Football has more money than ever before,
and it has made some football clubs enter
a perpetual cycle of
hiring managers, spending huge sums of money,
and when things go awry, sacking the manager
and doing it
all over again.
This endless pursuit of immediate success
and lack of stability is the result of poor
leadership at the club, and
one way of explained that is through game
theory.
Game theory is a branch of mathematics that
also uses elements of sociology and economics
to better
understand rational decision making in competitive
situations. It's used to understand a wide
variety of
topics, from business to war. The premise
is that when you have more than one competitor
in a situation, you
have a game. And there are two types of games:
finite and infinite.
Finite games are defined as having set rules
and players in which the objective of the
game is to win. An
individual football match is a classic example.
There are eleven known players on each team
and set, agreed
upon rules that both teams follow in order
to try and win the match.
In contrast, infinite games have changeable
rules and both known players and unknown players.
Most
importantly, the goal of the game is not to
win, but to keep playing. If we examine football
in a holistic
sense, it becomes clear that it is an infinite
game. Nobody can win or lose the entire sport
of football, they
can only try and continue to be a player amongst
a large field of constantly changing players.
There is no
football club who wins every trophy every
season, and there are countless clubs who
fade out of relevance at
the highest level.
In this sense, we can understand that the
clubs who are successful are those who recognise
the type of game
they are in and implement strategies befitting
that game.
An example of this is Sir Alex Ferguson and
Manchester United from 2004 to 2007. United
failed to win the
league for three successive seasons during
that time period, and Ferguson was facing
significant pressure
from fans and critics who saw Chelsea and
Arsenal as the best teams in England. However,
Ferguson
understood that Manchester United could never
be Premier League winners every single year
and that there
would be times in his tenure that his squad
would be inferior to that of other teams.
Rather than trying to immediately sign big-name
players to react to his competition, Ferguson
understood the
benefits of developing talents like Wayne
Rooney and Cristiano Ronaldo would outweigh
Manchester
United’s short term failures. This is not
to say that Ferguson didn’t care about results,
it's simply that he
believed in certain ideas about how football
should be approached, among which was youth
development.
Ferguson made decisions based on his and Manchester
United’s values ahead of their interests,
and this type
of infinite strategy enabled him to eventually
outperform his competition in the long term.
A more recent example of a team that recognizes
that it's in an infinite game is Watford.
Watford are not big
spenders in the Premier League, with the likes
of Wolverhampton Wanderers, Everton, and Fulham
spending
far more than them in the transfer window.
Instead, Watford looks to make astute signings
that fit a system
the manager is trying to play and do so with
the intent of achieving stability and consistency.
Even when
events take a turn for the worse, Watford
don’t become reactionary and instead stay
committed to their
principles. For instance, at the end of the
17/18 season, Watford lost manager Marco Silva
and a huge talent
in Richarlison to Everton, who finished six
places above Watford.
In this scenario, it would be easy for a club
to spend big to try and plug the gaps in their
side. However,
Watford appointed a manager who could get
the best out of the players in the squad and
have now developed
a cohesive and successful side that sit 8th
in the Premier League and in contention for
Europe. It may seem
strange for Watford to take such a pragmatic
and measured to its ownership.
After all, they will be never able to get
close to winning the league without heavy
investment in the squad.
But Watford realise that for them, that is
not the definition of success. If Watford
were to stay a top half
Premier League side for the next 15 years
and never finish above 5th, that would be
an astonishing
achievement. Different clubs have different
potentials, and Watford’s approach has set
them on course
become the best version of themselves.
One case of a team failing to recognisee that
they are in an infinite game is Fulham. The
London side was
sensational in the Championship and earned
promotion with the expectation of performing
well in the top
flight. The side was built on cohesion, and
understanding between players to achieve their
possession-based,
attacking style.
However, Fulham spent heavily in the transfer
window in an attempt to secure safety by improving
the
quality of player in the squad. In doing so,
they failed to recognise what had made them
successful in the
past and aimlessly sought to achieve safety
in the short term. Fast forward to March,
Fulham have had three
different managers and seem destined to go
straight back down. There is no guarantee
that Fulham would
have stayed up if had they depended on their
existing squad alone, but they would certainly
have more
stability and long term assurance than they
currently have.
It's clear that football is an infinite game
because it is the clubs and managers who pursue
infinite strategies
that become great. Managers like Sir Alex
Ferguson and Johan Cruyff made Manchester
United and
Barcelona so successful by consistently making
decisions based on their values, and thus
made those teams
stand for something. As author Simon Sinek
puts it, when people know what you stand for,
they can then say
“I believe what you believe. I would like
to be a part of your organisation” and later
explained that “this is
where loyalty comes from.” That loyalty
and trust enabled to both of those teams to
create successful
footballing empires. The blueprint for these
incredible coaches and teams and, more broadly,
the morals and
values of football are clearly rooted in infinite
strategies.
