Helena Costa has taken over as manager of Clermont Foot, a French Ligue 2 side that I freely admit that I've never heard of. She's 36 and has previous coaching experience with Benfica's youth side and as the manager of Iran and Qatar's ladies' national teams. She also lead lower league Portuguese side Cheleirense to a regional title. Her other work in the game involved scouting for Celtic in Portugal and Spain for a couple of years. She becomes the first female manager in any reasonably large side in a major country. Her qualifications have probably helped her in this, as has a Uefa A licence coaching qualification and a Masters degree in sports science. Is this something that we can expect to see more of or do people think that it's something of a one-off? I can't really see any reason why a woman couldn't make an impact in the English game, especially with the rise of coaches that haven't played at a high level. Some players will obviously have a problem with it, but that's true of any walk of life, I think.
The way I see it, is if she has the right qualifications then she's just as qualified as any other bloke to do the job, good luck to her. The only downside I could think of, would be that she wouldn't have any actual previous hands on experience of the team/ league she'd be managing. It's not like a former player-turned-manager of a side, it's someone who's fresh to the job and therefore may need time adapting and learning to the do's and don'ts of the team/ league.
Hope Powell's approach of playing her favourites regardless of form, fitness, injury or the fact there are better players available, which pissed off a lot of players, sounds remarkably familiar...
Often people accuse women of being a "bit moany", but literally the 2 most moany people on the planet are Wenger and Maureen, so i say lets get them in. If we could get some eye candy then that would be great
The only criteria should be ability to do the job. But what do we at Spurs know about picking managers LOL
There is a school of thought that women make better managers in the workplace because they are more cooperation-oriented in mindset than the confrontational/dominance mindset of men.
I think that this is a myth, going by my experience, but that could just be an anomaly. The most confrontational and aggressive manager that I've worked with was a woman. Probably still is!
"f**k that!" The "Queen Bee" scenario is an unpleasant exception to this. As I understand it there have been similar studies on gender traits in casino banking. With the suggestion being that women are probably better placed to be tasked with pension fund management etc, and leave the high reward/risk stuff to the usual male "dick-measuring" mob.
"The most confrontational and aggressive manager that I've worked with was a woman. Probably still is!" Queen Bee scenario (she saw you as a woman who could be a potential threat) .
I'm sure there will be some opportunities for this! Sexist comments aside, the biggest drawback is the lack of experience as a player. Although there are some male managers without playing experience, they are few and far between. It's an issue you can only overcome if you have other exceptional qualities - and that will limit the pool of likely candidates of whatever sex. But a large part of football management is getting the best from other people - and there is no reason a woman couldn't be as good at that aspect of the job as any man.
People who subscribe to this theory have, coincidentally, never worked in an environment where a woman is in charge. Pretty much every single time where I've worked with a woman who had the smallest sliver of authority, they were obnoxious control freaks that used their position as a bludgeon in all disputes and refused to listen to common sense. Just like Jose Moronho, then...
"People who subscribe to this theory have, coincidentally, never worked in an environment where a woman is in charge." I have had several women managers in control of me. No problems at all. A "Queen bee" incident with one of them (before my time) .
Just as a bit of balance, I may have worked with a horrible, argumentative, aggressive woman, but I've also worked with competent, sensible women in authority. I think that generalisations over this sort of thing are generally quite wrong. People are people. Some are nice, some are arseholes. Doesn't really matter what sex they are or where they come from, in my experience.
