Elite on the Pitch, Ordinary in the Dugout

Exploring if being an elite player translates to being an elite manager

In my latest podcast for Arsenal Vision doing my turn at Director of Football there was some discussion in the beginning about general thoughts on how experience as a player translates into coaching/punditry/executive positions.

I got a bit of push back on if my reliance on a bit of a cliche that being elite as a player is not perfectly translatable to becoming an elite coach and while I have done some thinking on this question to come to my position, I hadn’t done a ton of digging into it looking at the numbers.

The belief that elite soccer players naturally ascend to elite coaching roles is seductive, rooted in the idea that mastery of the skills required to be a great player guarantees that they will also have the necessary skills to translate that as a manager. There are definitely examples where a great player goes on to become a great manager, these are also often people that are given a bit of a leg up on the chances and face a path that is a bit easier into jobs because I think there is a bit of a belief that this is true in the game.

While a baseline level of soccer knowledge is essential to coach at a high level, I do not believe that there is perfect overlap between the skills required for the two domains.

The cliche and my general belief is that beyond this foundational level of knowledge of the game, elite players are not inherently more likely to succeed as coaches compared to others.

The Baseline Knowledge Requirement

I am not naive, and I don’t believe that just anyone can come in and becoming a high-level manager/coach. There is absolutely a minimum level of knowledge of the tactics, training methods, how the game works, etc. that is required for becoming a manager.

Elite players enter coaching with an undeniable advantage: intimate knowledge of the game. Having excelled at the highest levels, they grasp tactics, technique, and match dynamics intuitively and through the experience having been a player in the situations that they would be required to coach.

Zinedine Zidane, a Ballon d’Or winner at Juventus and Real Madrid, leveraged this playing foundation to lead Real Madrid to three consecutive Champions League titles (2016–2018). Similarly, Pep Guardiola, a probably underrated in his time (still had 47 international caps for Spain) midfielder at Barcelona, transformed modern soccer with his innovative coaching at Barcelona, Bayern Munich, and Manchester City.

However, this baseline knowledge is not exclusive to the truly elite. Many successful coaches have played at many levels of the professional pyramid and in different roles, from solid starters to squad players, rather than as the elite global superstars.

For every Zidane/Alonso/Simeone who had storied playing careers, there are coaches whose less illustrious careers still equipped them with the necessary foundation, suggesting that elite status as a player is not a prerequisite for coaching success.

The Distinct Skill Sets: Doing vs. Teaching

At its core, the gap between playing and coaching mirrors the difference between doing and teaching—a distinction evident across disciplines.

An elite player is like a pop star such as Taylor Swift, who crafts chart-topping hits with instinctive flair. But teaching others to write songs, like a music instructor guiding novices, requires breaking down creativity into steps, a skill Swift might not naturally have.

Thierry Henry is a bit of the classic example that epitomizes this. Arsenal’s iconic striker dazzled with his flair, imagination and physical gifts on the field as a player, yet his managerial spells at AS Monaco (going 4-5-11, winning 0.85 points per match with a -21 goal difference) and Montreal Impact (going 9-4-16, winning 1.07 points per match with a -12 goal difference) faltered, as he struggled to impart his instinctive genius to others. Wayne Rooney, Manchester United’s record goal scorer, faced similar woes at Derby County and D.C. United, where his teams lacked the structure his playing career never required him to articulate.

The psychological and intellectual demands of coaching are another area where there are similarities to playing but with crucial differences.

Elite players operate in an instinctive, adrenaline-fueled world, where split-second decisions developed through years of training and drilling to have these actions become second nature define success. Coaching, however, has significantly more decisions that demand slower more critical and deep thinking. It still comes under immense pressure but is often a different process.

Coaching also demands relational mastery, an area where elite players may stumble. On the field, they are stars, accustomed to deference and individual glory, while they are aware of the actions of others they have a focus on their individual performance and what they can impact. As the coach, they must unite a squad, manage egos, and foster trust—skills akin to an engineer shifting from designing bridges to leading a construction crew. The transition from an individual contributor to a manager/leader is often in our lives where it is apparent that these are not a perfect 1 to 1 translation of skills.

What does the data say?

For each of the current managers in Europe’s top five leagues I have gone through and looked at their number appearances for their National Team and the number of appearances in a Top 5 European League.

This was interesting to me and I think this is a bit of a mixed bit of evidence that doesn’t really help prove, nor disprove my thesis here.

There are definitely players that have that ELITE experience, 8% of the coaches have at least 70 international appearances and 25% made at least 200 appearances in a top five league.

There is also a significant portion of coaches that have pretty clear criteria that they were not elite players, nearly 70% made ZERO appearances for their senior national team, over 40% never played in a top 5 professional league, and 60% had fewer than 100 appearances (just over three seasons worth appearances).

The hard part for this is really going through and figuring out what is the definition of an elite player and really that is probably in the eye of the beholder.

Final thoughts

After looking through this and thinking more about this I think I remain in the same position that I held previously, the leap from elite player to elite coach is neither natural nor assured.

While there are examples of players like Alonso, Ancelotti, and Enrique that can take the experience of being that elite level player and translate it into elite coaching, their successes are I think more an anomaly than the rule.

Coaches like Slot, Arteta, Howe, Gasperini, Inzaghi, and Flick, with more modest playing careers, can also thrive by mastering the manager’s unique skillset and craft. It doesn’t hurt a person to have been an elite player when they are looking to become a manager, but I also think that the skillset required to be one of the best is different enough from playing that there is not a perfect translation of the skills.