HOW TO GO FROM PLAYER TO COACH: INTERVIEW WITH CESC FABREGAS
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99% of coaches were ex-players. This is true no matter what level of football. This is most likely true for you as well.
What I was looking to find out is how a player can transition into a coaching role most effectively. Who better to ask than Cesc Fabregas.
Cesc finished his playing career at Como 1907, which at the time was a Serie B team. Within a year he was Como’s first team manager successfully achieving the promotion into the Serie A.
To the average fan, his transition from player to coach may appear sudden, however, he had been preparing himself as a coach for nearly five years.
I wanted to know what he did to prepare himself so well…
WHAT HE STUDIED TO PREPARE TO BE A MANAGER
CESC: (We) analyzed every structure tactically that we think exist in football… And what do we think that is the best way to attack this structure that they are playing against.
So we basically created like a database about everything that I always felt as a player and had studied as a coach, and how we could create problems depending on how the opponent plays offensively or defensively.
I want to always be prepared.
I don't want to be the coach that always has, you know, the same way of playing, the same way of attacking, defending.
Yes, you offer some principles. Yeah, you have structures, but I like to be as complete as possible. I like one my team to be dominant, and for me nowadays to be dominant, you need to have as many solution as possible, because it's not the same to attack a team that will defend deep fight than to attack a team that will come to you man to man and follow you all around the pitch like for example, Atalanta does.
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THE IMPORTANCE OF REFLECTION
DAVID: Do you set a time to to go through the video and properly reflect?
CESC: Every day, every single day in every single training session and every decision that I make in every game, I analyze absolutely everything.
I'm obsessed with that. I want to get better. I want to see what I do well, how can they improve it? What I don't do well, what can I change to make it better? I'm obsessed with that.
And I think it's needed to keep growing, to keep learning.
I'm very young. Yes, I do have a lot of ideas. Yes, I've had the best coaches in the world. But these this is not enough. You need to recycle. You need to keep thinking, challenge yourself.
And for me, this is the super important. Yeah. I mean, analyzing every game, especially. Maybe I take it too much sometimes, to another level, the obsession for analyzing maybe a little bit too much sometimes.
WHAT HELPED HIM MOST FROM HIS PLAYING CAREER
CESC: I think the thing that helped me most about being a player to get into management is the moments and how to manage people and the collective. Because I've had so many meetings in my career with top, top coaches, and even these top coaches, sometimes they make mistakes in how to manage people or manage collectives.
I haven’t obviously written all that down, etc., but I know exactly how every group is different… The Alpha Group, lots of great stars. You have groups where they are a little bit more quiet. You have groups with big personalities. You have groups where nobody cares about anything. So do how to manage that?
The experience of having these top coaches and seeing what they did in different moments helped me a lot, you know, because also players speak. Imagine you are the coach, you deliver a session, a speech or analysis of of the game.
CONFIDENT COACHING REQUIRES CONVICTION
CESC: You need to make sure that as a coach you are very, very convinced about what you say. Once the player is convinced, if you send the message the right way at the right time, convinced of what you're saying and the players, they see it in your in your eyes and in your voice, it will all be good.
It will be good. I have no doubts about this. But if the players start seeing that you have doubts, that you crumble, that they see you a little bit scared about it, with doubts about what you're saying, etc. You have a lot of probabilities that this will not this will not go well.
As a coach, you need to impose yourself. You need to decide absolutely everything. You need to make sure that you are doing the best for the team. So thinking about every single detail that comes in this way.
THE COACH IS AN ENVIRONMENTAL ARCHITECT
CESC: The coach has a huge effect on the environment. All this atmosphere depends on me, on my decisions. You have to make sure that your impact on these decisions is very, very positive for the players, and you need to make them understand and convince them that what you are doing is because you thought about it, because you plan it, because you think it will have the best effect on the group to perform well on the on the pitch, which is the most important.
You are the architect of absolutely everything nowadays. The coach is the most important figure because before (I don't want to say the wrong thing) but I think the older generations, they were a little bit more responsible in terms of what football was about. But the younger generations, they need to be told what to do at every single step and sometimes slowly, for them to get the best out of them. So it's a different way of explaining is a different way of analyzing every single decision that you take.
And that's why decisions are more important than ever.
THE WORKLOAD OF A COACH
CESC: The difficulty is that your life changes. Obviously your time changes, your life is training centre at 7:00 in the morning you go back home at 7:00 in the evening, then you still need to make a lot of phone calls, you still need to be on your computer, you still need to watch games on TV.
My family supports me a lot. My wife is absolutely outstanding. It's just how to manage the time of the family. When you are a player, you basically finish at 2:00, 3:00, you go home, you understand have the afternoon free. You are just not thinking about anything. Then again next morning, breakfast at 9:00, training at 10:00. So it becomes like a routine.
You know, as a coach, there are so many things that you need to take care of during the day, analyze, etc., etc., that it's tough manage, it's crazy.
So yeah, managing the time of what you're doing together with the family. I have five kids, so I always try to be very much involved in everything they do in life. I want to be a good husband, a good dad, and I think this is what I would say.
I'm a young coach and very excited. I'm very passionate about it. And when you are doing this, without the experience, of like Ancelotti, that they still do what I do, but they are much more relaxed, they've seen everything 10,000 times more than me.
So sometimes I take a decision and you are waiting, as as as a new coach, inexperienced in certain ways. Is it going to be the right decision or not? You know, because maybe it’s the first time you've taken this decision, the second time. So you take it home sometimes, you go to sleep and your head keeps moving and spinning, etc., etc., The other coaches with so much experience, they will just take the decision, because they know exactly what they're doing. They go to sleep peacefully like babies, you know, and this is the two things that I would say that have been the most difficult to to manage.
MAKING DECISIONS
CESC: It's impossible to take that perfect decision always to get even once.
Sometimes there is always something that will not be good for an individual, but you have to think of the group. Now what is the best thing for the group you analyze it. After that you go for it sometimes. Hopefully most of the time you'll be right. Sometimes we have to understand that we will not be.
But you are always thinking of the group, not of the individual. And this is what the players sometimes don't understand because, it happened to me, we are are selfish. The players, we, only think about if the coach going to play me? Is the coach going to do this for me? Is he gonna think the right way for me to play?
Now, when you're a coach, I had great players and I'm like, Wow, if we don't have this player, we're going to suffer. We're not going to win. Now, as a coach, I can score a hat trick. Fantastic. But I don't care anymore. It's for the good of the of the team. And if he doesn't score a hat trick and the other one next week scores the hat trick, the other one will play.
It's not something you as a player will say, Oh, this guy needs to play every single game because he scored a hat trick or not. As a coach you want always the best for the group, for the team, for the training. I always talk about family, about the mentality, about the good environment, the culture of the training ground, the standards, who, if you are here, you will play.
CESC’s PHILOSOPHY: DEVELOPING SOLUTION DRIVEN PLAYERS
CESC: I'm a big fan of working in a way where I coach my team to have plenty of solutions.
Depending on the game and where are the spaces. I like to give plenty of solutions to each player in each position for them. After being on the pitch and express themselves the best way possible. Right? I'm not a coach that I will say you'll stay here and you stay here and you stay here and you stay here. That's not me, okay? Because I was a player. I've been in different moments of my career in different type of environments, systems, and every play is different. Yes, things happen. Yes. You need to have a game plan.
Yes. You need to study the opponent, of course, 100%. But every play is different. You could be faced that the guy is coming to you in front of you. You need to let the ball go. If he's coming in front of you, you need to attack the ball and maybe play one touch forward before the guy comes. It's there is so many things he's not about always. The collective is about, first of all, understand the game. Second, where is the pressure coming from? Are you alone? Is the coming, the pressure coming from behind? Is the pressure coming from front? Is he marking you man to man? Whatever it is? And then there is the collective of everyone understanding what we want to do at any moment. If they come man to man, we will be playing a little bit more direct. If you let me play between the lines, I will make sure that with the game plan and how I explain, you know, the spaces on the on the video before we go to training in the pitch that every player will understand.
For example, with against a very aggressive team that means that when they press you, you know, we need to fixed with the two strikers. For example, the two central defenders so they don't jump. That means the two number ten can come at this right time in the middle of the park. But then it's up to them to find the moment and the solution because the timing they need to understanding.
I need to show them and we work on it and we train it. But every single moment in the game is different. And this is this is my dream and the way I want to work, I want to give them a gameplan, show them how they press them, where the space is. That's how we can help them. But then they need to find also the solutions themselves, depending on each movement of the opponent, you know, and and this is this is how I work.
This is what I like to teach. This is what I like to show the players and make them feel that they command the game, you know, that they don't feel, oh, if I don't do this, the coach is going to is going to be upset with me. No, feel the freedom to understand what you need to do inside of what we work on the on the game right now that's I can connect to that 100% because I feel that this the same way this but don't get me wrong that there needs to be a structure, there needs to be a positional game. Like we were saying.
But you know, the player needs to be intelligent enough to understand how to connect everything, when to hold the position, when to move a little bit lower for me. And I like that my two number 10s come lower, for example. Why? Because if we are very close to each other and I want to play good football, the short passes are much more difficult to be missed than if we are very open and separated.
