Throughout this blog post, I am going to be discussing the skills, roles and responsibilities that a good coach will need to be successful.

Roles: Teachers, trainer, motivator, role model, innovator, educator instructor, friend, manager.

Skills:  management, organisation, communication, teaching, analyzing, problem solving,evaluating

Responsibilities: following code of conduct, personal standards,professional standards, attending workshops,being aware of changes,legal obligations, health and safety,equal opportunities.

In my blog I am going to be using three well known and very successful coaches. The skills and roles they have that make them successful in everything that they do and also the responsibilities they have that keep them in their jobs. The three coaches that I am using are Ivan Lendl, Sir Alex Ferguson and Jurgen Klopp these three coaches are very successful and all have different aspects that make each of them are different to each other.

These 3 very successful coaches all have different roles within their jobs, these roles include being a role model, a motivator, manager and trainer. These 3 all have similar roles within their sporting jobs but they each have different ways of showing them as have different personalities.

Role model

Being a good role model is hugely important in being a trainer or coach as this reflects onto the players/player they are working with.Being a role model is a person whose behaviour, example, or success can be followed by others. By being a role model as a coach it helps with keeping the players motivated and keeping them going down the correct pathway for example if a football player does not have a role model, this can lead to him making his own decisions and making incorrect choices, so by having a role model it can it can keep these athletes following them and keep them on the right pathway. Also If there role model was very successful, and won a lot of trophies this means it will keep motivating them to keep pushing themselves to work harder to achieve what their role model has. An example of a great role model would be Ivan Lendl as he has been a great coach for Murray on and of the court as he has been a very successful tennis player and won countless trophies but also has a very stable social life and this is what Murray will hope to achieve throughout his career. Also Lendl was a very calm tennis player and had a great reputation from winning games because of this and Murray, in his early career, was very inconsistent and was not mentally strong on the court. But Lendl helped to turn this around which he now as and this is a very strong part in his game. Lendl will now be a role model as well as a coach for Murray and hopefully Murray can achieve as much as Lendl did.

Motivator

A motivator is a person or thing that makes someone enthusiastic about doing something, this is needed in sport so that the athlete has the determination to keep going even if they are not having a good game, they need a motivator to get them back up to playing as well as they can. Having a good motivator can help you win games as it keeps you focused on the game and keeps the teams intensity high. A motivator is best when the team is not playing well and the team is flat, the motivator can help by talking to his players and getting them more motivated to play the game. A great example of a good motivator would be Jurgen Klopp as he is a very passionate manager and his infectious enthusiasm spreads throughout the team. Klopp is a great motivator from the side-lines of the pitch as he is constantly shouting and praising his players from the sides, this motivates his players as it will give them confidence as they will be proud as their manager is happy with their performance. A key skill that is needed in motivating your team Is to always stay positive no matter how the game is going and Klopp does this well as when his team is loosing or not performing well, you will always see Klopp getting his team motivated and getting them to perform better.

Manager 

A manager in sport is a person who is in charge of a team or an individual and tells them how they should be playing. Although they are not the ones playing the actual sport, they are usually the people responsible for the results, and this can lead to harsh criticism when things are not going well for the team or player. A manager is a very difficult job and the person doing it needs to have a lot of knowledge of the sport to be able to manage a player or team well, that’s why most managers used to play that sport before becoming a manager. A good example of a great manager would be Sir Alex Ferguson he was Manchester United’s manager for 26 years and within that time we won everything he could have possibly won. He has been United’s greatest ever manager and the club has not really been the same since he left. He was a very quite manager on the side of the pitch and remained calm throughout the game but when it came to the changing rooms he would be a totally different person and would be screaming at his players if they were not playing how he wanted them to. All of his players respected him which meant they would perform for him as well as themselves and by respecting him it meant they would listen to him and do as he says. He had lots of great qualities for a manager, one of them is that he was ruthless. For example when a player was not performing well, he would take him out of the starting line-up even if he was the teams best player and if this player was constantly not performing well, he would just sell him to another team. He only wanted players who would give everything for the club, so he was feared as well as being well respected.

Friend

Being a goof friend as a coach or trainer can be a very useful thing as it helps with relationships within the team. If a manager of a football team is good friends with their players, they are going to feel less pressure and also more confident because of this as they know their manager is supporting them to play well. But there does have to be a balance within this because if other players see that their manager is spending a lot of time with a few players and less time with them, this can demotivate them as they will wonder why he is not as good friends with them and can not be as motivated to play as well for their manager. But a time where it worked brilliantly was with Sir Alex Ferguson and Ronaldo. Ronaldo came to the club as a young boy who had a lot of talent but united fans did not know why they had bought him and didn’t really know who he was. But Ferguson spent a lot of time with Ronaldo getting his confidence up and improving him as a player and a person, they would go out for meals and spend time with each other. Ronaldo now respected Ferguson hugely and they had a great relationship, Ronaldo was played in every game for United and was now a key player in their success, every season he just kept on becoming better and better until he was now one of the best players in the world. Even now when Ronaldo plays in Italy they are still friends and will spend time with each other whenever they are close, so the friendship between them lead to Ronaldo becoming one of the best ever football players.

There are lots of responsibilities when being a coach or trainer the four I am going to focus on are: following code of conduct,  professional standards, equal opportunities. These four are important in everyday life but having this in sport help hugely and can create a lot of success because of it. I will describe each of these responsibilities and link them to one of the three coaches I have chosen.

Code of conduct

Code of conduct is a set of rules that are put in place to keep coaches doing the correct things. If one of these rules are broken it is not likely to be a crime, but Is seen as a terrible thing to do. The coach can also set these rules for his players or player so that they have to follow them, these can include: the commitment needed from the players, what is required from the players, the relationship between players and also just over rules keeping the players safe and professional. By following the code of conduct, it keeps a high standard for the team or the individual. For example Jurgen Klopp will have a code of conduct list and rules for himself and his players at Liverpool. This just ensures that the standard remains high  and everyone is following the same rules. But there will be a punishment or a fine if these rules are not followed as this drops the standard and make the club look less professional because of it.

personal standards

Personal standards are hugely important in sport, this is because these days the press and social media is a big part of the athletes lives and everything they do can be seen all over the world through the press taking lots of pictures and publishing stories about them. So for the athletes to keep a good reputation they need to make sure that they have good personal standards outside the their sport, by them having bad personal standards, this can affect the profession, this is because if they do not have a good reputation this will have an effect on their club as the athlete is associated with his club and his sponsors. So if an athlete has a bad reputation and has bad personal standards, it his going to be hard to get any sponsorships and to move to a higher standard team and get further on in is career, For example, Joey Barton has terrible personal standards. He has been at clubs such as Manchester City, Newcastle, QPR, Burnley and these are all great clubs but when he is at the top of his game and performing well, he will do something stupid outside of football, like get arrested for drink driving or get into a fight when he’s out in town, which will set him back quite a bit in his career and will take him out of the starting line-up or possibly even the club. So he needs to keep his personal standards high or else he will be constantly going down in his career.

Professional standards

Professional standards in sport are within the club u are playing for, so this means keeping a professional standard on the pitch if u were a footballer. Keeping professional standards is important in sport, however you are not going to be arrested for something that you do on a football pitch, where as you are likely to get arrested and have a big fine if your personal standards are bad and you commit a crime outside of the sport. Football is the best sporting example to use for professional standards as there is always things happening to do with these standards. Diving, spitting, racism, bad discipline etc, these are all examples of bad professional standards. Luis Suarez Is one of the best strikers in the word and plays for Barcelona, but he has a terrible professional standard throughout his career he has bitten 3 people during a game of football, racially abused people and cheated to help his team win games. He is a horrible player on the pitch as well. He also dives and fowls a lot which means opposition defenders will hate to play against him, although this is a terrible way to be on the pitch, it is one of the reasons that he is one of the best in the world. He does not have a great reputation in sport and although he is one of the best strikers, there are teams that would say no to having him because of his terrible reputation within the sport. They would say no because it might drag down the reputation of their club, yes he may bring them more success through the goals he scores but some times will value their reputation more than some extra goals a season.

Equal opportunities

Equal opportunities in sport is really important as it gives everyone a fair chance and to make it at the highest standard they can. In football it is all about opportunities and luck, this is because if you are not a regular in the starting line-up u need an opportunity to get into it to show the manager how you can actually play. Being a manager of a football team, it is very important to make it fair, for example if a player was not playing well in a certain position, you should talk to him and as him why, then give him a bit more of a chance. But if he still does not perform well, you should swap him out of the line-up for another player who plays in his position who might perform better but might not be as good as a player. Sir Alex Ferguson was a great example of this, he was very fair when giving equal opportunities if a player was not playing well, he would take him out of the team no matter how good or famous the player was. He wanted what was best for the team and wanted players that performed well consistently. Ferguson would sometimes leave Cristiano Ronaldo out of the team, who at that time was one of the best players in the world and still getting better, just because his attitude was not right and was not performing well. This had a positive affect on Ronaldo as he did not sulk about it but trained harder, changed his attitude and performed better in games more consistently.

Being a coach or trainer means u have to have lots of skills to be successful and win lots of trophies and three skills I am going to be focusing on are management, teaching, problem solving. These are important to get the best outcome of every game. Also the three coaches I have chosen each have all of thee skills but individually are better at each as I will explain now.

Jurgen Klopp is a manager of Liverpool FC and has changes the club since he has arrived. A great skill of Klopp is that he is he has great management. Before he joined Liverpool they did not play the football he wanted them to as he is a very attacking manager and loves to press teams, and he is very stubborn about this and will have this with every team he manages. So once he joined the club he instantly told them how he wants them to be playing and in a very short time has got his team playing the way he wants them to be playing. This shows good management as he has gone into the team with an idea of how he wants them to be playing and in short time has actually made that happen by working hard with them at training and being persistent. Now Liverpool are getting into finals and challenging for the league most seasons, so Klopp has done a great job for the club and has a lot of respect by the fans and the players.

Teaching is an important skill when it comes to being a coach and trainer. Having a teacher in sport can be very useful as if you are a young or inexperienced athlete it is great to have someone with a lot of experience teaching you how to become better and more skilled.Ivan Lendl has been a great coach for Andy Murray and has helped with lots with his career. Lendl was a very successful tennis player a while ago and used to win tennis matches because of his strong mentality during his matches. But once he retired he started coaching straight away and decided to help Murray. In Murray’s early career he was not mentality strong when it came to tennis and used to get frustrated during his tennis matches and throw his racket about and have a bad temper. But since controlling their temper was a great skill that Lendl had, he used his teaching skills to help Murray control him temper which has helped him hugely throughout his carer and since Lendl has been coaching him he was won lots of trophies and competitions. So Lendl is clearly a great teacher as he has taught Murray to control his temper and this has led to Murray gaining a lot more success from this.

In sport there are a lot of challenges that you have to face as a sports coach, for example team getting beat, getting a player sent off, injuries, the crowd, weather etc. Coaches need good problem solving skill so that they can overcome thee challenges and get the best result out of the game. By them using their problem solving skills they are able to change the game completely by doing one simple thing. Sir Alex Ferguson was one of the best problem solvers in football, when he was the manager at Manchester United he faced all kind of problems; there was injuries, sending offs, last-minute goals. Ferguson was one of the best records of scoring in the last minute of games to win them, people would say we are now in “Fergie time” when the added minutes were shown that’s how common it was for him to score a last minute winner, this was not down to look but it was because Ferguson had great problem solving skills and knew exactly what to do to help his side score the winning goal. He would only know what to do because he had great problem solving skills. Once when his team had a lot of important players injured  he played a team with 7 defenders against Arsenal and he still won 2-0 because he knew exactly how to play the game. So by having great problem solving skill it can win you a lot of games.