A: Lots of football lessons apply to business. Here are just a few:
– Football shows how a great manager can create success and demonstrates the damage done by selfish players who don’t have “pride in the shirt”.
– Many clubs can see the dangers of an interfering chairman and, as a spectator, you experience the importance of creating a club culture when the guy on the gate gives you a warm welcome.
– Football demonstrates the importance of winning and how it affects morale.
While basic management principles do apply to football, a premiership club is worlds apart from an ordinary business – we pay our star shoe repairers a lot less than Terry or Tevez.
I wish my customers were as loyal as football fans, but I wouldn’t want to run a company under the constant eye of the public with my performance published in the national press every week.
I am happy to learn lessons from football – but only as a spectator. I’m a Manchester City season ticket holder, but my seats are as far away as possible from the directors’ box. The small sum I fritter away on sport is spent owning race horses – I am not brave enough to buy into a football club.
Picture: source
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