Euro 2012: A cultural coaching lesson for the Middle East

On Sunday night in Kiev, the national teams of two of the western world’s most established football countries battled against each other to claim the title of champions of European football.
It was in many ways predictable that the likes of Italy and Spain made it to the grand final of the UEFA Euro 2012 championship.
But some commentators believed before the championship kicked off in early June that times had changed, that the dominance of the old world footballing teams would give way to the rise of ‘new Europe’: Russia or Croatia, for example. Much was expected of the hosts Poland and Ukraine, but neither made it out of the group stages. The semi-final slots read like a roll call of footballing titans from a bygone era: Portugal, Spain, Germany, and Italy. So within the microcosm of European football, there still does not appear to be a level playing field. Nothing near it, in fact. What does this mean for teams preparing for the FIFA World Cup to be held in Qatar in 2022?
The fact that the World Cup will be hosted by Qatar in 2022 is nothing other than a stunning diplomatic, political and economic victory for the region. On a purely economic level, it will act as a catalyst for regional growth. Thinking more broadly, it will showcase not only Qatar but also surrounding countries to the wider world. The tournament will serve as a bridge between east and west. A football world cup is a global event. Such ‘mega-events’ are not even once in a generation spectacles; they come along, at most, once in a lifetime. Londoners currently making the final preparations for the start of the 2012 Olympics will most probably never see the torch return in their, maybe even their children’s, lifetimes. In front of home audiences, expectations for a strong performance by Arab teams in Qatar in 2022 will therefore be high.
The events of the last few weeks in Poland and Ukraine raise the issue of how well host nations from non-traditional footballing countries are realistically expected to perform. If they have not done so already, national teams from the GCC region will consider hiring in brand name managers during the next few years to get the most out of their players. The likes of Fabio Capello and Harry Redknapp are currently unemployed in Europe and are rumored to be thinking of accepting positions with certain national teams.
Foreign managers of national teams can undoubtedly be successful. It is often claimed that foreign managers fail to get excited about leading a national side because they, by definition, are foreign. I do not wholly agree with this. After all, Greece won the 2004 European championship when they were managed by a German, Otto Rehhagel. Many of the athletes about to stretch their bodies to the limit at the London Olympics are coached by foreigners. Why should football be any different? Ultimately, this debate is not about nationality, it is about culture. Chairmen of national teams looking to 2022 should consider the experience of the English national team of late.
England experienced four disappointing years with the Italian manager Fabio Capello at the helm. Before taking over England, Capello’s track record managing club sides in Europe were almost without parallel. I believe the failure of ‘Project Capello’ with England can be explained by his inability to understand properly what was going on in his team.
First, Capello was given the job without proving he could learn English. Listening to him being interviewed four years later, it is clear he never mastered the language. Following England’s exit from Euro 2012 last week, Wayne Rooney finally conceded that Capello’s lack of linguistic mastery had been a problem for the players in the team: some simply did not understand what he had been saying.
Secondly, Capello may have conquered the heights of European club football, but he never did that with an English club side, where nearly all of the English national teams play. He was used to Italian and Spanish tactics, attitudes, and personalities. When he tried to transpose his success over to England, he failed. If you want evidence, think back to what happened in South Africa in 2010 when England was dismal.
If a national team appoints a foreign manager, both sides (players and manager) will need to address the inevitable cultural disconnect. The manager needs to communicate with his players on multiple different levels, taking into account both footballing technique and human emotion. He needs to direct them to play so that he gets the most from the team, and he needs to encourage and cajole them as necessary. Doing all this over through a cultural barrier is difficult, but not impossible. Diego Maradona, currently coaching Al-Wasl in Dubai, may arguably be the best footballer in history, but that does not necessarily mean he is the right man to lead the UAE national team, as is being rumored. He may well be the right man for such a job, but it would be for other reasons.
The message to the footballing ‘new world’, from East Europe to East Asia, is this: it is basically irrelevant whether your coach is a national or non-national. For teams looking to score in 2022, what matters is building a culturally coherent unit, where everyone understands everyone else. A team in the truest sense of the word.

n John Burman, Ph.D. is managing director of an investment advisory firm based in London.