the Premiership and Jussi Jaaskelainen into one of the league's most consistent goalkeepers, Saturday's aberrations against Newcastle United apart.
It is Allardyce's success in getting the best out of people that gives him the confidence to challenge Beckham's assertion that the next England manager needs to have experience of Champions League football. He may yet get it next season if he stays at Bolton — “and what a magnificent feat that would be” — but he responded to Beckham by saying that “you don't need to be anything apart from a great manager, if that's what you are”.
And while some have still to be convinced that he is as great as he thinks, Allardyce would certainly bring a novel approach if he and the Bolton brains trust were to decamp to Soho Square.
When Allardyce talks of knowledge, he is not threatening to name the Kansas City Wizards left back but rather talking about the expertise that he and his staff at Bolton have accumulated. “It's what comes from working with players from 17 different countries and 12 different leagues, including World Cup winners and European Cup winners,” he said. “It comes from the scouting department and the global knowledge they've acquired, not just in terms of who plays where but every aspect of the culture of football and footballers.”
Nor is it only football. “I'm not sure any other club has researched as far as we have to widen our knowledge,” he said. Bolton have sent staff to work with American football teams, basketball teams, even Formula One teams, to pick up new ways of improving performance. They have used international business recruitment firms to help identify and alleviate potential problems with integrating overseas players (question: when did you last hear of any of Bolton's foreign legion pining for home?) and they have implemented dozens of other ideas to ensure that, as far as is possible, everything they do, on and off the field, is geared to success.
“With everything we do, from signing a player to taking a set-play, we do everything we can to make sure it goes the way we want it to,” he said. “You can't leave anything to chance. It's like Gary Player used to say, ‘The harder I practise, the luckier I get.'
“When we send a team out, we need to know we've given them everything they need, in terms of knowledge and preparation, to win that match. We have all these motivational techniques to make sure they're stimulated every time they go on to the pitch. After we identify a possible signing, we go through a process of elimination to see if they meet our criteria. If they don't, we look elsewhere.”
It has not always been thus. On transfer deadline day in 2003, Allardyce gambled on signing three loan players he had never seen. But everything at Bolton is monitored so carefully — from the players' performance on his beloved ProZone system to their eating habits and just about everything else — that nothing is left to chance. They even sent three staff to the African Cup of Nations to assess their players' training and diets to minimise the risk of degeneration in their time away from the club. Even José Mourinho would be impressed by that.
It was put to Allardyce that international management, in terms of time as well as power, would lack the scope he requires, but he disagrees. “International management is 95 per cent preparation,” he said. Would he care to elaborate? “No,” he said, pointing out that we are straying into forbidden territory. “But the possibilities are endless.”
As for what type of international manager Allardyce would be, some will have their preconceptions, but he would challenge them. “Firstly, we don't play long balls any more than Liverpool or Chelsea, but when they do it we get told that it's a long pass,” he said. “Secondly, you play to your strengths. If I was manager of a top, top club with top players and huge resources, my players would be better than the other team's players 95 per cent of the time and we'd play a completely different style to how we do at Bolton, although there would be a lot of core values that I'd want to retain.”
Earlier in the conversation, Allardyce had strayed into discussion of Greece's success in the last European Championship finals. “That was a coach who imposed a belief and an organisational structure and got his players to buy into that,” he said. “You can't win anything without that structure, without belief, without the will. Muhammad Ali would tell you that. ‘The will must be stronger than the skill.'
“There's scientists who will tell you that spirit, because it can't be measured, doesn't exist. Bollocks. It does exist. And when you see it in a group of footballers, it can be a very powerful thing. But it doesn't come out by accident. And that's where your staff come in. You work on ways of bringing it out. And that comes down to using your brain and being creative.” |
Karl |
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Allardyce unrivalled in eye for detail
