This past weekend in the Premier League was the last match of Roy Hodgson's 45-year coaching career. With a wealth of experience that included managing 16 different teams in eight different countries, Roy has always been a positive contributor to the coaching community. I was going through some files last week and came across an old presentation that had been passed onto me a couple of years ago. I'm not exactly sure of the date of this presentation, but I believe it was around 2004/2005 so you can get an appreciation of how forward thinking he was as a manager. It may be nothing ground breaking from a tactical viewpoint, but I think it has some fantastic advice in how to manage a number of crucial facets of the game. The title of the slides themselves suggest areas where Roy thought the game was moving, including media training, financial status of players, and managing upwards to owners and directors.
I was fortunate to observe a training session when Roy Hodgson was at Fulham in 2007 and was immediately impressed by his intensity and detail. He was very specific with his directions and was not going to compromise on the quality nor the tempo. In recent years, I've admired how he has adapted to the new generation of players, especially with his style of training. One of my favorite clips was when Wilfried Zaha scored a fantastic goal at Crystal Palace training in 2019. I thought it was refreshing to see him avoid technical coaching points on either side of the ball and go for humor instead to highlight the strike. When you look at the presentation and you see how forward thinking he has been towards the coaching profession, I think the ability to continue to adapt, change and communicate cannot be downplayed for coaches today. The game will continue to change and Roy Hodgson is a great example that we must always be looking at ourselves throughout the process in order to keep up with it.
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