As I listened to one of the radio morning shows, I heard a phrase that stuck with me and it was: ‘We need solutions and not explanations’.
As I kept pondering on this phrase, it took me to the game of football.
The happenings of football can somehow be related to the people and its elected political officials within a country.
Manchester United, Chelsea, Barcelona, Liverpool, Man City, A.S Roma, Real Madrid, Tottenham Hotspur, just to mention a few, would be used as case studies within the context of solutions and not explanations.
So, on Manchester United, ever since their Manager, Alex Ferguson retired, the only manager after him that had managed to win more silverware is Jose Mourinho.
Jose Mourinho is currently the manager of A.S Roma in the Italian league. After Jose had won the UEFA Champions league with Inter Milan in 2010, no other Italian club had managed to win a European competition. The best had been at finals for Juventus against Real Madrid at the UEFA Champions League. Real Madrid has won this competition 14 times. It took this same Jose Mourinho to win another inaugural UEFA Europa Conference League title competition with Roma for the Italian League.
Chelsea, on the other hand, gave the helm of their managerial role to its former player Frank Lampard in the summer of 2019 and did sack him on January 2021 to pave way for another manager in the person of Thomas Tuchel. Thomas, during his first tenure, managed to win the UEFA Champions League, UEFA Super Cup and Club World Cup.
Barcelona sold their best player in the person of Lionel Messi to PSG due to financial debacle, and it also went through some turmoil leading to the sack of its manager Ronald Koeman. The club got stabilised after the appointment of its former player Xavi as the current manager.
Liverpool won the Premiership title in 2020 after not winning it in 30 years, UEFA Champions League, the FA Cup, Carabao Cup under its current manager Jurgen Klopp who has been reining in since October 2015.
Man City was winning the Premier League titles back to back, as well as all the domestic titles, yet decided to sack its manager Manuel Pellegrini who was doing well to bring in Pep Gurdiola who has still continued that trajectory with historic moments being created as icing on the cake. Pep’s free-flowing smooth possessive football is scintillating to the eyes.
Tottenham Hotspur, after sacking Mauricio Pochettino after their Champions League finals against Liverpool, brought in Jose Mourinho who took them to the Carabao Cup Finals but was sacked just a week before the finals could be played. Now at the helm is Antonio Conte.
Now with the gist of happenings within these clubs, the common denominator for all of these clubs is what is called Spectators or Fans and Owners or CEOs.
These Spectators and CEOs are the main pull and push factors. The Spectators are seen to be fanatics with no reason while the CEOs are seen to be the level-headed for these clubs.
In most cases, the spectators demonstrate for these managers to be sacked depending on whatever they seem as not fit for their club.
These spectators just don’t care about explanations from their CEOs on whatever; all that they care about is solutions from their CEOs’ on winning titles or dominating at every competition with high resolute performances.
These CEOs are appointed or elected and their jobs are not to explain issues to the spectators but their boards who are level-headed, and most of the time do even understand all the challenges behind the scenes but would put questions to the CEOs to solicit their solutions on the challenges; while with the spectators it is about solutions – showing results for all and sundry to see, despite the unexpected external crisis and shocks that can derail their projections.
As a CEO, elected official, A Person of Political Position, your core mandate is solutions and not explanations for your spectators, followers just don’t care.
