FootBiz newsletter #176: Are coaches worth even more in international football?

A whole round of games is over and we’re back to the beginning, which means it would be easy to jump to some premature conclusions (as many appear to be doing in praising the format switch/expansion — let’s wait until the potentially dead final round of games, shall we?).

Rather than falling into that trap, this morning we will zoom out a little and look a bit more at something which is going to affect every team at the tournament - coaching.

Very broadly, it’s fair to say that the elite coaches have increasingly shifted towards the club game as money and power in global football has done the same. It makes sense, too, if you are a top coach you tend to want as much time with players as possible to impart your system and your beliefs, or simply to have the maximum effect.

It is why Pep Guardiola’s seemingly inevitable move into international management is so interesting to me. Pep appears to be an extreme example of someone you want to be in contact with players as much as possible, rather than getting four-to-six weeks with his players in any given calendar year. Will it nerf Guardiola’s effectiveness? Alternatively, could it force him to distill and simplify his messaging, making him more potent? Would 60% of Pep’s maximum effectiveness still be better than the second-best international coach? It’s an interesting thought.

Looking at the coaches at this tournament, a consensus top five would surely consist of Carlo Ancelotti, Julian Nagelsmann, Mauricio Pochettino, Thomas Tuchel and then a fifth of your choice. Perhaps you’d prioritise Marcelo Bielsa’s ideological victories over the more narrative-driven successes of Hervé Renard, or you believe Lionel Scaloni is not fully appreciated because he’s always been able to lean on Lionel Messi.

I was in Dallas for England’s 4-2 win over Croatia on Wednesday and it did underline that Tuchel was a significant upgrade on Sir Gareth Southgate in the tactical sphere, as you might also reasonably deduce from their respective achievements in coaching. Tuchel tried some interesting stuff in the first half, some of which worked and some which didn’t, but is smart and decisive enough to have made good adjustments at the break and the second-half performance was very good.

It was notable that England’s players, unprompted, praised their manager’s words at half-time. “That’s when you remember he’s a top manager,” Declan Rice told ITV.

Which team you felt had the best performance of the opening round is dependent on what precisely it is that you’re looking for, but given the margin of victory and relatively low expectations, the USMNT’s 4-1 win over Paraguay would certainly be up there.

In the first edition of FootBiz I wrote that you could argue hiring Pochettino could be one of the most consequential appointments in modern football history. The rationale was:

“The difference in projected revenue for the USMNT, USSF, MLS, and everyone around soccer in America and beyond is so staggeringly different if the US gets to a World Cup semi-final on home soil versus exiting at the group stage.

“Even beyond the sponsorship revenues that would jump with a deep run in the tournament, the players that it would inspire, in one of the greatest global athlete pools, would surely have a knock-on effect of producing elite players for the USMNT that they have been craving for decades.

“The cyclical effect of reinvesting increased revenues in the development of better talent could, finally, elevate the US to a global footballing power by the 2030s.”

Now it was only Paraguay, who I didn’t have great hopes for given they won just one of nine qualifiers away from home, but Pochettino has tinkered and tested to find a system he likes, that gets the most out of his players, and he is doing a pretty good job of making sure all his best ones are out on the pitch — something a lot of international coaches appear to struggle with.

Nagelsmann’s job with Germany was made easier by coming up against the smallest nation in the tournament, but a 7-1 win is hard to criticise too much. Carlo Ancelotti, whose trophy cabinet means his CV is beyond reproach, arguably had the worst start of any of this top tier of coaches but also was the only one to face a team ranked in FIFA’s top 10.

International coaching is obviously a slightly different beast to doing so at club level but many a strong squad of players has been wasted by poor coaching. The criticism of Roberto Martinez having done that with Belgium’s golden generation may well carry through to Portugal’s latest crop of talent if he persists with a statue of Cristiano Ronaldo as the focal point of their attack, while back-to-back Champions League winner Goncalo Ramos sits on the bench.

In an era when it feels as if the strongest nations all have squads of similarly frightening strength, who you have in the dugout making the big decisions could make all the difference.

But for the more limited tier of teams below that, hiring a brilliant coach — as Greece did with Otto Rehhagel, and the US may have done with Poch — who can help you catch fire for a couple of weeks is similarly valuable.

In international football, where you can’t spend money on players and simply have fewer levers to pull in pursuit of sporting success, hiring a brilliant coach is one of the most important things you can do. Over the coming weeks we will have a better idea of who has done that.