Player responsibility

One of the most important roles of a football manager is to motivate his team and get the best out of them, collectively and as individuals.

However, the extent to which this is often necessary perhaps speaks volumes about many modern footballers. To have made it to the top level in the professional game surely a player must have some amount of self motivation? There must be within them a burning desire to play the game? They must want to play their best every week out of professional pride, if nothing else?

Apparently this isn’t the case with many players. They really do need that kick up the backside, that shout from the sideline, that verbal dressing down in the changing room.

It’s understandable that this is needed to a degree but when you see players out on the pitch lacking commitment, looking disinterested or, as fans say, “not playing for the shirt”, whose fault is that? Is it entirely the manager’s or do the players need to take a look at themselves and question their own attitudes?

The answer is not a simple one or the other, it is a little of both but it is pertinent to wonder how many times players with bad attitudes may have cost a manager his job.

Of course the manager has a massive influence on the team but any footballer worth his salt should give it his all day in day out in training and in every single match. To see players who lose fitness, become out of shape and lose the hunger to perform at their best is sad but it is largely their own fault. It is their own lack of professionalism, their own lack of passion for the game that led them down that path. Perhaps this is the price of the lucrative nature of modern football. Footballers can earn a good living by sitting on the bench every week. Maybe it has become too much about the money and not enough about the football for some players.

A common phrase when a manager is forced out of a club is that he “lost the dressing room”. Players must respect the manager and the respect must be earned. There must be a good atmosphere amongst the squad. But the players have an important role to play in that too. If some players kept a rein on their ego then perhaps less dressing rooms would be lost and squads would have a greater togetherness.

When things are going bad at any club the response from the fans is almost always a) blame the manager or b) blame the board.

I’ll suggest a third option that should be given more credence: c) blame the players. They are the ones earning large amounts of money to strut out onto the pitch and let your club down and let you down.

Hold those to account who are directly responsible for the poor results. That is not to say that boards and managers should be immune from criticism, far from it, but players get off a little lightly sometimes. There will always be one or two scapegoats in the team in individual games but when on a run of poor form the supporters will lay into the board and the manager, even if the team on the park is good enough in terms of ability but is hugely underperforming. There’s only so much that can be done from the board room and the touchline – the players make the difference. Or, at least, they should. It’s time for footballers to take greater responsibility.