00:00The Premier League, as it starts the 26-27 season, is no longer the league of big-name managers.
00:07But, that might actually mean it's better coached than ever before.
00:12So, just on the eve of the new season, I am doing a piece on how coaching in the league
00:17and the managers in the league have absolutely transformed.
00:20You can check that out on The Independent.
00:22We're just going to talk through the main themes of it here as well.
00:25And just so, there's been a few little stories that kind of, I suppose, set me thinking about the piece.
00:28So, at Chelsea, players have already remarked on one way that Xabi Alonso is living up to his famous reputation
00:36as a player and a coach.
00:37The training sessions rarely follow a set pattern.
00:40They change almost every day, ensuring players have to think about everything a lot more.
00:44They're kept on their toes, if not quite to the same degree as Liverpool are.
00:48And Dona Iriola has Liverpool adapting to different, as I quote, physiological demands.
00:53There's been a jolt from Arne Slott's time.
00:57And Newcastle United, Matthias Geisler, may not have such a reputation, but he's had a similar effect.
01:04People have already been very impressed, to the point of perceived sacrilege.
01:08Many are talking about how the coaching is a higher quality than Eddie Howe.
01:13And if Howe had long been seen as the next England manager, his successor is generally viewed as the next
01:19big coach.
01:20And despite such disparate situations across the Premier League, there is a link here, especially when you make the link
01:27back to that obvious contrast of the summer of 2016.
01:32So that was the closed season when Pep Guardiola was arriving rather than leaving.
01:38And the Premier League really wasn't about the next big names.
01:41It was about the biggest right dead.
01:44As Guardiola joined all of Jurgen Klopp, Jose Mourinho, Antonio Conte, Arsene Wenger and Maurizio Pochettino.
01:50The Premier League, as I say, became the league of star managers.
01:53A status that seemed to fit England's grand history of managerial patriarchs.
01:58The lack of such names now is all the more notable amid a debate about the lack of star players,
02:04something I'll be covering in my newsletter this week, since a wider line has been broken.
02:08This is actually the first Premier League season with none of Ferguson, Wenger, Mourinho or Guardiola involved.
02:15In other words, the line of great title-winning totems has been broken.
02:20And I've gone from that to this rather remarkable stat.
02:23But Mikel Arteta is in fact the only current coach to have even won the English League at all, having
02:30just claimed his first.
02:33And that victory came almost out of, as was put to me, complete control at Arsenal.
02:38A level of command that Arteta has that emulates those big beasts, as they used to be called, of the
02:44past.
02:45And it's increasingly rare in the modern game.
02:48That it's Arteta that may be all the more apt, since he does fit into one theme that has been
02:53kind of held up in a way that 2016 was the League of Stars, star coaches.
02:59If that was about the biggest names, this is about Basque names.
03:02The one piece of discourse you've probably seen more than Alonso's superior technique in training is discussion of how he
03:11is one of three coaches, along with Iriola and Arteta, to come from the same team in Antiguoco.
03:17To go with how Unai Emery also hails from the same region around the San Sebastian.
03:22So that's four Basque coaches, famously.
03:25And if it's obvious to say this is immensely impressive over-representation for such a small area, it's equally unfashionable
03:34to say some of this is possibly just coincidence.
03:36It happens.
03:38It's happened, in fact, in numerous cities in various fields throughout history.
03:41And you don't have to go as highbrow, say, as Vienna and its composers.
03:45Just consider the attention paid to how Glasgow's industrial hardships produced Jock Steen, Sir Matt Busby and Bill Shankly all
03:53at the same time, and eventually Ferguson.
03:56The freakish coincidence of producing coaches of such high quality can still be connected to wider cultural forces, even if
04:02there is an element of coincidence, as I say.
04:04The Basque country shares Spain's wider football ideology, with Salamanca-born Alvaro Arbeloa now sharing a place in the Premier
04:12League.
04:13His first Fulham match, in fact, comes against a former Liverpool, Real Madrid and Spain teammate, Xabi Alonso, on Monday.
04:22English inquests are warranted at how a quarter of the Premier League's managers are Spanish, at the same time that
04:29their country are reigning European and world champions,
04:33with the national team having displayed a depth of tactical sophistication that England couldn't get close to.
04:39England actually seems so far away that they had to opt for another big-name coach in Thomas Tuchel, at
04:46the expense of a figure like Howe.
04:48So England may be the home of the vintage managerial patriarch, but it is not currently a hothouse for elite
04:55modern coaches.
04:57Something has been missing, despite brilliant talent production with players.
05:00And it is within that gap that the most telling link between this season's managers lies.
05:06More relevant than a fifth of the coaches being Basque is how two of those are among nine managers new
05:12to their jobs.
05:13They've just come in this season, or this summer.
05:16And in fact, more than half of the Premier League, if you include Michael Carrick and Roberto De Zerbi, that's
05:2011 altogether,
05:21are currently working through their first pre-seasons with their teams.
05:27The 33-year-old Fabian Herzler is, meanwhile, the joint fourth longest-serving coach, with Marco Rose the 12th.
05:34So stats form quite a contrast to 10 years ago, when it was all about stature and legacy.
05:39So against the 28 titles that eight managers had won across eight different countries at that point in 2018,
05:45only five of the current group have won titles at all.
05:49And four of those seven titles came in Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Croatia.
05:55In fact, outside Arteta, Emery and Alonso are the only coaches with experience of winning a major league.
06:02And I suppose there's some debate about winning that with Paris Saint-Germain in France.
06:06So yeah, it's Arteta, Emery, Jekirovic at Hull City, Alonso and Gisela,
06:11who are the only coaches to have won domestic titles.
06:15Some in football have been talking about a group of unknowns and randoms set for multiple sackings in the Premier
06:22League this season,
06:23evidently ignoring the instructive example of Maurizio Pochettino at Southampton all the way back in 2013.
06:30And that is where there is a spin on this akin to especially creative training drills.
06:35The current crop may not have anything near the recognition of 2016,
06:39but numerous more people in football are adamant that the Premier League is now collectively much better coached.
06:47This is just what the competition is now,
06:49with years of broadcasting wealth,
06:51gradually ensuring almost all clubs have the most advanced ideas in coaching.
06:56And at the short time spans of these managers also speak to the grand theme of last season
07:01and the increasing influence of directors and executives.
07:04It also reflects the speed at which all of this is evolving.
07:08Clubs now actively prefer low-maintenance managers who will just concentrate on the coaching,
07:13of which your aeola is seen as a rare ideal.
07:16An irony is that successful management often necessitates stronger personalities,
07:20with a aeola an exception,
07:21but that also plays into an intense concentration on the coaching.
07:25Long-time football figures have been blown away by this.
07:27Relatively standard practice at clubs now is to work from 6am to well into the night,
07:32with new coaching plans presented every single morning.
07:35The manager will then ensure every code is in its exact place,
07:39so everything can be executed to the essential level,
07:42with all of this then poured over for hours on video afterwards.
07:46It's been written on these pages before that pressing systems are now so sophisticated
07:49that they form this kind of unseen map that shapes matches,
07:53normally nurtured by drill programs that even have the positions of water bottles marked out.
07:59In other words, the obsessiveness that marked out Guardiola is now commonplace.
08:04Little wonder coaches talk of the most competitive Premier League ever,
08:07with constant battle for space to think,
08:10almost inevitably devolving into wrestling matches for space at set pieces.
08:14And that constant obsessing about everything has also ensured football tactics,
08:18at least at a micro level, if not a macro, are evolving faster than ever.
08:23As an illustration, Alonso's core ideas were seen as innovative five years ago,
08:27but a lot of the Premier League have now taken those even further.
08:32It's just as well he's so good as a pure manager.
08:35That's another constant challenge though, that Arteta is known to be obsessed with.
08:38You don't just have to think about your own team's coaching all the time,
08:41but whether you yourself are keeping pace with all of the most advanced ideas.
08:46As one club insider says,
08:48the game has just changed so much from even three to four years,
08:51and it's certainly transformed from ten years ago.
08:54It's no longer about the big names,
08:56it's about overall ideas executed to the most granular level.
09:00So this has been Miguel Delaney's Inside Football,
09:02a compliment to my newsletter of the same name and my work for The Independent.
09:05If you enjoy the content, please like, subscribe, comment, that's always very important.
09:09And I'll see you soon for the start of this new season.
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