Haven't seen this posted on here yet, an interview with Harry (by a Gooner) talking about how clubs are run, how he motivates players, how things have changed since he was playing and the England job. Overall it's quite a good read although the author annoys me slightly during the England bit at the beginning.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-16357044
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Redknapp: An Englishman should manage England
Can football managers learn from successful business leaders and vice versa?
I have been examining the commercialisation and globalisation of top flight football, for a new two-part series on Radio 4 called "Among the Managers", which I've made with David Stenhouse of BBC Scotland (the first part is broadcast at 1100 on Wednesday, 4 January).
Among the footballing and business stars I interviewed, two stood out for me as particularly gripping: one with "Big" Sam Allardyce, manager of West Ham (which I will return to on another occasion); the other with Harry Redknapp, manager of Tottenham Hotspur.
As a third-generation Arsenal supporter, it worried me that I thoroughly enjoyed chatting to Mr Redknapp - although there was small consolation in his confession that he grew up a Gooner (he told me the most exciting match he ever saw at Highbury was Arsenal versus Manchester United on the weekend before the 1958 Munich Air Crash).
It was Mr Redknapp's reminiscences of how football used to be that resonated most. But he also said a couple of newsy things, so I had better get those out of the way.
And the next England manager is...
There has, for example, been a good deal of speculation that he may be offered the England manager's job, when Fabio Capello steps down next summer. So I asked Mr Redknapp whether he wanted to be England manager.
Here is what he said: "It's a difficult one. You know I've said so many times it's the pinnacle for any Englishman to want to manage their country... I would like to see an English manager manage England. I would like to see that... When Fabio Capello finishes, I would like to see them give it to an Englishman."
So not exactly a "no, nay, never". That said, there is something about the rhythm of the England job that he would not find appealing: "I enjoy the day to day, coming in to work with players, going out on the training pitch every day, seeing the players, being involved every day. I don't know if seeing players once every six or seven weeks, it would be different for me and I'd find it very difficult. I'd get very bored I would imagine, you know. I haven't got too many hobbies, except for a round of golf occasionally."
But: "If it came along it would - it would - it would be difficult to turn it down I think for any Englishman."
So if I were a Spurs supporter (absurd idea) I would be a bit anxious that the club's outstanding manager of recent years could be serving out his final season.
Globalised football
Also, since he's right at the centre of Premier League action, his views on the future of football are worth noting - and what he says is that globalisation for the biggest clubs is work in progress: "We're getting more and more foreign owners into the country now.
"I don't know where it's all going to be in 20 years time... I can see us playing Premier League games all round the world on a regular basis. If you're from China or you're from India or Russia and you own a club, you're going to want to take your club back to where you come from... I think it'll almost be a world Premier League".
Football, but not as we knew it
But it was when Mr Redknapp talked about his playing days at West Ham in the 1960s, and also his early managerial career at Bournemouth that I became particularly enthralled, because it showed quite how much the game has changed within the span of one man's career: "When I first came into it, as a manager at Bournemouth, you know you were responsible for almost everything.
"You had a secretary and you had the manager. And the manager would do the transfers, you would do the contracts with the players, you would negotiate the contracts with the players, you negotiate all the transfer fees with the different managers at different clubs... Whereas nowadays we've all got chief executives, you've got chairmen who are all hands on and really the business side of the club is completely run by them.
"I mean from my point of view, I run the football side of it. I go out today and I take the training, with the coaching staff, we work with the players, I pick the team. I decide who we buy and who we sell. But when it comes to actually doing the negotiating, the chairman, and the chief executive, or specially the chairman at this club, Daniel Levy, he'd be responsible for doing that.
"He would discuss the terms with the selling club or whatever... and he would do all the deals with them. I wouldn't be involved in it. I couldn't even tell you the wages of a player at this club. You know the wages are something that he negotiates.
"You probably have as much idea of what they earn as what I do. I don't even bother to ask him, to be honest with you. It's all done now chairman to chairman or chief executive to chief executive."
Motivating the team
So what happens if a player feels he isn't paid enough? Who deals with that?
"They go directly to the chairman. They've all got agents. Agents go to the chairman; the agent would ring the chairman... The player wouldn't do it, he wouldn't speak to the chairman... If I found out players were going directly to the chairman I wouldn't stand for that. Because if they've got any kind of problem, they should come to see me, as far as I'm concerned... They would go through their agent when it comes to a new contract; their agent would deal with the chairman and between them they would sort out the problems and whatever needs to be done."
So with players earning so much and managers not controlling the purse strings, there has been a change in the way that someone like Mr Redknapp motivates his team. The contrast with how he was motivated to do well by Ron Greenwood, when he played alongside the Hammers' greats, Bobby Moore, Geoff Hurst and Martin Peters, could hardly be greater: "You are dealing with more fragile characters now because they're all super highly paid young guys.
"You haven't got the control that you [as a manager] might have had a few years ago. The main control you have is that you pick or don't pick 'em. But in terms of the money they earn now, it's gone beyond all belief. And it keeps getting more and more difficult.
"You don't have that control that my manager would've had when I was a young player, when at the end of the year, you'd sign a new one-year contract. Whether it was Bobby Moore, whether it was Geoff Hurst, Martin Peters - who played in the World Cup final - they'd go in to see the manager. You didn't have an agent. You'd sit in the manager's office and he'd give you maybe a five or 10 pound a week rise.
"And you went home and you thought 'fantastic'. You'd go home and tell the wife 'I got another £10 a week, which is great'. You know we could certainly improve our standard of living and things were moving in the right direction for everybody.
"Nowadays it's different. The [player's] agent goes to the chairman and they go home and say well I got you another £20,000 a week... You haven't got the power that the manager had you know over me or over the rest of the players when we were younger."
'I don't drink with them'
I find it's no good shouting and screaming at players and telling them 'you're rubbish and you can't do this', because that doesn't help anybodyâ
Here is where Mr Redknapp summarised a social and economic revolution in football: "You know they move in different circles. We'd maybe go and have a lager after the game. They'd probably go and have a bottle of £200 champagne or something. I don't know, I'm not sure, I don't drink with them. But it's very, very different, the way they live now.
"We were all brought up living amongst the supporters, if you like. You know Kevin Bond who works with me, his dad John played twenty-odd years at West Ham. He lived 50 yards away from West Ham football ground, in a little terraced house, so the game would finish, he'd walk across the road and he was home. And we all lived in terraced, or semi-detached houses you know...
"Now they all live in beautiful houses. They don't live near the football ground any more, and they probably have very little contact with the average punter now."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-16357044
________________________________________________
Redknapp: An Englishman should manage England
Can football managers learn from successful business leaders and vice versa?
I have been examining the commercialisation and globalisation of top flight football, for a new two-part series on Radio 4 called "Among the Managers", which I've made with David Stenhouse of BBC Scotland (the first part is broadcast at 1100 on Wednesday, 4 January).
Among the footballing and business stars I interviewed, two stood out for me as particularly gripping: one with "Big" Sam Allardyce, manager of West Ham (which I will return to on another occasion); the other with Harry Redknapp, manager of Tottenham Hotspur.
As a third-generation Arsenal supporter, it worried me that I thoroughly enjoyed chatting to Mr Redknapp - although there was small consolation in his confession that he grew up a Gooner (he told me the most exciting match he ever saw at Highbury was Arsenal versus Manchester United on the weekend before the 1958 Munich Air Crash).
It was Mr Redknapp's reminiscences of how football used to be that resonated most. But he also said a couple of newsy things, so I had better get those out of the way.
And the next England manager is...
There has, for example, been a good deal of speculation that he may be offered the England manager's job, when Fabio Capello steps down next summer. So I asked Mr Redknapp whether he wanted to be England manager.
Here is what he said: "It's a difficult one. You know I've said so many times it's the pinnacle for any Englishman to want to manage their country... I would like to see an English manager manage England. I would like to see that... When Fabio Capello finishes, I would like to see them give it to an Englishman."
So not exactly a "no, nay, never". That said, there is something about the rhythm of the England job that he would not find appealing: "I enjoy the day to day, coming in to work with players, going out on the training pitch every day, seeing the players, being involved every day. I don't know if seeing players once every six or seven weeks, it would be different for me and I'd find it very difficult. I'd get very bored I would imagine, you know. I haven't got too many hobbies, except for a round of golf occasionally."
But: "If it came along it would - it would - it would be difficult to turn it down I think for any Englishman."
So if I were a Spurs supporter (absurd idea) I would be a bit anxious that the club's outstanding manager of recent years could be serving out his final season.
Globalised football
Also, since he's right at the centre of Premier League action, his views on the future of football are worth noting - and what he says is that globalisation for the biggest clubs is work in progress: "We're getting more and more foreign owners into the country now.
"I don't know where it's all going to be in 20 years time... I can see us playing Premier League games all round the world on a regular basis. If you're from China or you're from India or Russia and you own a club, you're going to want to take your club back to where you come from... I think it'll almost be a world Premier League".
Football, but not as we knew it
But it was when Mr Redknapp talked about his playing days at West Ham in the 1960s, and also his early managerial career at Bournemouth that I became particularly enthralled, because it showed quite how much the game has changed within the span of one man's career: "When I first came into it, as a manager at Bournemouth, you know you were responsible for almost everything.
"You had a secretary and you had the manager. And the manager would do the transfers, you would do the contracts with the players, you would negotiate the contracts with the players, you negotiate all the transfer fees with the different managers at different clubs... Whereas nowadays we've all got chief executives, you've got chairmen who are all hands on and really the business side of the club is completely run by them.
"I mean from my point of view, I run the football side of it. I go out today and I take the training, with the coaching staff, we work with the players, I pick the team. I decide who we buy and who we sell. But when it comes to actually doing the negotiating, the chairman, and the chief executive, or specially the chairman at this club, Daniel Levy, he'd be responsible for doing that.
"He would discuss the terms with the selling club or whatever... and he would do all the deals with them. I wouldn't be involved in it. I couldn't even tell you the wages of a player at this club. You know the wages are something that he negotiates.
"You probably have as much idea of what they earn as what I do. I don't even bother to ask him, to be honest with you. It's all done now chairman to chairman or chief executive to chief executive."
Motivating the team
So what happens if a player feels he isn't paid enough? Who deals with that?
"They go directly to the chairman. They've all got agents. Agents go to the chairman; the agent would ring the chairman... The player wouldn't do it, he wouldn't speak to the chairman... If I found out players were going directly to the chairman I wouldn't stand for that. Because if they've got any kind of problem, they should come to see me, as far as I'm concerned... They would go through their agent when it comes to a new contract; their agent would deal with the chairman and between them they would sort out the problems and whatever needs to be done."
So with players earning so much and managers not controlling the purse strings, there has been a change in the way that someone like Mr Redknapp motivates his team. The contrast with how he was motivated to do well by Ron Greenwood, when he played alongside the Hammers' greats, Bobby Moore, Geoff Hurst and Martin Peters, could hardly be greater: "You are dealing with more fragile characters now because they're all super highly paid young guys.
"You haven't got the control that you [as a manager] might have had a few years ago. The main control you have is that you pick or don't pick 'em. But in terms of the money they earn now, it's gone beyond all belief. And it keeps getting more and more difficult.
"You don't have that control that my manager would've had when I was a young player, when at the end of the year, you'd sign a new one-year contract. Whether it was Bobby Moore, whether it was Geoff Hurst, Martin Peters - who played in the World Cup final - they'd go in to see the manager. You didn't have an agent. You'd sit in the manager's office and he'd give you maybe a five or 10 pound a week rise.
"And you went home and you thought 'fantastic'. You'd go home and tell the wife 'I got another £10 a week, which is great'. You know we could certainly improve our standard of living and things were moving in the right direction for everybody.
"Nowadays it's different. The [player's] agent goes to the chairman and they go home and say well I got you another £20,000 a week... You haven't got the power that the manager had you know over me or over the rest of the players when we were younger."
'I don't drink with them'
I find it's no good shouting and screaming at players and telling them 'you're rubbish and you can't do this', because that doesn't help anybodyâ
Here is where Mr Redknapp summarised a social and economic revolution in football: "You know they move in different circles. We'd maybe go and have a lager after the game. They'd probably go and have a bottle of £200 champagne or something. I don't know, I'm not sure, I don't drink with them. But it's very, very different, the way they live now.
"We were all brought up living amongst the supporters, if you like. You know Kevin Bond who works with me, his dad John played twenty-odd years at West Ham. He lived 50 yards away from West Ham football ground, in a little terraced house, so the game would finish, he'd walk across the road and he was home. And we all lived in terraced, or semi-detached houses you know...
"Now they all live in beautiful houses. They don't live near the football ground any more, and they probably have very little contact with the average punter now."
