Famous journalist Mykola Nesenyuk shared his thoughts on the role of a coach and the role of players in football on his Facebook page.
Every time I hear deep-thinking conversations about the intricacies of football tactics, I remember August 2003, when Dynamo Kyiv, led by coach Oleksiy Mykhailychenko, failed to beat Zaporizhzhia Metalurg, led by coach Mykhailo Fomenko, away from home. In the last minute, the home team's player Nevmyvaka equalized the score and the match ended with a 2-2 draw. After the game, one of the local journalists asked Fomenko about the tactics that helped his team not to lose to , the champions of Ukraine.
- "What tactics?" the coach replied, "You have to see which games they have and which we have!
I remember these words of the outstanding football player and coach who recently left us better than anything else he said during his career. Because it is primarily the players who produce results in football. It all depends on their skills and desire to play. While the latter is entirely within the power of a motivational coach, the former does not depend on any coach.
Otherwise, European superclubs would not pay fabulous millions for outstanding players or those who can become outstanding. No Guardiola, no Ancelotti, or any other world-renowned coach can pull the same Zaporizhzhia Metalurh out of the depths of the first league today. Because success requires players. And the greater the success, the better they have to be.
Do not think that I am denying the role of the coach at all. This role is huge! It is the coach who is able to make sure that the players show their best in the game, finding a place for each of them in the team's game where they will bring the most benefit, where they will best reveal their potential. There is nothing particularly complicated about this - all the secrets of training football teams are now in the public domain.
Why, then, are there not so many strong coaches? Because knowing how to play football is not enough for a coach. The players need to believe the coach! And for this, a coach needs a name! A reputation gained either on the football field as a player or on the bench as a coach. In every team, from minor leagues to super clubs, there comes a time when players no longer believe that the coach's instructions can bring success. Then the coach should be changed. This is what is done everywhere and always.
The main thing in this process is to match the coach's authority to the level of the players. It's funny to me when some domestic "football experts" start to mold this or that coach into a kind of miracle worker. Most often, this is done for a reason. Anyone who is interested in football can easily recall several Ukrainian football coaches, or coaches from abroad working in our country, who mercilessly promote themselves through certain media or certain journalists. This is normal - advertising is the engine of progress.
Another thing is that each of these publicized specialists, in the event of a completely predictable failure, begins to complain about the lack of players of the right qualifications in the team. And when they are brought these players, and there is still no result, they begin to say something about tactics that these players, it turns out, are not able to understand
If not for me, the best example of tactical training in our football was the method of Volodymyr Yemets, the coach of Dnipro in the eighties of the last century. It is said that before the game he would go into the locker room and say: "Seventy-five hundred players!". This meant that in two hours, the players could earn four monthly salaries of an engineer. As a result, there were as many people as you want to play for Dnipro as there were players, and they gave it their all on the field to win! Unfortunately, there were no real world-class players on that team. That's why they were successful only in the domestic arena. I am sure that this tactic still works in our football today. Especially when higher bonuses are promised not only to players. For some reason, I have no doubt that the coaches of Bukovyna Chernivtsi, who are rumored to be about to invest a lot of money, will definitely find the same tactics that will help the team move up in class. And the coaches of Bukovyna's opponents will not!
What is the conclusion? Strategically, for the success of our football, we need to bring up really highly qualified players, which is always more profitable than bringing in foreigners. When we have these players in the right amount, the coaches will somehow find a tactic. When there are no players, no tactics will help. It was proved by Mykhailo Fomenko, may his memory be blessed!
Mykola NESENYUK