What Reference Guides Football Decision Makers?
What Reference Guides Football Decision Makers?
Why defining and explaining the problem must come before creating the role or appointing the person
A football club was searching for someone to lead its academy. The position had already been approved and advertised under the title Academy Director, and the organisation received applications from experienced coaches, former players, administrators and people who had occupied similar roles elsewhere. Two candidates reached the final stage. The first delivered an impressive presentation filled with familiar expressions such as high performance, winning culture, leadership, intensity, innovation and long-term strategy. He spoke confidently, used attractive graphics and appeared comfortable answering every question.
The second candidate began differently. Before explaining what he would do as Academy Director, he asked the panel: What football-development problem is the organisation trying to solve? Was the academy failing to develop players who could communicate, make football decisions and execute those decisions? Was there no common football reference guiding the coaches? Was training disconnected from how the teams were expected to attack, defend and transition? Were players progressing through the age groups without being sufficiently prepared for the senior team? Or was the organisation recruiting an Academy Director mainly because other clubs employed someone with that title?
The panel was surprised. The vacancy had been approved, the job description had been written, and the title had been advertised, but the football problem the successful candidate would be expected to solve had never been clearly defined or explained. The first candidate told the panel how he would perform the role. The second wanted to establish why the role needed to exist.
The panel eventually selected the first candidate. His presentation appeared more complete, his language sounded familiar and his previous titles seemed to provide evidence that he could perform the work. The second candidate may have demonstrated a clearer approach to football development, but because the organisation had started with the title rather than the problem, his questions did not fit comfortably within the recruitment process.
Several months later, the academy had more meetings, new reporting structures, attractive documents and additional job titles. However, the coaches still lacked a common football reference, the training process remained disconnected and the players were not necessarily receiving better football development. The panel had not deliberately made a poor decision. Its members may have been honest, hardworking and committed to the club. The difficulty began before the candidates entered the interview room: the organisation created a title and searched for someone to occupy it without first defining what it was observing, explaining why it was happening and identifying the football responsibility required to improve it.
This story is fictional, but the process may be familiar across clubs, academies, associations, federations, government organisations and community programmes. Positions are regularly advertised under titles such as Academy Director, Technical Director, Director of Football, Head of Development or Performance Manager. These titles may sound established and professional, but the title alone does not tell us what football problem exists, why it exists or what competence is required to solve it. Before asking who should be appointed, football organisations may need to ask an earlier question: Was the football problem clearly defined and explained before the role was created?
From Football Terminology to Football Decision-Making
In my previous blog, Terminology Influences Behaviour: Is Football Using the Wrong Language?, I examined how terms such as Performance Coach, goalkeeper, defender and attacker can influence organisational structures, coaching behaviour and the way players understand their responsibilities. That discussion raised another question: who creates these titles, who writes the job descriptions and what football reference is used to determine whether the appointed person is capable of carrying the responsibility?
When an organisation begins with a familiar title, terminology may influence the entire process before the problem has even been understood. The organisation may assume that employing someone called an Academy Director, Performance Manager or Head of Development means that the issue has been addressed. The appointed person may then perform the traditional activities associated with the title rather than solve the specific football problem that exists within that environment.
This blog therefore moves the discussion from the language used to describe football roles to the process through which those roles are created and filled. It is not an argument against administrators, board members, business leaders or government officials being involved in football. Football organisations require governance, finance, safeguarding, legal oversight, commercial development and effective administration. The question is whether decisions concerning technical football responsibilities are being guided by a clear football reference and whether the role being advertised has emerged from an identified football need.
Football Must Be the Starting Point
Before examining football decision-making, we must first define and explain football. Defining describes what we observe; explaining identifies why those observable actions are taking place.
Football is played between two teams. When one team has possession, that team attacks while the opposition defends. When possession changes, both teams briefly transition: one changes from attacking to defending while the other changes from defending to attacking. Teams repeat this process throughout the match. The team with the ball attacks because it is trying to create and score goals, while the team without the ball defends because it is trying to prevent the opposition from creating and scoring.
To achieve these objectives, players continuously interact with teammates, opponents, the ball, space, time, the score and the changing football situation. Within this process, players communicate, make football decisions and execute those decisions. They must repeat these football actions as frequently as possible and maintain their quality for as long as the match requires. This is the CDEF reference: Communication, Decision-making, Execution of decisions and Football Fitness.
Raymond Verheijen presents this as a universal football reference. It does not require every coach to use the same formation, playing style or training exercise. Those applications may differ according to the coach, players and environment. However, the game remains the same: teams attack, defend and transition, while players communicate, decide and execute football actions. This is the difference between the objective WHAT of football and the subjective HOW chosen by a particular coach.
The same logic should guide recruitment. Before evaluating how someone intends to develop football, an organisation must establish what is currently happening within its environment and why it is happening. Without that reference, an interview panel may struggle to distinguish between a candidate who understands the football responsibility and one who has simply learned to speak confidently about it.
The Problem Should Create the Role
When an organisation decides that it needs an Academy Director, Technical Director or Head of Performance, it may begin by examining similar vacancies elsewhere, combining commonly used duties and advertising the position. However, this may reverse the correct working order.
The process should begin with observation. Perhaps players are progressing through the academy without developing the football understanding required for the senior team. Perhaps each age-group coach works from a different reference. Perhaps players perform well in isolated exercises but struggle to communicate, make decisions and execute under realistic football pressure. Perhaps the academy achieves youth results but does not prepare enough players for the next level. Perhaps coaches are being appointed without a clear education and development pathway.
These observations help define what is happening. The organisation must then explain why it is happening. Is there no agreed football-development reference? Are coaches mainly evaluated through short-term results? Is player recruitment replacing player development? Is the training process disconnected from the game? Is there insufficient coach education? Are technical leaders spending most of their time on administration rather than developing football?
Only after defining the situation and explaining its causes can the organisation identify the responsibility required to improve it. The job description should describe the work necessary to address that problem, and the title should accurately communicate that responsibility. The problem should create the role; the role should not be created first and the problem fitted around it afterwards.
This is important because the same title can describe completely different responsibilities. One Academy Director may be responsible for coach education and football methodology. Another may primarily organise schedules, facilities and registrations. Another may oversee recruitment, contracts, safeguarding, budgets and parental communication. All may carry the same title, but the problems they are expected to solve and the competence required are very different.
Without a clearly defined problem, the recruitment panel also lacks a reliable reference for identifying the strongest candidate. It may select the person with the most familiar previous title, the most impressive presentation, the greatest confidence or the strongest personal recommendation rather than the person whose competence best matches the organisation’s football needs.
An Ancient Observation About Power and Capability
Thousands of years ago, King Solomon recorded an observation about what can happen when people in authority place responsibility in the wrong hands. Solomon was not an unknown writer commenting on leadership from the outside. He governed a wealthy and internationally connected kingdom, oversaw major building and trading projects and interacted with rulers and visitors from different nations. He became famous for both his wealth and wisdom.
Although no exact financial comparison can be made across such different historical periods, a modern reader might loosely compare the scale of Solomon’s wealth, reputation and influence with globally recognised figures such as Bill Gates or Elon Musk. His credibility, however, did not come from wealth alone. He composed thousands of proverbs and carefully examined human behaviour, work, leadership, success, failure, wealth and the consequences of people’s decisions. His writing describes a process of reflecting, conducting a thorough search, arranging his findings and trying to record accurate conclusions. In modern terms, he approached many of these subjects as a researcher.
After years of leadership, observation and investigation, Solomon recorded this statement in an ancient book:
“The sort of mistake made by those in power: Foolishness is put in many high positions, but the capable remain in low positions.”
The significance of the statement is that Solomon described the situation as a mistake made by those in power. The problem was not only that an unsuitable person occupied a senior position. The deeper problem was that those responsible for assigning authority had failed to recognise, evaluate or correctly place capability.
At the same time, capable people remained in lower positions where their knowledge and ability could not be fully used. Responsibility and capability had become disconnected. Some people were elevated beyond what they were equipped to manage, while others who could have contributed more remained overlooked.
Although this observation was made thousands of years ago, the principle remains recognisable today. Organisations may appoint people because of reputation, visibility, previous job titles, relationships, influence, confidence or an impressive presentation. Meanwhile, someone with greater competence for the actual responsibility may remain unnoticed because the decision-makers do not possess the reference needed to recognise that competence.
This does not mean that everyone in a senior position is incapable or that everyone occupying a lower position is more qualified. The observation should not be used to accuse individuals. It should encourage organisations to examine whether responsibility and capability have been correctly matched.
How Can Football Capability Be Recognised?
The issue is not simply that an unsuitable person may occasionally be appointed. The more fundamental difficulty is that people may be asked to evaluate technical football competence without having an established football reference from which to recognise it.
Members of a recruitment panel may be highly competent in administration, finance, business, governance, law, education or commercial development. Football organisations need all these forms of expertise. However, competence in one area does not automatically provide the ability to evaluate another.
When decision-makers do not fully understand the technical responsibility, they naturally rely on substitute indicators such as previous job titles, qualifications, reputation, confidence, presentation style, personal recommendations or the size of the organisations where candidates previously worked. These factors can provide useful information, but none independently proves that the person can solve the particular football problem facing the organisation.
A candidate may speak confidently about high performance, leadership, culture, innovation and intensity while struggling to explain how coaches should develop players who communicate, make decisions and execute football actions while attacking, defending and transitioning. Another candidate may possess a clearer football reference but be less familiar with corporate interview language. Without the appropriate football knowledge on the panel, the organisation may naturally select the presentation it understands most easily.
Qualifications and experience are important, but they must also be examined. A recognised coaching licence confirms that someone has completed an educational and assessment process, but two people with the same qualification may demonstrate very different abilities to define, explain and solve football problems. A successful playing career can provide valuable experience, but the ability to play does not automatically prove the ability to coach, educate coaches or lead long-term football development. Likewise, someone who did not play professionally may become an excellent technical leader through education, practical experience, observation and continued reflection.
The question should therefore not be whether a candidate is famous, highly qualified or previously employed under an impressive title. The question should be whether that person possesses the specific competence required to solve the organisation’s clearly defined football problem.
This is why technical appointments should involve people capable of evaluating football competence. The board may retain final governance authority, but the technical evaluation should be led by those who understand the responsibility. In the same way that financial expertise should be evaluated by someone who understands finance, football expertise should be evaluated by people who understand football.
Why the Appointment Matters Beyond the Individual
A technical appointment rarely affects only the person receiving the job. A Technical Director may influence the appointment of coach educators. Coach educators influence the education of coaches. Coaches influence the learning environments of players. Those players may later become senior players, coaches, parents, referees, volunteers and decision-makers. One appointment can therefore shape football behaviour for many years.
If the person leading coach education cannot clearly define and explain football, the educational process beneath that person may become a collection of exercises, fashionable expressions and disconnected subjects. Coaches may receive information about leadership, nutrition, conditioning, player welfare, technique and tactics without being shown how these areas connect to football itself. They may leave with more information but without a clearer reference for coaching the game.
The same can happen within a club. A Director of Football influences the recruitment of the Head Coach, academy staff, analysts and specialists. If that person cannot evaluate football competence, appointments may become dependent on familiarity, reputation or relationships. The organisation may gradually fill with people who use similar language and protect the same structures, even when those structures are not solving the original problem.
When results eventually decline, the Head Coach may be removed and recruitment begins again. However, if the reference guiding the appointments remains unchanged, replacing the visible person may not address the underlying cause.
The long-term cost may be greatest in youth and grassroots football. At professional level, poor decisions are visible through results, supporters and financial consequences. At youth level, the damage is harder to measure. Players may leave the game, coaches may become discouraged and development opportunities may never be created. There is no league table recording the children who stopped participating, the coaches who were overlooked or the players who were never given the environment needed to develop.
This is how football underdevelopment can continue even when nobody deliberately intends to cause it. The people experiencing the consequences may be far removed from those who made the original decision.
A Better Working Order
The solution is not to remove administrators from football or give coaches complete authority over every organisational decision. Football needs governance, finance, safeguarding, legal oversight, commercial development and competent administration. The solution is to establish clearer responsibilities and follow the correct process.
An organisation should begin by observing what is happening within its football environment. It should define the problem and explain why it is occurring. From that explanation, it should identify the responsibility required to improve the situation. It should then create a job description that accurately reflects the work and select a title that communicates the responsibility. Only after completing this process should recruitment begin.
Candidates should not only present what they intend to do; they should explain why. They should analyse football situations, identify development problems and demonstrate how their proposed work connects to attacking, defending, transitioning and CDEF. The successful candidate should then be evaluated against the problem they were employed to address, not merely against the activities traditionally associated with the title.
If someone was appointed to improve coach education, have the coaches developed a clearer football reference? If the role was created to improve the academy-to-senior-team pathway, are more players being prepared for that transition? If the problem concerned disconnected training, has the football process become more connected? More meetings, reports, presentations and job titles should not be confused with progress.
A capable administrator should be allowed to administer. A finance professional should manage finance. A safeguarding specialist should protect safeguarding standards. A competent Technical Director should lead technical development. A Head Coach should manage and improve team performance. Cooperation is necessary, but cooperation does not mean everyone possesses equal expertise in every area. Respecting expertise means recognising where one person’s authority should end and another person’s responsibility should begin.
Conclusion: Define the Problem Before Appointing the Person
The question is not simply whether the correct person has been appointed. The earlier question is whether the organisation correctly defined and explained the problem before creating the position.
Without that process, job titles can become substitutes for solutions. An organisation recognises that something is wrong, creates a familiar role and assumes that appointing someone under that title will improve the situation. However, when the cause of the problem has not been explained, the new appointment may add another layer to the structure without changing what happens on the pitch.
A clear football reference provides a better starting point. Football consists of two teams repeatedly attacking, defending and transitioning. Within these situations, players communicate, make decisions and execute football actions as frequently as possible and for as long as required. From this CDEF reference, an organisation can begin to understand what is happening, why it is happening and what competence is required to improve it.
Solomon’s observation remains relevant thousands of years after it was recorded. A serious mistake can occur when those in authority disconnect responsibility from capability—when people are elevated beyond what they are equipped to manage while capable people remain where their knowledge cannot be fully used. The lesson for football is not to accuse everyone occupying a senior position. It is to improve the process and reference through which responsibility is assigned.
The working order should therefore be clear: observe what is happening, define the problem, explain why it is happening, identify the responsibility required, create the role, evaluate the competence and then appoint the person.
When football begins with the title, it searches for someone to occupy a position. When football begins with the problem, it can search for someone capable of solving it.