Goal: The Ball Doesn't Go In By Chance: Management Ideas from the World of Football by Ferran Soriano

Author:Ferran Soriano [Soriano, Ferran]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781137004802
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan - A
Published: 2011-11-18T00:00:00+00:00

Competition to renew commitment

The following summer, after a disappointing end of season because we had lost the Spanish Championship on the final day on goal average against Real Madrid, after failing to make the most of a substantial points advantage, the club quickly made great economic and negotiating efforts to satisfy the coach’s needs. Frenchman Thierry Henry was brought in to give Ronaldinho and Eto’o the competition they had lacked during the previous season. We also signed a very strong, defensive left-winger – Frenchman Eric Abidal from Olympique Lyon; a solid center defender who was very familiar with the Spanish League – Gabriel Milito from Zaragoza; plus a sturdy midfielder from Côte d’Ivoire named Yaya Touré, who had been playing for Monaco.

The leader has an essential role in motivating and getting commitment from a group. First of all, he needs to be self-motivated, and make this commitment visible and contagious. The leader should be the first person to get up every morning, convinced that the project makes sense and that the team will be successful. When the leader is the first to come into the office with strength and conviction, it motivates the rest of the team. The leader’s second task might be to partially change the team by adding new people, who come in with new motivation and a high level of commitment, capable of infecting the rest. It might also mean getting rid of team members who are less motivated or committed, and that would be especially tricky as these players are amongst the leaders of the group.

At FC Barcelona we tried a partial renovation of the team to reactivate commitment and motivation in 2007, but we failed. The new team members were certainly motivated and committed, but their impact on the group was not enough, and results were worse than those of the previous season. This is a classic, complex management challenge: to recover the performance of a team by changing the leader and some key members or to reinforce the confidence of the existing group.

At FC Barcelona, the strategy of renewing confidence in the leader and the integrity of the team did not work for us in 2007. We had to wait until the next season before we could introduce an alternative strategy: change the leader (Josep Guardiola), the leadership style, and some key players. This strategy did work.

Guardiola decided to let two of the most charismatic leaders of the group go: Ronaldinho and Deco. He also thought about letting Eto’o go. Ronaldinho went to AC Milan, Deco went to Chelsea, but Eto’o stayed and played a decisive role in the extraordinary results achieved. Guardiola also changed the leadership style, to the one the team needed at the time.

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