If you have never coached or managed a football team you will believe, like I did, that the fans feel the highs of victory and lows of defeat more than anyone else. You will believe that the players and staff just don’t care as much as you do.

I have always felt this way about my beloved Watford. I have always thought, ‘if only the manager and players cared as much as I do and had the same passion for the club as I do, then we would be alright. It just doesn’t matter to them enough.’

Well I can’t speak for managers and coaches at the upper levels of the game as I have never been involved in any football other than at grassroots level, but if they feel emotions in anything like the way I do as a coach then they definitely care. Make no mistake about that.

I am currently coaching Wilton Town FC. We are a local league side playing at the seventh tier of the non-league pyramid in England. Not a great standard but not bad. We are a new club this season and we have played just three league games so far.

I have been a Watford supporter for forty years and I have been involved with Wilton Town for three months. My son asked me on Saturday morning if I would be happier if Watford or Wilton won their game that afternoon. I didn’t have to think about it for a second. The answer was obvious to me straight away and it surprised me greatly when I heard myself answering the question by saying, Wilton Town.

It is absolutely true that for me, at least, being a part of something makes me feel more passionate than just being a fan. I’m a pretty passionate fan so that is saying something!

So, Saturday afternoon came around and I traveled with the Wilton team to a place called Castle Combe to take on their reserve side. We had lost our first league game 5-0 but got an excellent 3-1 win away from home last week. Confidence in the team was high and I could sense victory in the air.

Ninety minutes later I was unable to even say a word to our players as they trooped off the pitch having lost 1-0. I didn’t go into the dressing room after the game for fear of saying something I would regret. The manager went in, but he said little and left the players to have their own inquest into what went so horribly wrong on the pitch.

The journey back from Castle Combe took just over an hour and I hadn’t managed to say more than one or two words by the time we got back. I was devastated, distraught, frustrated, angry and hurt. I found out that Watford had won their game 2-1 against Ipswich. A good win. I hardly raised a smile.

I know experiments have been carried out on Premier League managers and that they have shown that heart rates and blood pressure reach dangerously high levels during a match. I can well understand that when, as a mild mannered man, I can become apoplectic with rage when a throw-in is given against us in Wiltshire League division two! If there were millions of pounds at stake, my own livelihood and forty odd thousand people watching, I’m not sure my tired old ticker could cope at all.

The problem is that not only am I watching the game hoping that the players do what they have been told and coached to do, not only am I watching the game hoping that we win, I am also kicking and heading every ball, making every tackle and hitting every shot. I expect my players to have the ability of the top professionals and get so frustrated when they haven’t. If I actually could still play I wouldn’t be any better than the players we’ve got so I don’t know why I bother kidding myself that I would be!

The end result of all this is that my favourite team won their game on Saturday. I’ve spent the rest of the weekend with my lovely family and I’ve watched some great football. I’ve had a glass or two of a particularly nice red wine and I’ve had some truly excellent food. Despite all that, because the Wilton Town forwards couldn’t convert any of the numerous bloody chances we created on Saturday afternoon, I’ve had a rotten weekend.

I didn’t think the game could matter to me any more than it already unhealthily did, but I’m afraid my world has descended even further into clinical footballholism.

I now have even more reason to lie awake at night and try to tackle those difficult life questions like, should we play a flat back four or go to a three with two marking and a sweeper? Should we continue to try to play football or should we go a little more direct? Forget the meaning of life, these things are really important.

All I know is that the next time I accuse a manager or player of not caring enough, I will stop to reconsider my views. They are putting their whole lives into what they are doing. At Wilton we are just doing it for fun. Fun?… hah!

From Soccerlens.com - Football News

As fans we see the game of football very differently from the coaches and managers. How many times have we watched a game and then heard the manager talk about it afterward and said to ourselves, “What game was he watching?”

I coach a football team over here in the southwest of England. It is a new team and we play in the Wiltshire League Division Two. It is tier seven of the non-league pyramid and although some players are paid to play at that level, none of our players receive anything for playing.

Wilton Town Football Club has only been formed over the past few months and it has ambitious people behind it. There are big plans to develop the club and try to progress quickly through the non-league pyramid. Have a look at the club website here.

The reason I mention this is because, although my experience is very much at the grassroots level of the game, I do get some insight into how coaches are looking for different things than the fans are. The only thing that everyone wants is success. How that success is achieved, however, is rarely demanded in the same way.

In our pre-season training so far we have done a lot of work on fitness and ball skills and played quite a few variations on small-sided games. In this coming week we will continue to do that but also try to have a look at the players in a full scale 11 v 11 game so that we can select the best available team for the first friendly game on Saturday.

We have been looking for great touch, sharp passing, determination and a good attitude. (Looking for it, not necessarily finding it!) All of those things will be important when the games start. We will want the players to play as a team, do what we ask of them, and win their games. Most of these things are important for the fans and spectators as well, but what will please the fans might make us very unhappy.

As a fan I like to see shots at goal, great skills, flair and people trying the unexpected. I like to see defenders making last minute goal-saving tackles and blocks and I like to see keepers making great saves. I like to see goals from corners and free kicks and I like to see teams pouring forward and peppering the opponents’ goal.

As a coach, many of the above things will annoy me a great deal. If one of my players hits a hopeful shot when a pass was a better option I will not be happy that he has given the ball back to the opposition. If one of players is ‘show-boating’ and showing how clever he is, I shall tell him to get the basics right before he tries to be Cristiano Ronaldo. If my defenders are making last ditch tackles and blocks I will be deeply angry with my midfield and maybe my defenders for the lack of organisation and the failure to press the opposition sufficiently in order to prevent the situation in the first place.

If my keeper is forced into making great saves what the hell are the defenders doing? If we concede from a set piece then somebody better have a bloody good reason why the person they were supposed to be marking was able to put the ball in the net.

So all the things that get the fans excited are likely to give an old bugger of a coach like me a coronary! This is at tier seven of the non-league pyramid. Imagine what it is like for the managers and coaches at the top levels of the game. What they are looking for from their players is unlikely to match what we as fans are looking for.

Sometimes I hear managers after games, particularly England managers after England games, spout what I regard to be absolute rubbish. They talk about all the positives and the things that worked well. After watching the game and either falling asleep or throwing things at the television, the manager comes on to say that he thought “we played well” in a “thoroughly entertaining game.”

Before I launch into my, “what game was he watching” routine, I should take a step back and try to understand what he means. There will have been positives and there will have been aspects of the game that have gone totally according to plan and the players will have done exactly what was asked of them. The coach is looking for those moments. We as fans are not.

Sometimes a player is not liked by his own fans and he gets jeered and booed by his own team’s supporters. Very often the coach will know exactly how valuable that player is to the team. He may be aware that the whole team can only function the way it does because of the unselfish contribution of that one player. Despite this, the fans jeer him. The coach wonders what game the fans are watching even more than the fans do the other way round.

My intention is to keep the readers of this site updated with occasional articles about how Wilton Town are progressing. I will share the excitement, frustration, fun and disappointments with you as we begin the long trek on our road to worldwide football domination.

By my reckoning if we get promoted every year, we should arrive in the Premier League in around 2020. I’ll be fifty-eight then and just about the right age to pit my wits against the top coaches in the game! OK, that might be just a little bit optimistic!

There will be many twists and turns over the coming months and I think it might be interesting to share them with you every now and then. It might not have the glamour of a Barcelona or Manchester United but Wilton Town is real life and real football.

Read more articles from Graham Fisher.

From Soccerlens.com - Football News