It emerged last week that Newly Promoted Prison Leopards F.C had given Coach Frank Miti a five match ultimatum. As if that was not farcical enough, an established Side like ZANACO F.C have given their coach Numba Mumamba a three match ultimatum to deliver or face the sack.
It’s absurd that this is happening even before the league kicks off and it raises a lot of questions among them being: How did the respective club heads reach at such ultimatums? Do they trust their own coaches well enough? Are they trying to find an early scape goat in case things go south? Only the club chiefs know the answers at this stage but the whole idea is not health.
The Costs and Effects
From the outset, ultimatums create uncertainty in the dressing room for both players and coaches. The game itself is surrounded by pressure but early ultimatums raise it a notch higher. With the understanding that some players have special connections with coaches, it brings out two extremes as some may thrive under pressure while others wither. Instability may hit the team.
By the time the league season kicks off, most teams wouldn’t have done their full pre-season training and as a result the time for specifics training wouldn’t have been fully done.
Furthermore, the major part teams would have done is fitness training but the tactical side would still not be up to date. Once this area is not well fed, results are inconsistent. In the modern game, tactics win matches.
In addition, clubs risk wasting most of the financial outlay made in pre-season training. Most coaches have their own way of wanting their team to play and this is what they try to build on in all days including all activities done in pre-season but sacking one coach after match week 5 will throw most of that work down the drain.
Whoever will be turned to will want to start afresh and make the team play his own way and even worse players that may have just come into the team will still be trying to jell by match week 5. This will make the job threefold for the new man, starting from point one to stamp his idea on the team, integrate the new signings and get the team firing on all cylinders. This will be time wasted and the effects on the campaign would be devastating.
Do Ultimatums Work?
In the short term they appear to work but over the course of the season, they do not.
The chief reason they appear to work in the short term is coaches begin to ignore the right processes of creating an environment for a sustainable winning team and go for short cuts.
Among many short cuts may be playing the same players that did the job before and ignoring the new additions, sticking to old tactics at the expense of modern and progressive ones and focusing only on the present without keeping an eye on things ahead.
The results of this will be physical and mental strain on players due to luck of rotation, tactics proving ineffective over the course of the campaign as they become predictable and non-fruit yielding and overall struggle to meet season ambitions.
Ultimatums limit the players’ ability to fully express themselves, takes away the freedom from coaches to try new ideas and in turn the whole team suffers. More often than not, clubs end up worse than before.
Best Practice
In between seasons, clubs must sit and agree on what the targets will be for the upcoming season and put all things in place to ensure those are met.
These targets should further be broken down to quarters of the season and specific points be targeted clearly stated. These should be the basic guidelines especially that coaches are judged on results.
Football success demands processes be followed, mid-season is the perfect time to gauge how a coach and his team have performed, to re-asses targets if need be and address matters arising and decisions made thereafter.
The mid-season point allows time to make necessary changes. Performance or lack thereof should be against set targets.
Going past an ultimatum doesn’t rule out a future one, neither does it mean all is well. Clubs must begin to trust the people they appoint and judge them based on results not threatening with daggers even before battles begin. This practice of Ultimatums so early is not health.
