Kolarov - "Football fans know nothing about football..."

UNITED ACADEMY

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Evaluating something to be of good or mediocre quality is one thing, understanding why and and knowing how to fix it is completely different.
Correct but even managers or coaches who are supposed to know more about football don’t know how to fix the problem. If both managers and fans don’t know, who does? Fans have the right thing to give their opinion about tactical advice.
 

Paul_Scholes18

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Being in the game doesn't necessary make you an expert. It sure helps to be around and play football a lot, but the tactical parts of the games should not be easier to analyseif you are in a game. The limits of a player and how you can get a team to function together can be hard to understand from the outside though. It is very easy for a fan to point to the wrong problems due to the lack of knowledge. Although if given the right knowledge fans could potentially do as well as the managers in some areas.
 

Theonas

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Correct but even managers or coaches who are supposed to know more about football don’t know how to fix the problem. If both managers and fans don’t know, who does? Fans have the right thing to give their opinion about tactical advice.
Well there are obviously no absolutes here. There is no one formula to fixing a problem but you can say the same about any field really. There are medical problems that no doctor knows the answer to and let's not even get into politics. The point is managers are simply more likely to find the answers by virtue of knowing more about different facets of the problem and living it every day. They get paid a lot of money because they are likely to find the answers, not because they definitely will. The ones who ensure more likelihood obviously get most.
 

Steerpike

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False, and more than a bit arrogant too. Do fans know as much about the game as they like to think? - definitely not - but that's a long way from saying they know nothing.

If he'd said that fans were not au fait with the preparations that happen prior to a match, and therefore wouldn't be able to understand the full details of the tactics being implemented, that would be true.

Let's be honest here: with a few notable exceptions, footballers are hardly the sharpest tools in the box, and if it came to an ability to grasp difficult concepts, I'd put my money on the fans every time.
 

Camilo

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Of course - we don't have a clue what we're talking about. That's half the fun
 

Raees

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The statement is true in some respects and overreaching in others. Some fans are obviously clueless but then again so are many footballers - if anything football has the thickest pundits out of all the big sports whereas in cricket or rugby you genuinely feel informed by ex players as you also do in tennis. Even boxing has smarter ex pro pundits. I enjoy listening to Bellew for instance.

I rarely feel that ex footballers give brilliant insights and that is a sad situation tbh. If only they were all like Cruyff.
 

UNITED ACADEMY

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Well there are obviously no absolutes here. There is no one formula to fixing a problem but you can say the same about any field really. There are medical problems that no doctor knows the answer to and let's not even get into politics. The point is managers are simply more likely to find the answers by virtue of knowing more about different facets of the problem and living it every day. They get paid a lot of money because they are likely to find the answers, not because they definitely will. The ones who ensure more likelihood obviously get most.
Just because managers have better chances to find the answer doesn’t means fans have zero chance. Fans might have less chance but they still know something. Being manager isn’t just about tactical, it’s also about man management and leadership and not every fans have man management and leadership skills.
 

LoveFootball

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Fan-Football-Player => Driver-Car-Mechanic. The logic for the two are almost the same. I don't have to be a mechanic to detect a problem on my car, I can even fix some minnow issues by myself without having to consult a mechanic despite me not being a specialist in automobile.
The same can be apply to football. Fans have spent many time watching football that they can have some knowledge on the matter, of course that knowledge would be significantly inferior to someone who dedicates his full time on the matter like Kolarov.

Football is not a complex domain like Mathematics, physics or religion which requires years of studies to achieve the require knowledge to be an expert, football just requires training and practicing; that's the reason why some player who didn't join any academy from their younger age can become pro footballer in their are 17/18; Smalling start playing pro football when he was 17 y/o I think; many Africans players didn't go through academies of football to become pro (Shabani Nonda for example did not play pro football before his 20s).

At the end the only things that separate many fans, who dedicated their passion to football and have some knowledge on the matter, to pros like Kolarov are training and practicing which bring the latter to the level of expert. Football is not an exact science where 1+1=2, it's only a game with it's rules and skills, at the end the most skillful person will have the better of the others.
 

Cloud7

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I’m not having this. When I read some of the in depth analysis of things on field on here, and then listen to Michael Owen drone on about complete nonsense, there’s no way that Owen knows far more about football than them.

If you were to say that someone like Sir Alex or Pep knows far more about football than me, obviously I would agree with that, but there’s no way that every single player is worlds apart from fans in terms of their understanding of the game.
 

Sauldogba

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Well i could have told you Rooney was crap and should have been dropped atleast two years before it happened.
I could also tell you that Lukaku is not and will never be good enough for a team like us and has the touch of a trampoline.

Then again i would say i have a better knowledge about football than most fans because i hope to be a football manager one day so i regularly watch videos about tactics,formations,pressing,passing and moving etc. And i play a couple of times a week as well

He has a point that a lot of fans dont know the very fine details of what it takes to suceed in football but knowing a lot about football doesnt equate to sucess.
Theres a reason why so many former footballers fail at management.

They might know about how to play the game but not know.about man management for instance.

They might know about how to organize attacks because thats where they played all of their career but know feck all about how to build a defense.
 
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dannyrhinos89

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Kolorov is talking bull. Football is a very simple game, Whatever tactics a team uses or playstyle they use be it entertaining or boring at the end of the day it’s 22 players, 11 on each team and whoever scores the most within 90 minutes wins the game and most of football is based of luck anyway.

the thing people don’t understand about football is the business side of it as shown when transfer season comes around.
 

Zlatattack

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I'm going to stick my neck out here, but I disagree. He's probably right in most cases (present company included), but lets not make it out like most players and managers are tactical geniuses. The vast majority of people in football would be on minimum wage work if they hadn't been supreme athletes. They don't suddenly become geniuses because they spend lots of time playing football. The way many of them struggle to adapt to different tactics and methodologies says a lot more about them than it does us.

I reckon there are fans out there who have as much tactical nous as many players certainly. Besides a lot of it is quite straightforward. I might not be a doctor (much to my parents ever lasting dissapointment) but I can tell you how to cure the symptoms of common ailments.
 

RedRover

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He's right to a degree. My younger brother went on trial at a Football League club at 16 and was kept on for weeks over the summer before they eventually released him having told him that whilst he had a lot of talent, the lads they had who played in his position were more familiar with the tactical schemes as they'd been there since they were kids. He said they spent more time in the classroom than on the pitch which since he just played the game in front of him was a shock. Watching a Chelsea game he talked me though how many channels full backs played in Mourinho's system. Obviously, the average punter isn't necessarily going to understand that side of the game. Players clearly have a system coached into them day to day and the decisions they make are therefore, for the most part, rarely spur of the moment but as a result of that coaching. They are not going out there and simply playing football but playing to a tactical scheme and doing a job.

That said, I think the average fan, whilst not having a forensic understanding of the game understands the game to a level. If something isn't working its obvious and there will be levels of understanding of the game.

I also think fans are entitled to an opinion wrong or not and that players and managers shouldn't be insulated from that by virtue of considering themselves more knowledgeable - especially if a fans wants to be entertained and isn't.
 

RedRover

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Kolorov is talking bull. Football is a very simple game, Whatever tactics a team uses or playstyle they use be it entertaining or boring at the end of the day it’s 22 players, 11 on each team and whoever scores the most within 90 minutes wins the game and most of football is based of luck anyway.

the thing people don’t understand about football is the business side of it as shown when transfer season comes around.
If that were the case managing a football team would be easy. I suspect if you sat with a professional coach, in ten minutes of talking tactics he'd have lost you - and every other non coach he was speaking too. Its not at all simple. The game changes frequently, tactics evolve and the pressure the managers in particular are under to be successful all the time, in a games where you might get sacked after 5 bad results, is huge.

Its not luck that the same managers are at the top year in, year out.
 

rollingstoned1

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Judging by the muppetry and opinions on this forum it's hard to disagree with his observations. Around January this year we should have been favorites for the CL after having signed Sanchez and every summer and managerial signing since 2014 has been greeted with excitement and optimism before it faded into oblivion and a rinse repeat cycle was initiated. You could write an algorithm for it.
 

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I agree.

Fans only knows cliche such as : need to push forward, quicker passing, pass and move, play from the back.

But very few if any knows how to set up teams that works in high level football.

Even the likes of gary neville who embodies what most of united fans sees as ideal way of play fails to employ his vision at valencia.

There are many finer details at play : your fullback weaker foot, your midfielder preferences, how to set a formation for that works for 11 players, how to pair defenders, who covers what, who moves to where, and many other smaller details that most fans never has the insight.

I bet cruyft total football has been studied to death, pep tiki taka analysed to death by teams of coach, but to play like them is another issue.
 

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I know enough to say he is absolute shite as a player, especially in the last few years and should be benched until he's retired. Actually, he should just retire.
 

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You only have to listen to a few idiots at the pub to know that football fans are a little bit obtuse. Definitely hit a nerve with a few on here as well.
 
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André Dominguez

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I understand that few fans are aware that, just as an example, some center backs are srock wolid on the right and will be underwhelming on the left, but the main function of a manager at elite level is just to organize and motivate the squad, because at elite level there's no time to teach and develop (small clubs have to do it because they have no other way), since you can't afford to drop points in every game.

Most of us are probably capable of giving tactical advices, good or bad.
 

stevoc

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Yes it seems logical for someone to watch 75-100 hours of something every year for 10-20-30-40+ years and understand absolutely nothing about it. Especially football which as we all know is as complex as Quantum Mechanics and only a select group of people on the planet actually understand it.
 

GiddyUp

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Pay me hundreds of thousands and I will eat drink and sleep football so he has a point. The people that work in the sport are paid to know their shit so when you see shit managers and shit players do the same stupid stuff of course the average supporter will play manager.
Let's be honest, this game isn't complicated. We've been playing it since kids and it's really just the offside rule that is sometimes hard to get the head afoul d if you are a new spectator to the sport. But if you get paid handsomely to formulate tactics and have all week to prepare for 90 minutes then you should have a better knowledge of football than the average fan. Also, you will be very familiar with opposition teams and tactics so there really isn't any suprises.
 

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Yes it seems logical for someone to watch 75-100 hours of something every year for 10-20-30-40+ years and understand absolutely nothing about it. Especially football which as we all know is as complex as Quantum Mechanics and only a select group of people on the planet actually understand it.
I think people underestimate the complexity of optimizing the actions of 11 distinct individuals to produce top flight football. I honestly don't think Quantum Mechanics is a tier above in terms of difficulty... if you understand mathematics well that's most of the battle with QM. How many disciplines do you need to understand well in order to be an effective football coach?
 

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Absolute nonsense.

The fact you are paid thousands of pounds to kick a football in a very organised set-up does not mean you can compare football (the sport) to another highly skilled profession which takes years of hard work and studying to master.

Kolarov demonstrates how deluded these football prima donnas are. A lot of what our fans have said has turbed out to be true and including on this forum. A few 'top' reds will inevitably come along and try to act high and mighty but at the end of the day the mistakes managers (like Mourinho) make are patently obvious to the dedicated watcher or match-goer (such as playing dross like Fellaini, Lukaku and current form Matic).
I don’t think that’s exactly what he’s saying though. If my car started to make a weird noise I’d probably know something was wrong. If I didn’t fix it then it would eventually break. Doesn't mean I'd have the faintest idea on how to repair it.
I think people underestimate the complexity of optimizing the actions of 11 distinct individuals to produce top flight football. I honestly don't think Quantum Mechanics is a tier above in terms of difficulty... if you understand mathematics well that's most of the battle with QM. How many disciplines do you need to understand well in order to be an effective football coach?
This. There is a reason why they are paid millions every year.
 

Ibrahimorich

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I think people underestimate the complexity of optimizing the actions of 11 distinct individuals to produce top flight football. I honestly don't think Quantum Mechanics is a tier above in terms of difficulty... if you understand mathematics well that's most of the battle with QM. How many disciplines do you need to understand well in order to be an effective football coach?
Pretty sure Mark Hughes would disagree
 

cafecillos

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Unless you're party to an elite camp's setup, how, as a fan, can you possibly know the intricacies and nuances of a football match?

To that end, what he's saying has to be right, but general tactics, foresight and formation decisions, non pros can get an extremely strong grasp on, and this can be proven by calling events before they happen on the field, which often happens on forums.

Also, don't people like Andre Villas Boas prove that with the right opportunities an outsider can become something in professional football management?
Are forum posters a representative sample of football fans though? How many football fans go on a forum regularly to discuss the game at a somewhat deep level? Very few, I'd say, of the millions and millions of people who would consider themselves to be "football fans" in England, the UK, or Spain (where I'm from).

In particular in Spain, and I've been noticing this for years now, the average football fan/supporter/viewer understands the game only at a rather superficial level: they basically celebrate goals, insult oppo players and fans and the referees, and yell very primitive and embarrassingly simple or wrong tactical notions. And that is the vast majority of fans I find myself surrounded by, be it friends, acquaintances or strangers. Don't get me wrong, I'm not claiming I'm better than them, because I'm certainly not, but I think it's obvious, at least from what I see, that outside specific circles like football forums, the game knowledge is extremely poor among fans, which is probably fair enough if the are enjoying themselves that way, but that doesn't mean that there's nothing more to it than goals, controversial referee decisions and Barça-Madrid rivalry.

That's not to say I agree with Kolarov or how he worded the idea, he very possibly doesn't know much more or understands the game any better than those fans he's talking down to. Neither am I claiming that pundits and in general ex-player are much better than many fans, which is awful in Spain as well, cringeworthy sport commentary is our daily bread too.
 

JPRouve

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Anyone that isn't a top coach knows less than a top coach. Players included.
 

Mr Anderson

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Fans can see issues for sure as they unfold. Where most fans would fall down on is implementing changes to fix these issues. We are great in hindsight - it's cutting out problems before they ever crop up is where we would fail in football - transfers and squad selection is a mere tip of the iceberg - and again all that is usually in hindsight.

It's to be expected, it would be like walking in off the street to a random job and crack it in a day.
 

JPRouve

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Fans can see issues for sure as they unfold. Where most fans would fall down on is implementing changes to fix these issues. We are great in hindsight - it's cutting out problems before they ever crop up is where we would fail in football - transfers and squad selection is a mere tip of the iceberg - and again all that is usually in hindsight.

It's to be expected, it would be like walking in off the street to a random job and crack it in a day.
I kind of disagree. Hindsight is the base of most actions, the pattern is more often experimenting, witnessing, analysing and then fixing that pattern will create insight which will then be the source of some foresight. Managers need to be at the same time analytical and good communicants because they need to share their insight, that's these two things that are in my opinion the biggest hurdles.
 

Mr Anderson

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I kind of disagree. Hindsight is the base of most actions, the pattern is more often experimenting, witnessing, analysing and then fixing that pattern will create insight which will then be the source of some foresight. Managers need to be at the same time analytical and good communicants because they need to share their insight, that's these two things that are in my opinion the biggest hurdles.
To the more educated and invested fan - yes. But in terms to the passive fan shouting instructions at a tv - no, to me that is who Kolorov would be directing his line at.
 

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Fan-Football-Player => Driver-Car-Mechanic. The logic for the two are almost the same. I don't have to be a mechanic to detect a problem on my car, I can even fix some minnow issues by myself without having to consult a mechanic despite me not being a specialist in automobile.
The same can be apply to football. Fans have spent many time watching football that they can have some knowledge on the matter, of course that knowledge would be significantly inferior to someone who dedicates his full time on the matter like Kolarov.
He's right to a degree. My younger brother went on trial at a Football League club at 16 and was kept on for weeks over the summer before they eventually released him having told him that whilst he had a lot of talent, the lads they had who played in his position were more familiar with the tactical schemes as they'd been there since they were kids. He said they spent more time in the classroom than on the pitch which since he just played the game in front of him was a shock. Watching a Chelsea game he talked me though how many channels full backs played in Mourinho's system. Obviously, the average punter isn't necessarily going to understand that side of the game. Players clearly have a system coached into them day to day and the decisions they make are therefore, for the most part, rarely spur of the moment but as a result of that coaching. They are not going out there and simply playing football but playing to a tactical scheme and doing a job.

That said, I think the average fan, whilst not having a forensic understanding of the game understands the game to a level. If something isn't working its obvious and there will be levels of understanding of the game.

I also think fans are entitled to an opinion wrong or not and that players and managers shouldn't be insulated from that by virtue of considering themselves more knowledgeable - especially if a fans wants to be entertained and isn't.
These are good posts and apply to virtually any profession. Within in the context of sports, I have a friend who is basketball coach and he was explaining offensive and defensive schemes to me while watching a game (Princeton offense, 2-3 zone, etc) and even though I played and watched the game since I was and kid and recognized the terms I was blown away by the in-depth analysis he gave of what we were watching. It was way beyond the surface level stuff you hear on TV. In the context of my profession, creating a website is easy, but understanding the moving parts and intricacies of a scalable, tested, production-grade web application is far from straightforward.

In regards to complaints about pundits, I think we should understand that sports punditry is catered to the largest demographic: the casual fan. Therefore the commentary has to be a bit basic since discussing the intricacies of tactics can be a bore to those who just want to be entertained (which I would major are most fans).
 

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Fans are primary school kids, Players are high school kids, Good coaches are in higher education. Kolarov's general sentiment is correct to anyone that knows how players are prepared for games. This is made even more apparent with Kolarov's move to Seria A. Tactical preparation in the Seria A is on another level, greater than other top leagues.

A fan without formal training and experience would be laughed out of the room if they were tasked with giving a tactical brief. To pretend that anyone can pick up being a tactician is simply ignorant, it requires a lot of skill and training.
 

stevoc

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I think people underestimate the complexity of optimizing the actions of 11 distinct individuals to produce top flight football. I honestly don't think Quantum Mechanics is a tier above in terms of difficulty... if you understand mathematics well that's most of the battle with QM. How many disciplines do you need to understand well in order to be an effective football coach?
No doubt at the top end of football tactics and strategy are complicated. And professional football coaches will understand football to a level beyond most football fans.

But professional coaches knowing more than fans is not the same as football fans knowing nothing at all as Kolarov suggests. I would say lots of fans especially ones who have watched for a long time and/or take an interest in tactics and actually watching games beyond just waiting for a goal to go in, will have a decent understanding of the game.
 
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Isotope

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I might take his statement more seriously if he was a legend of the game. Otherwise, he's just ...

 

Sky1981

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Yes it seems logical for someone to watch 75-100 hours of something every year for 10-20-30-40+ years and understand absolutely nothing about it. Especially football which as we all know is as complex as Quantum Mechanics and only a select group of people on the planet actually understand it.
I've watched movies for more than thousands of hours i cant act, nor direct a movie.
 

Sky1981

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Pay me hundreds of thousands and I will eat drink and sleep football so he has a point. The people that work in the sport are paid to know their shit so when you see shit managers and shit players do the same stupid stuff of course the average supporter will play manager.
Let's be honest, this game isn't complicated. We've been playing it since kids and it's really just the offside rule that is sometimes hard to get the head afoul d if you are a new spectator to the sport. But if you get paid handsomely to formulate tactics and have all week to prepare for 90 minutes then you should have a better knowledge of football than the average fan. Also, you will be very familiar with opposition teams and tactics so there really isn't any suprises.
Problem is. Ditto your opponent manager. They too are familiar with your team and tactics