How to Run a Football Club

Jim Keoghan

Description

How to Run a Football Club is the story of our national game. Told through a journey up the pyramid, from the muddy pitches and ramshackle changing rooms at grass-roots level to the glitz and glamour of the Premier League, the book explores that common theme that links the game at all levels - the simple love of the sport. It's there in the volunteer coaches who give up their Saturday mornings to teach kids how to play, the non-league club secretaries trying their best to get the pitch in good shape and the owners and investors risking their wealth in the unpredictable world of English football. How to Run a Football Club delves into their stories to find out what motivates the people who keep the game alive. It explores how the sport is evolving, with the growth of women's football, walking football and esports. What does it take to run a good football club? How is money, or a lack of it, changing the game? Read this book to find out.

Sujets

• Inglaterra
• England

Informations

• Publié par: Pitch Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 03 août 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781785317149
• Langue: English

Extrait

First published by Pitch Publishing, 2020
Pitch Publishing
A2 Yeoman Gate
Yeoman Way
Durrington
BN13 3QZ
www.pitchpublishing.co.uk
Jim Keoghan, 2020
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the Publisher.
A CIP catalogue record is available for this book from the British Library
Print ISBN 978 1 78531 644 9
eBook ISBN 978 1 78531 714 9
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Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. Jumpers for Goalposts
2. Out With the Old, In With the New
3. For the Love of the Game
4. Giant Steps
5. The National League
6. Give Her the Ball and a Yard of Space
7. Crisis Clubs
8. The Big Time
9. Football 2.0
10. Epilogue
Bibliography
Acknowledgements
I WOULD like to say a big thanks to everyone who agreed to be interviewed. Each person featured has been exceptionally generous with their time and I hope that they re satisfied with the outcome.
Special thanks need to go to Rotherfield Football Club who allowed me to intrude on their weekly matches and training sessions and plague their coaches with more questions than they probably bargained for.
Several sites and publications have been kind enough to allow me to reproduce their work, for which I would like to say thanks. These are: Pitch Publishing, The Warm Down , The Blizzard , Training Ground Guru , The Sunderland Echo , The Chronicle , Lynn News , ESPN, That s Liquid Football and The Bootiful Game .
At Pitch Publishing I m grateful to Paul and Jane for giving me this opportunity and would like to thank everyone else there who has been involved with the creation of the book.
On a personal level, my children, Emma and Jamie, have provided a welcome and much needed distraction from the daily grind of writing. They probably don t realise it but being around to hear about their days remains one of the greatest perks of working freelance. Through researching this book, I have even managed to introduce Jamie to the attractions of non-league football, albeit with the additional bribe of a pre-match, half-time and post-match Mars Bar.
But I save my biggest thanks, as always, for Nicky, without whom there would be no book. You have helped me throughout the process, fact-checking, reading over a subject area upon which you have zero interest and patiently correcting my appalling grasp of grammar. It s been a long slog, with its fair share of ups and downs, but I could not have got through any of it without the love and unconditional support you provide every single day.
Introduction
I T all started with dog s**t. Or to be more specific, with lots of dog s**t. A few years ago, after being endlessly nagged by my son to come and help out his football team, I reluctantly caved in and offered my (admittedly limited) services.
Memories of my own days of junior football were obviously child-centric, a world of playing for fun, of stress-free games, an administration- and responsibility-free age of joy. It never occurred to me just how much work went into those games, the admin, the coaching sessions, the dealing with 15 hyperactive budding scallies, each with the attention span of a goldfish. What for me was nothing but a laugh must for the coaches have been one long, continuous headache.
And then, of course, there s that dog s**t.
One of the downsides of our grassroots game is just how much of it is played on municipal fields. They are open to all, including those who choose to walk man s best friend upon them. And while many owners are good, wrapping up their dog s steaming productions in a plastic bag, others are just arseholes, leaving said productions out there, like a landmine waiting to spoil someone s morning.
How many coaches have picked up how many such landmines is a figure beyond me. But judging by my own experiences, the number must be significant. I can tell you from the heart that there is nothing less likely to get you in the mood for coaching a football game than leaning down and picking up your third dog turd of the morning. There might be a plastic bag separating your skin from the mushy mess being collected but that does little to stifle what for me has become a gag-reflex-inducing horror show.
It was while picking up one such deposit that the idea of this book came to me, as I thought to myself I wonder if Pep Guardiola has ever had to do this?
As soon as football in this country stopped being about one village trying to kick an inflated pig bladder into the neighbouring village s church and instead began to morph into the sport that we recognise today, the game has always been, in its heart, about two teams trying to best each other. And yet, how a coach training U10s on a Saturday morning, a manager running a side in county football, or a Premier League owner experience the game are often so far removed from one another to almost make you think that there is nothing to link them beyond the simple fact of kicking a ball.
In my 40 (mumbles) years involved with football, watching it, playing it, writing about it, I d experienced my fair share of these different mediums. I d played junior football, university football and Sunday league, I d followed a top-flight side for decades, I d watched local sides grind it out in the unforgiving world of non-league football, I d coached the game where it first begins and I d reported and written about all kinds of different clubs, right across the pyramid. And through it all, it s clear that as much as there is a uniting similarity in the matches that take place, there is also so much that sets them apart.
And it was this that I wanted to explore, to journey through our national game to see just what it takes to run a football club, how the experience differs from the bottom to the top.
It s an exploration that has taken me up through the pyramid, from kids starting out on their football journey to the bright lights of the Premier League. Along the way I have not just seen how and why the sport we love keeps going but also witnessed how it is changing. Because although there are unquestionably parts of English football that are not what they once were, suffering under growing indifference and financial constraints, there are also new parts that are thriving. The pyramid might not be the structure it used to be, but that s not necessarily a cause for concern. A different structure is taking shape, one more inclusive, more innovative, better suited to our world today.
And through this journey I have got to appreciate just how much of the sport is dependent on one simple thing, the sheer love of the game. English football has its paid positions, the people whose job it is to run academies, to manage sides, to keep clubs ticking along. But across the pyramid, so much of the game is dependent on those who give their time for free, simply because they love football. That love is there in the coaches sacrificing their Saturday mornings to coach kids, it s there in the groundspeople keeping non-league pitches alive and it s there in the owners putting their hands in their pockets, sure in the knowledge that it s money they might very well never see again.
It s fair to say that without them the game as we know it today would be very different. England is blessed with such a vast network of clubs because so many people love this sport, so much so that they collectively underwrite it with their time and their income.
And it s easy to see why. It s been two years since I relented to my son s incessant nagging, two years of midweek training and Saturday morning matches. Two years of trying to get 15 excitable kids to do one thing they re meant to. Two years of tying soggy laces on a cold morning, of waterlogged pitches, driving rain and biting winds.
Would I change any of it? Would I go back in time and recommend to my earlier self that I resist his pleas? Of course not. It s football. Come Saturday morning I ll be out there again, tracksuited up, game plan in hand, giving my time for nothing.
When my dad first took me out in the garden, flyaway football in hand, and introduced me to the game, he started a love affair that has lasted since. And no amount of dog s**t will ever change that.
Chapter One
Jumpers for Goalposts
I T S a gloriously sunny September morning in the heart of the East Sussex countryside. On a pitch as manicured as a lawn tennis court, Spartak Rotherfield U10s take on their local rivals, Jarvis Brook Tigers. Both teams are resplendent in new kits (a long season of grass stains and machine washes yet to take their toll), supportive parents stand behind respect barriers and coaches in matching, club-coloured tracksuits pose questions in measured tones from the touchlines. It s like a scene from an FA promotional video.
The kids play with the levels of enthusiasm and hunger you would expect from those still in the first throws of love with the game. But there is technique and method there too. Some DNA might remain from those early days, when fledgling footballers taking their first steps in the game chased the ball en-masse, like a pack of animals hunting down its quarry, but it is a mere memory. Years of coaching, of Saturday morning sessions, of drills, games and instruction have moulded them, developed them, brought out the footballer within. The ball is moved with precision, players exploit space, positions are held.
The two sides are neatly balanced, with every outcome on the table. Rotherfield take the lead, Jarvis