I am european and I live in Europe following both soccer and football.
One thing that is interesting to me is that in Europe there are so many former star players that became coaches. Some of them have been very successful coaches. Others less so. But the point is a lot become coaches. And Head Coaches nonetheless. I can list like 15-20 people without even thinking too hard.
In football, that seems to not be the case. People like Prime and DeMeco Ryans are the exceptions.
It is a two part issue 1) why are former top players not interested in being coaches 2) why are teams not offering top gigs to former players straight up
Let’s look at two current examples. Bills OC job and the Texas A&M job. Both of these jobs are highly desirable and pay well. A&M likely $10 mil +.
Why are people like Larry Fitzgerald, Rivers, Demarcus Ware, Matt Ryan, Drew Brees, Mannings, Brady, Revis not interested and not being offered these jobs straight up?
I can easily see Messi or Ronaldo coaching down the road. Many players of their status have done it.
And I am not talking about recent developments. Many of the former star players never became coaches over the past 30+ years
But it seems impossible to imagine Mahomes or Mannings becoming coaches down the road. Wondering why such a difference.
Thanks!
I was listening to a podcast the other day and they were talking about something similar to this. It was more of a why don’t stars make as good of a coach as a guy that bounces around the league. The stars typically play for one team and therefore learn a very limited number of schemes while the guys bouncing around have to learn several.
They used Wayne Gretzky as an example of a star not being a successful coach. Apparently in practice he was criticizing a player for not being to see something. I don’t remember what it was or if they even said. The point of it though was that for some players, especially the stars, the game slows down so much that the average person or even some other players just can’t see it. You can’t coach that vision.