Orange Ramblers 2-1 Social Frees
Orange Ramblers is the strongest team currently playing at the PFS home ground and its strength is increasing rapidly through exposure to state level competitions. A day earlier, they held team Medical (3rd in last year's Div. 1) to a scoreless draw. It is my believe that the commitment to the match with Medical resulted in Orange Ramblers fielding an understrength team against Social Frees thus allowing the Social Frees (perhaps the weakest team playing in PFS) to get away with a very flattering 2-1 defeat.
Social Frees tried (but failed) to achieve a 5-3-2 formation with players being advised to play wide and to utilise both wings to secure as many corner kicks as possible given that we had taller players to dominate the goal area. The Orange Ramblers tend to play a narrower game with the ball seldom remaining at the wings for long as it is played to centrally located players who were pretty good with short passes. Alas, Social Frees players continued to play a more central game and throughout the match, obtained only one corner which was badly taken eventually. I can only say that there is a natural bias that players possessing better footballing skills are assumed to be better at football strategy as well. Hence, it can be frustrating for a manager not skilled in football techniques to advise those with better skills. Was Sir Alex Ferguson (one of the best managers of all time) an excellent football player?
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There seems to be a myth that Sir Alex Ferguson was a terrible player. Reading his autobiography he was a barnstorming centre forward who played for one of the top clubs in Scotland - Rangers - and even won a few caps for his country (which most of us can only ever dream of - even if we were born in Malaysia!). However he was never going to be one of the world's best players and the fact that he's become a brilliant manager has overshadowed his playing career. Same goes for Capello too (yes - I've read his autobiography too! :) )
I think better examples of bad players but excellent managers would be the trio of Benitez, Wenger and Mourinho who have been very successful in their own right and have had NO playing career! :)
The trick with managing is to get the respect of the players first. Once you've got that then they will do anything for you.
Maybe get two or three of the more influential players on your side, explain what you want them to do and theory then let them disseminate the information to the rest of the team. Just an idea! ;)
Unfortunately, there is actually no manager for the Social Frees. Only a facilitator who sometimes thinks and plans too much to the extent he tries at times to be the de facto manager albeit in his dreams. The game versus Ramblers has taught him that there is lots of frustration and anguish trying to manage from the sidelines (and of course just getting perhaps 15 mins play time) when instead he should be enjoying himself (win or lose) playing a full game on the field. He has learned a valuable lesson about management which is not to manage.
Management is a pain - I agree. My new team is giving me headaches like you wouldn't believe.
Playing is much more fun and frankly a lot more fulfilling! :D
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