Authority as a player and coach: Xabi Alonso Image: EPA
Anyone who has previously been a professional footballer is often more quickly recognized as an authority as a coach. See: FC Bayern Munich. Now he needs a coach who knows what makes the locker room tick.
Many, many years ago, a former shoe salesman from Italy responded to the criticism, which Sebastian Hoeneß and Fabian Hürzeler, the popular German football coaches, would also be familiar with. Roughly speaking, if you want to become a jockey, you don’t have to have been a horse.
After all, it was he, an amateur footballer, who decisively shaped the way professional football would develop tactically in Italy in the late 1980s. He told his players at the time that they should not focus on their opponents when defending, but rather as a group on the ball.
