I am european and I live in Europe following both soccer and football.
One thing that is interesting to me is that in Europe there are so many former star players that became coaches. Some of them have been very successful coaches. Others less so. But the point is a lot become coaches. And Head Coaches nonetheless. I can list like 15-20 people without even thinking too hard.
In football, that seems to not be the case. People like Prime and DeMeco Ryans are the exceptions.
It is a two part issue 1) why are former top players not interested in being coaches 2) why are teams not offering top gigs to former players straight up
Let’s look at two current examples. Bills OC job and the Texas A&M job. Both of these jobs are highly desirable and pay well. A&M likely $10 mil +.
Why are people like Larry Fitzgerald, Rivers, Demarcus Ware, Matt Ryan, Drew Brees, Mannings, Brady, Revis not interested and not being offered these jobs straight up?
I can easily see Messi or Ronaldo coaching down the road. Many players of their status have done it.
And I am not talking about recent developments. Many of the former star players never became coaches over the past 30+ years
But it seems impossible to imagine Mahomes or Mannings becoming coaches down the road. Wondering why such a difference.
Thanks!
Lots of answers here already but given you’re European like me, let me explain why you cannot compare NFL coaching to ⚽ coaching.
NFL players are way more specialised than soccer. The only position in soccer that is truly specialised compared to other positions is the goalkeeper. Otherwise the principles and coaching need for the other 10 outfield positions have huge amounts of overlap (formations, set pieces, passing drills etc). Apart from the goalkeepers, everyone has to practice corners, free kicks, dribbling, passing, aerial ball control etc. Maybe only half your team needs to practice shooting at goal but generally everyone needs to practice penalties. Therefore if you are a star midfielder, outside of the goalkeeper, you probably know already what everyone else on your team needs to do well. Compare that to the NFL, where there are three distinct units and within that incredibly specialised roles. QBs don’t need to practice catching, receivers don’t need to throw the ball and offensive tackles rarely ever even touch the ball. The coaching day for a linebacker is completely different to a quarterback, running back or kicker and the head coach has to manage assistants for all of these.
There are only 32 professional franchises and after that it’s college football where there is completely different mindset in terms of drafting and developing your players. Competition for these roles is tough. In football, every European country has multiple divisions in a league structure and the second division teams are functionally the same so the transition between say League One or the Championship to the Premier League is much less than college to NFL. This means instead of fighting for 32 opportunities, you have hundreds of teams you can go manage.
Outside of maybe set pieces, soccer is way less scripted and designed on a whiteboard with scripted plays and schemes. Play is much fluid and instinctive where you trust your players to move around the pitch, find the passes and generally play more reactively. This is probably similar to playing defense in the NFL but on offense, the playcalling side is a completely different beast where you have to design plays ahead of time which again is not a skill you would get from playing the game as a star