football test

When someone asks you: "Can he play?", they are usually referring to a player's technical qualities and his ability to read the game. But when they ask: "Can he coach?", the question is much more complex because it depends on the coaching category and the specific role he plays. Although coaches come in many guises, they can be put into three general groups - front-line team managers, player developers, and coach educators. So what is the difference between the various branches of the coaching profession?

The high-profile prowlers of the technical area - club coaches such as Arsène Wenger (Arsenal FC) and Frank Rijkaard(FC Barcelona) or national coaches such as Otto Rehhagel (Greece) and Oleg Blokhin (Ukraine) - have the task of winning top-level games. In the entertainment age, most of the time this has to be achieved with style and panache if the wrath of the media and public is to be avoided.

Roy Hodgson, head coach of the Finnish national team, summed up the requirements when he said: "The modern coach needs a philosophy, an expert eye and intuition." If we were building the winners' profile, we could add that he must also be articulate, focused, mentally strong, intelligent, decisive, and energetic. The perceptive and lively Giovanni Trapattoni emphasised that the day-to-day coaching of a club was an entirely different proposition from handling a national team. The Italian master coach once pronounced: "With a club I was a sculptor, and with the national team I was a blender."

In the field of player development, youth coaches, academy directors, technical trainers and grassroots organisers/teachers try to create a learning environment which nurtures young footballers. For me, the youth coach who works with talented players needs to be honest, open, passionate, fit, organised, patient, practical(a man of the pitch), knowledgeable (a football and teaching expert), demanding, and, above all, young at heart. Working with the young can be an exhausting business, and the coach needs to match the players' enthusiasm.

Academy directors, while playing the role of practical coach, also have overall responsibility for talent management. With the support of their staff, they must identify, attract, develop, manage, motivate and keep young players of potential at their club, guiding them along the road to football maturity. With elite youth players, either at a club or with the national youth squad, coaching is fundamentally an educational process. As Juan Santisteban, the excellent coach of the Spanish youth teams for the last decade, has often stated: "As usual, I was less concerned with results than with adding to the boys' education." Of course, coaches and players want to win, but not at the expense of a young player's health and development. Those who work in grassroots football have a similar philosophy because the grassroots players' welfare and enjoyment supersedes team outcomes - in fact, a win-at-all cost mentality has no place in the grassroots game or, for that matter, in elite youth football.

Technical directors, such as Sir Trevor Brooking (England) and Aimé Jacquet (France), oversee all aspects of technical work in their respective associations. One domain under their control is coach education, and in some countries this area is handled by a specialist coach education director: Andreas Morisbak (Norway) and Mariano Moreno (Spain) are two good examples of technicians who organise the training of student coaches, the reeducation of those in employment, and the further development of their own staff coaches. The Italian FA's Franco Ferrari and the German FA's Erich Rutemöller are recognised as two of the best European coach educators, particularly in the coaching work they have done with Pro-licence candidates in their respective associations. Many coaches at top clubs in Italy and Germany will testify to the support and wise counsel they received from their 'professors' - football teachers who taught them how to coach rather than what to coach.

Few coaches have the necessary background or diverse interests to work in all categories of the coaching profession.

Gérard Houllier, however, is one of the select few who immediately comes to mind when we talk of the 'all-rounder'.

The Lyon coach is the current champion of France; a UEFA Cup winner with Liverpool; a European youth champion with a team which included Thierry Henry, David Trezeguet and others; and a leading coach educator when he was technical director of the French Football Federation. Recently, the French newspaper L'Equipe asked me to describe Gérard's coaching qualities. I described him as a "Da Vinci Coach" because of his expertise in the art and science of football, and because he has shown his ability to make an impact on all grades and sectors of the game. Seeing the big picture in football can be invaluable, as UEFA Champions League winners Sir Alex Ferguson and Louis van Gaal have shown over the years.

"Can he coach?". Ultimately, the value of a coach depends on his ability to work in a particular coaching category and on how well he is able to perform in the specific role. Of course, certain fundamental skills are required by all coaches, including the ability to read the game. As Mario Zagallo once said: "A good coach is not the one who sees the game, but the one who reads the game." Winning a title, although great, is not the only way to contribute to the success of the game. Or to put it another way: Not all coaches of value live in the media spotlight.