Get back in your Box
Credit:
BRIAN de SALVO on how the game’s administrators are infringing on the right of a manager to do his job.
The introduction of the right to make three substitutions during a match changed the nature of association football for ever. There had been a single substitute available since the 1965-66 season but this was intended to end the suffering of an injured player hobbling down the wing to maintain his team’s full complement.
Hard as it seems to believe now this was once seen as an integral part of the drama. The sight of Eric Bell courageously limping up to head a goal for Bolton was an epic moment in what became known as the Stanley Matthews Cup Final. Matthews had experienced a quiet game until Bell’s injury removed him from the posse barring the great man’s progress down the right flank. Afterwards, with left back Ralph Banks exposed, Matthews ran riot and won his winners’ medal at last.
Managers being human and human nature being what it is, substituting a player only if he was too disabled to continue soon became a casualty. Players revealed various levels of acting ability on being instructed to limp off “injured”. Two seasons after its introduction the regulation was amended to incorporate “tactical” substitutions.
Prior to three substitutes a manager could only prepare his team for a forthcoming match and then hope for the best. Yes, he could exhort from the touchline, indulge in a blistering half time talk and even make the odd tactical switch but it was asking a lot of one sub to change the course of a match. A choice of three, available from 1995, made it a whole new ball game.
As early as the millennium Pat Devlin’s whole tactical plan was based on how he might deploy his subs. Devlin developed a core of genuine utility players who could switch to alternative roles as subs were sprung from the bench to present the opposition with a different set of problems. It was a brilliant exploitation of the revised laws and effectively brought the manager out of the dugout and onto the pitch.
Tactical substitution is now an integral part of the soccer spectacle but was it good for the game? That’s a bit like saying it’s good for my dog that he’s been neutered. He’s still great value but the bottom line is that he has been mutilated. And, in the case of the beautiful game, all because the administrators had failed to take into account the way the original substitute rule was sure to be exploited.
The latest blunder from head office is about to hit an Airtricity League team near you. The A League, the competition for most of the senior clubs’ reserve teams, has been retired and replaced by an Under 19 League. So, as a manager, you have a first team squad and a youth team squad but you have nothing in between. Obviously the people who dreamed up this scheme have never managed a professional football club.
Say, in these cash strapped days, you are lucky enough to have a senior squad of seventeen players. You have nowhere to play any member of that squad who doesn’t make the starting eleven and is over 19. It becomes even more ludicrous in the case of a senior player returning after long term injury. How do you give him the necessary match play which is an essential part of his recovery? What happens if the player who has replaced him has done so well our man cannot get back into the team? By contract you must pay his wages but you cannot give him a competitive game, perhaps for the rest of the season.
This brainless concept is intended to enhance the progress of young players into senior football but it has the opposite result. If you have a promising member of your Under 19 team who becomes overage for it but is not quite ready for the senior squad you have to offload him because you have nowhere to play him. What kind of encouragement for emerging talent is this? Domestic managers are already committed to youth development for economic reasons. Just as the managers have invaded the playing area now we have administrators reaching over their shoulders telling them who to pick and who to sack, decisions that are the right of the coaching staff that work week in week out with these lads. It’s a threat to the integrity of the dressing room and it should be resisted by managers, at least to the point of allowing a maximum of three over age players to feature in any Under 19 fixture.
When I was a kid I kept my table soccer players in a box when they weren’t engaged on the pitch. It took me some time to realise that real players didn’t just return to the dressing room until needed for the next match too. I grew up. It’s time for some of the game’s administrators to show signs of maturity.
The introduction of the right to make three substitutions during a match changed the nature of association football for ever. There had been a single substitute available since the 1965-66 season but this was intended to end the suffering of an injured player hobbling down the wing to maintain his team’s full complement.
Hard as it seems to believe now this was once seen as an integral part of the drama. The sight of Eric Bell courageously limping up to head a goal for Bolton was an epic moment in what became known as the Stanley Matthews Cup Final. Matthews had experienced a quiet game until Bell’s injury removed him from the posse barring the great man’s progress down the right flank. Afterwards, with left back Ralph Banks exposed, Matthews ran riot and won his winners’ medal at last.
Managers being human and human nature being what it is, substituting a player only if he was too disabled to continue soon became a casualty. Players revealed various levels of acting ability on being instructed to limp off “injured”. Two seasons after its introduction the regulation was amended to incorporate “tactical” substitutions.
Prior to three substitutes a manager could only prepare his team for a forthcoming match and then hope for the best. Yes, he could exhort from the touchline, indulge in a blistering half time talk and even make the odd tactical switch but it was asking a lot of one sub to change the course of a match. A choice of three, available from 1995, made it a whole new ball game.
As early as the millennium Pat Devlin’s whole tactical plan was based on how he might deploy his subs. Devlin developed a core of genuine utility players who could switch to alternative roles as subs were sprung from the bench to present the opposition with a different set of problems. It was a brilliant exploitation of the revised laws and effectively brought the manager out of the dugout and onto the pitch.
Tactical substitution is now an integral part of the soccer spectacle but was it good for the game? That’s a bit like saying it’s good for my dog that he’s been neutered. He’s still great value but the bottom line is that he has been mutilated. And, in the case of the beautiful game, all because the administrators had failed to take into account the way the original substitute rule was sure to be exploited.
The latest blunder from head office is about to hit an Airtricity League team near you. The A League, the competition for most of the senior clubs’ reserve teams, has been retired and replaced by an Under 19 League. So, as a manager, you have a first team squad and a youth team squad but you have nothing in between. Obviously the people who dreamed up this scheme have never managed a professional football club.
Say, in these cash strapped days, you are lucky enough to have a senior squad of seventeen players. You have nowhere to play any member of that squad who doesn’t make the starting eleven and is over 19. It becomes even more ludicrous in the case of a senior player returning after long term injury. How do you give him the necessary match play which is an essential part of his recovery? What happens if the player who has replaced him has done so well our man cannot get back into the team? By contract you must pay his wages but you cannot give him a competitive game, perhaps for the rest of the season.
This brainless concept is intended to enhance the progress of young players into senior football but it has the opposite result. If you have a promising member of your Under 19 team who becomes overage for it but is not quite ready for the senior squad you have to offload him because you have nowhere to play him. What kind of encouragement for emerging talent is this? Domestic managers are already committed to youth development for economic reasons. Just as the managers have invaded the playing area now we have administrators reaching over their shoulders telling them who to pick and who to sack, decisions that are the right of the coaching staff that work week in week out with these lads. It’s a threat to the integrity of the dressing room and it should be resisted by managers, at least to the point of allowing a maximum of three over age players to feature in any Under 19 fixture.
When I was a kid I kept my table soccer players in a box when they weren’t engaged on the pitch. It took me some time to realise that real players didn’t just return to the dressing room until needed for the next match too. I grew up. It’s time for some of the game’s administrators to show signs of maturity.
