I'm just amazed at how many people seem eager to become a coach, a job that makes most other jobs look stress-free.
You may have difficult days at work from time to time but you don't have the hot breath of 50,000 people blaming you when one of the over-bred multi-millionaires you send out to implement your policies have a bit of an off-day.
When absolutely everything that could go wrong has gone wrong you don't have to go and face a room-full of hacks who seem completely at a loss as to how to fix their own business but can immediately tell you where you're going wrong in yours.
You don't turn on the radio to hear a load of hacks gleefully discussing how soon you'll be fired.
I don't think anybody puts themselves through that kind of thing for the money.
"I don't think anybody puts themselves through that kind of thing for the money."
ReplyDeleteA few do, at the lower end of football's financial spread, whether through relative lack of career earnings or overeager expenditure thereof.
Most, however, do it because they're addicted to the game their bodies can no longer play. Sam Allardyce told me it's nothing like playing, but it's the next best thing; his sentiments echo down the years, as those who can longer lace up boots ascend to management, which they fancy is a promotion but doesn't make them nearly as rich and, in a somewhat related point, always makes the much more expendable.
Besides, both sorts – the skint and the addicted – are usually unqualified to do much else. There's only so many seats for pundits, and footballers aren't the most loquacious: if you think the ones on the telly are bad, you want to try talking to some of the undereducated teenage millionaires we have to interview. Nor is it journophobia: off the record, most will speak more volubly but rarely more intelligently.