Page 98 - Soccer360 Issue 105

LAST WORD
THE BATTLE WITH BURNOUT
WHEN EVEN A PASSIONATE COACH LIKE JURGEN KLOPP IS FEELING BURNED OUT, SUSY CAMPANALE KNOWS FOOTBALL IS BECOMING ALL ABOUT QUANTITY RATHER
NTHAN QUALITY.
obody can begrudge Jurgen Klopp for wanting to take some time out to himself after nine years in charge
of Liverpool and winning practically everything there was to win. Just hours after the shock announcement from Anfield, Xavi Hernandez confirmed that he too would be walking away from the Barcelona bench at the end of the season. Despite his
assurances that he needed time to live a normal life for a little while, the speculation started within minutes on which job Klopp would go into next.
So much has been said about the risk of player burnout with an increasingly packed schedule, but we cannot forget that the race for quantity over quality is also affecting coaches, directors and will ultimately hit
fans too. We run the genuine risk of ruining the sport we love because it continues to be treated as a business venture.
Maurizio Sarri of Lazio really rang the alarm bell with his repeated comments warning that the reason he left a job in banking to work in football is dissipating fast. When teams play a big game every three days, which usually involves a lot of travelling
and scheduling slots to give a series of interviews, there is hardly any time left for actual training.
One of my favourite Klopp anecdotes was during a tough clash between his Liverpool and Sarri’s Chelsea, where the German looked over at his colleague, let loose that mile-wide smile and said: “Isn’t this fun?” The endless cycle of matches is starting to make even Klopp lose his enthusiasm.
The repercussions of this are not just physical, draining the players to within an inch of their lives and creating a multitude
of avoidable muscular injuries. The
lack of training routines leads to worse performances, more approximate defending and attacking, the focus becomes more
on just giving the talented players the ball and hoping for the best. That might be fine in the short-term, but over the course of
a campaign it is inevitably going to take away from the level of football we get to watch. Why have a coach at all if his job is merely to select a starting XI? Perhaps this is just leading up to what some clubs really want, namely to use artificial intelligence and algorithms to pick their transfers and squad, doing away with costly managers altogether?
The response from UEFA and FIFA to any questions over the popularity of the sport
is simply to create more fixtures, more tournaments, more trophies, spread the games out over more kick-off times. It’s already starting to feel like too much and it is just going to escalate. We are losing sight of quality in order to provide more quantity and that is no way to create new supporters, let alone bleed the enthusiasm of the existing fans dry.
There doesn’t seem to be a single day of the week now without some top-level match
on television and even the most committed supporter of the game is going to struggle eventually. I hope that the problem is spotted before we reach the point where even the fans are suffering from burnout,
because this feels like the moment coaches are hitting that brick wall and Klopp is only the first.
I continue to see football as art every bit as much as sport, so it is like seeing the movie franchise you once loved get the original idea stretched out over sequels, spin-offs and merchandise until you can’t quite be bothered to keep up anymore. I have for years pushed for Serie A to go back to 18 or even 16 teams, as it felt like expanding to 20 was when things started to go badly wrong for the League. We need to bring the focus back to quality rather than quantity, which might mean some clubs and nations feeling left out when the major tournaments come along, but it is necessary to preserve the joy of the sport.
That absolutely does not mean the European Super League, by the way, as it
is just a way of ensuring the traditionally big clubs don’t miss out on the cash cow that is the Champions League. It is about giving everyone an opportunity to earn their place in the top tier tournaments, providing coaches with the time and space to form a vision within their team on the training ground. If we want to see tactical innovations in the mould of Arrigo Sacchi and Pep Guardiola when they first emerged, we need to give them the opportunity to practice their craft, or fear it will be lost forever.
98 SOCCER360
“WE CANNOT FORGET
THAT THE RACE FOR
QUANTITY OVER QUALITY
IS ALSO AFFECTING
COACHES, DIRECTORS AND WILL ULTIMATELY
HIT FANS TOO.”
TOP:
Jurgen Klopp realised he cannot continue
at Liverpool without losing enthusiasm for the sport
ABOVE:
Maurizio Sarri warned the reasons he got into football are dissipating fast