This is not a course about football as most people think about the sport. We don’t discuss tactics or matches but view football clubs as complex businesses. Players are seen as employees but also as assets. Player contracts are amortised over time but the person may be a cultural architect or assassin. Most fans are customers but not all are. Not all customers are fans as the products on offer vary from match attendance, club TV packages, event space in stadiums as well as players sold to competitor clubs.
Confused? That’s a perfectly healthy place to start as in this programme. You need to be ready to challenge everything that you thought you knew about football.
The step into a management role is difficult in most industries as your technical expertise may help you solve some problems but not many. You move from a large independent role into an interdependent one, where your ability to build a network is crucial for your survival. You tend not to make that difficult transition in public but you do in football. Relatively few new managers survive a full season in their first job and half of those leave the game completely afterwards.
Scottish football has a long tradition of producing skilled technical coaches but this course focuses on the challenges of managing part of a complex organisation. It has been said that playing football is relatively simple. Players focus on their own game and they are given the information they need for the next challenge. Overnight, a person can go from making sure that they turn up at the right place at the right time to being responsible for 20-25 people turning up at the right place and time. In some cases, dealing with those who do not arrive as scheduled. If you take on management or coaching responsibilities at the same club where you played, you leave the safety of the players’ WhatsApp group. Those who were friends are now your players who you may need to leave out of the team. You are now required to deal with the players, coaches, other staff and the businesspeople at the club. Very quickly new managers realise that there is a gap between responsibility and authority. You do not only have to manage a team of players but learn to manage ‘up’ and ‘across’ within the organisation. Within a small part-time club, you may have a much broader range of responsibilities that at one of the high-profile clubs.
Dr Stevie Robertson is the architect of the programme and draws on a unique set of experiences as leader in IT projects, long-time involvement in Edinburgh Napier University football club across a range of roles and his doctoral research into the business strategies with Scottish football. Stevie has a wide range of teaching experience, including commercial workshops, to draw on. The course was originally designed to be face to face but quickly moved to a virtual delivery during Covid. The decision was been taken to keep the virtual sessions as it makes it possible to recruit players across the country. It also allows players to take part when playing for their national team.
The course is funded by the players’ union in Scotland (PFA Scotland) and Scottish Union Learning so attendance is restricted to their members. The course runs from August to March (30 weekly sessions) and numbers are restricted to a maximum of 15 to encourage discussion. The academic content is used as a discussion focus to allow the participants to share their own ideas and experiences.
Participants are drawn from all 4 professional men’s leagues and the top division in the women’s game. Without name-dropping, many of the participants are household names. The women who have taken part have played around 250 matches (and counting) for Scotland between them and all have played in the Champions League. Many of the men who have participated
have played international football, including at the World Cup, have captained teams in national Cup Finals, some have scored winning goals in those finals. Many have played in England while others have experiences in other countries. Players have won leagues, been relegated and others have experienced clubs in administration. While those stories and experiences remain in the rooms where they were shared, they do broaden the knowledge of others especially the delivery team.
Stevie is able to use his broad business knowledge to facilitate on most of the sessions but the experience of James MacDougal makes the session on Football and the Law makes for an excellent session. We also make use of the experience of Luke Shanley from Sky Sports to explore the role of the media. It is one of the most enjoyable sessions and easily the longest. All students are required to formally present solutions to problems using theory as a base. Many have found this beneficial. Where possible, this is done in person in the Board Room at Craiglockhart.
The benefits of participation within the course can be seen in the number of participants who are moving successfully from playing to post-playing roles. There are several participants in Manager and Assistant Manager roles in full-time clubs. Others are continuing to develop their leadership skills in elite academies across Scotland. Some of those involved have moved into roles outside of football as the course is designed to help those who are looking to move away from careers with a little more security. An informal mentoring network has grown over the years, and this allows us to gauge impact of the sessions as well as develop the material for the future.
When you ask Stevie if this works, his reply tends to be “That’s not for me to say. When I go to a Scottish Cup Final and I’ve worked with both managers, then I’ll know it’s worked.”
The programme is being shortlisted for the Herald Higher Education Awards for outstanding business engagement in universities! The Herald Scotland Higher Education Awards is a prestigious annual event that celebrates excellence and innovation in higher education throughout Scotland. It provides a platform to acknowledge exceptional achievements, contributions, and initiatives within the academic community.