by Matt Riley
20th May, 2014
High profile Thai football teams like the kudos of hiring foreign coaches, giving them a veneer of internationalism and global appeal. The only drawback is that, whilst their faces are welcome, their approaches are often not. Thailand, with its rigid hierarchical society based on respect and conflict avoidance, jars against the rough and tumble of a football club. The beautiful game is littered with flying hair dryers, expletive laden confrontations and training ground bust ups. But, whilst they are grist the the world football mill, in Thailand there is no way back from causing a loss of face to bosses or players.
SCG Muang Thong and BEC Tero are good examples of finally choosing coaching horses for courses. More comfortable rotating through a coaching League of Nations (between them they have gone through an eye watering nineteen coaches in five years) both now have low profile men guiding the teams to the top two TPL spots. That Jose Alves, a man plucked from unglamorous Big Bang Chula United had to look over his shoulder at former Dutch great Aaron Winter lurking in the crowd then staying for a month waiting for him to slip up was loyalty Thai style, but he remains the only Thai Premier League coach enjoying an unbeaten start to the season after thirteen games.
For SCG Muang Thong United, their first Thai coach in five years Phon Chomchearn, is a long serving, likeable and hard working man who has worked quietly through the club from the second team, academy and previous spells as emergency stand in coach between foreigners. Despite a 5: 2 home thrashing at the hands of Suphanburi, he has steadied the ship and delivered strong results in high profile games, particularly with last weekend's defeat of Chonburi. So the league's top two teams are coached by men clearly seen as stop gap measures. Does that mean that it doesn't matter who leads the team out?
Simon Kuper's article for the Financial Times in January 2012 has a very harsh description of some of them in England:
"Football managers are modern celebrities, yet the vast majority appear to add no value to their teams, and could probably be replaced by their secretaries or stuffed teddy bears without anyone noticing."
Ouch. This is music to the ears of several Thai club chairmen who, whilst adamant that they won't be coaches (a FIFA licence is less easy to cultivate than a sack full of votes) cannot resist the temptation to coach the coaches. In his excellent book, Soccernomics analysing the connection between the value of players and the success of teams, University of Michigan Professor Stefan Szymanski conducted a 37-year study of English football (now there's a job to dream of).
Kuper (who co wrote the book with Szymanski) went on to explain:
"He found that the size of each English club’s wage bill (taking data from 1978 to 2010) largely explained where the club finished in the league. The club that paid the highest wages typically came top; the club that paid least came last. The correlation between players’ wages and league position was about 90 per cent." But what of the coaches? Kuper has strong views on them:
"If players’ wages determine results, it follows that everything else – including the manager – is just noise. Most managers are not very relevant. In the long run, they will achieve almost exactly the league positions that their players’ wages would predict."
In Thailand, this scenario has a long way to run before reflecting the English model. League leaders SCG Muang Thong United pay their coaches well (of course, this being Thailand, all club expenditure is not on public record) but there are plenty of high paying clubs nearer relegation than Champions League glory. Bangkok United lavish huge sums on their staff but get very poor returns as they currently sit in the fifth relegation spot. This season it seems that Buriram are also swimming against the financial tide. Their staff enjoy extremely generous contracts, although bonuses make up a big part of them and, currently sitting in eleventh place, they will be very thin on the ground.
It hurts me to say this but, looking at the current TPL table, sixth place TOT employ the most overachieving coach based on wages and resources. Having one of the poorest crowds in the league (last season they finished rock bottom of the attendance table with an average of only 1,700) and few luxuries, perennial misery guts Somchai Subpherm has moulded journey men and young talent to be level on points with free spending Suphanburi and above serial luxury seekers Bangkok Glass. Of course they could nosedive again as they did last season, but big budget teams like PTT Rayong currently languishing third from bottom know only too well that points on the board right now are priceless.
In Thailand, it is better for clubs when negotiating with new coaches to quote a daily rate rather than an annual one. The headline contract figures look impressive but, apart from "Teco" Stefano Cugurra's three year tenure at Chiang Rai and TOT's favourite Mexican bandit impersonator, most people won't get anywhere near receiving the figures quoted, misheard then inflated in the Thai media. This being Thailand, all five clubs above TOT have new coaches this season and two of them are on the second one in thirteen games. There are no other clubs in the league with a longer serving coach. Considering the conditions he has to work in, it's almost as if sticking by a coach and letting him develop the club works. It will never catch on.
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