If this is woolly apologies but I’d like to take you on a quick tour of nineteenth and early twentieth century German military history. No, wait – seriously. There is some relevance. For 150 years the Germany army was the best in the world at fighting battles. If that is not a successful spell of domination in a very competitive business, then I don’t know what is.
It stems from a general called von Gneisenau. The Prussians had been beaten by Napoleon and were figuring out why, von Gneisenau claimed to have the answer. Instead of telling your officers what to do and how to do it, how about telling them what you want them to make happen? Instead of strictly controlling your subordinates, allow them freedom to be creative in finding solutions to problems. This was the birth of Auftragstaktik (Mission Command as it is now called by the US Army who adopted it post-WW2). You tell your subordinate what you want but allow them to find the best way to achieve that goal.
The problem with allowing people to be creative is of course that they can end up working at cross-purposes, chaotically, or inefficiently. To solve this problem another general named von Moltke established a training school for officers. This was the Prussian General staff. They chose the best and most likely candidates, trained them, groomed them and eventually put them in positions of authority. The training was not in what to think but how to think. The officers were immersed in a system and philosophy which allowed them to replace each other in positions of authority with minimal fuss and no loss of direction. The creativity was nurtured and protected allowing seemingly insane ideas to be proposed, tested and analysed for any benefits.
This foundation of operational planning allowed Prussia to rapidly dominate central Europe. They beat the Austro-Hungarian Empire handily when they disagreed over uniting Germany, they beat the French convincingly in 1870 and came within a whisker of doing the same again to the French and British in 1914 in a plan undone by one wing of their army not following the plan of attack correctly. In 1940, they trounced the French and British again. In 1941, they did the same to the Soviet Union.
However, successful operational planning did not translate into successful strategic planning. Germany is a country of limited resources. In short wars against opponents of equal or more limited means, the Prussian general staff system gave them a huge advantage. But once wars became longer and stagnated, adversaries with greater resources could ultimately grind them down and defeat them.
Where does this tie in with Liverpool football club? Oddly enough, ‘The Boot Room’ seems to have been an embryonic Prussian General staff system. The style of football involved heavy use of ‘auftragstaktik’.
Let me pass you over to one graduate, Ronnie Moran, the quotes are from
www.shankly.com :
Training based on philosophy and how to think?
"People missed what it was all about. They would just see us do a bit of jogging then go straight into small groups for games of 5-a-sides, or maybe a bit of ball work. They never saw the little things that we were doing, teaching the players when to pass, how to move into space. Sometimes players would be corrected for passing to someone who was marked for instance. I was blessed as a player, I found it easy but some didn't and they had to be taught."
Identifying talent suitable for promotion?
"Shanks called me to one side. I thought, this is it, he's going to tell me another club's come in for me' and he said to me 'Ronnie, how would you like to join the back room staff?'. I went off and discussed it with my wife. We are both from Liverpool and didn't want to leave, and the next day I told Bill, 'yes'."
Now a member of the burgeoning boot room, Moran gradually worked his way up the ranks from working with the youngsters, through to first team trainer and then manager. Moran was to become the sergeant major of Melwood, bellowing instructions and keeping any inflating egos firmly in check.
"We never really discussed specific roles, I guess Shanks and Bob had seen me shouting and talking a lot when I was playing and liked what they'd seen. They just let me get on with it."
I'm not saying having great ball skills is wrong, of course it's not and all players have to have a certain level of skill, but with Shanks it was not the most important thing. If you watched youngsters playing a game you might spot the one who gives you something extra, a bit of fight or determination for example. Shanks would want to see what the lad could do with his natural footballing brains. Does he know how to pass? Can he tackle? He would be looking to see if that lad had something about him.
Working within a philosophical framework rather than specific task based orders?
Shanks always preached that we had eleven captains. He wanted to see players think things out and rectify things if they were going wrong. You never got shouted at for trying to change something out on the pitch. You were always taught to work things out for yourself. Mind you if you tried something stupid and it didn't come off we had a saying that we would 'hit you on the head with a big stick from the touchline'. I remember Steve Nicol getting a hat-trick once at Newcastle. Nobody told him where he had to go and what to do, he just worked it out himself. He got the match ball and I told him it was probably the only one he'd ever get ! but nobody told him off for joining in the attack.
You see players now going on overlaps because they think they have to even though they've got three players around them and no chance of getting the ball. To be fair, if you look at the really successful teams now, like Manchester United or Chelsea and even Leeds, they do get it right.
Look at Denis Irwin the other week at Chelsea. United were getting beaten and were down to 10 men but he pushed up whenever he could, trying to influence the game and help out, yet he knew when to stay back whenever they were under the cosh or when to bolster the midfield."
For Moran the lack of quality in the game today stems simply from the fact that we don't, as a rule, teach the right things to our young footballers.
"Phil Neal was telling me the other day how he used to know when to go and when not to but players today don't seem to have that nouse. I think all over the country now too much is being put in footballer's brains about what they must and must not do."
An anecdote from Tom Saunders ( Youth Development Officer, scout and director at Liverpool) seems to convey a similar message:
The players waited for instructions and Shankly began to speak and continued for some fifteen minutes. Not about the opposition or even football. Oh no! Boxing was the sole subject for a quarter of an hour. He then switched to football but quickly brought proceedings to a halt. 'Don't let's waste time! That bloody lot can't play at all.' With that, the team talk was rapidly brought to a close.
How did our system collapse? Did we neglect the strategic in favour of the operational? Did we allow a chief of staff to focus solely on operational quick fixes which our resources were unable to sustain?
There have been many superb posts by regular contributors to RAWK on the structure of the club, on the philosophical framework which Benítez is currently trying to implement and how it will be possible for Liverpool once more to dominate domestically. I would strongly agree with those who have argued that the whole structure of the club needs to be sorted out. And I’d like to point once more to Germany for an example of how they have married ‘operational’ level planning with ‘strategic’ level planning.
The example is Bayern Munich.
They have been the dominant force in German football for decades. Their success has been underpinned by utilising those with football knowledge and business acumen in roles within the club. High profile former players work alongside business leaders on ‘strategic’ developments with strategy and operational sides of the club being linked by those former players – if the flaw with the Prussian general staff was that they weren’t involved enough in strategy, the Bayern general staff have a strong voice on the strategic direction of the club.
This is not to say that one cannot detect flaws in the Bayern system – Beckenbauer is the strongest voice in the Bayern set-up and few managers seem to tolerate his ‘active’ approach in more ‘operational’ matters such as running the team.
The Mancs tried something similar once with Busby and it backfired badly, and so they now have a figurehead appointment in Bobby Charlton acting at the ‘strategic’ level. (We passed up the opportunity, rightly or wrongly, to try a similar experiment with Shankly after seeing the Mancs collapse in the 70s).
Perhaps what would be ideal would be a figure with responsibilities somewhere between the heavyweight Beckenbauer and the paperweight Charlton. One name springs immediately to mind.
Obviously the strategic direction is dependant on the actual owner/s of the club (insert your own joke about Hitler and G&H here) but can we continue with a system which divorces those tasked with achieving success from access to debate over the resources committed to sustain such a drive? The manager of the football club must be accountable to the club, surely his overseer should have detailed knowledge of the game?
Liverpool football club exists to win things for its supporters. Would our way back to dominance be better guaranteed if we gave a clever general room and time to restart a general staff system but this time ensure that we do not divorce activities off the field from activities on it?
And now I'll shut up about Prussia