While I am a business student, I have to say that this article links sport with business. I'm an Info Systems major, and while the important objective for my majors is to transmit the information from the other branches of the company into something those outside can read, this is a good reflection of what happens when you team loses big.
It's a cruelty, indeed. When a team performs this poorly, the bureaucracy deems the coach and players as liabilities. Here's an article from the Adelaide Advertiser about how all this works.
United finds fall guy
GRAHAM CORNES
February 24, 2007 01:15am
JOHN Kosmina didn't realise, until it was too late, that those "dark forces" that he was talking about weren't from the eastern states, they were actually operating from within the Adelaide United Football Club.
Just when we thought the Reds were different from all those other soccer clubs, they prove that nothing much has changed.
Coaches and players can still be dispensed with at the whim of owners to whom pride, status and reputation are paramount.
I know how Nick Bianco must have felt last Sunday evening. The grand final was a debacle, and as the owner of the club, seeing his team disintegrate while he could but sit and watch, would have embarrassed and humiliated such a proud, successful man. But that is sport.
Unlike business, where successful systems, training, staff and quality control can withstand all but the most unusual economic circumstances, sport can break your heart in a second. Regardless of your standards, expectations and the amount of money that you pour in, success is never guaranteed.
Kosmina's gut feeling before Thursday's highly-publicised board meeting was not good. Like many successful coaches, he follows his instinct. There may be plenty of logic in planning and deliberations, but their actions are predominantly instinctive. Kosmina's instinct detected too much negativity around the club, and the pressure was building by the minute. He made the decision on his own behalf, that the right thing to do, for himself, his family, and importantly his players, was to resign. Despite the fact that he had no other job to go to, his relief was immediate and profound.
Bianco distanced himself significantly from Kosmina in the wake of the the grand final defeat. His public criticisms of the coach may have been distorted in translation, but they were scathing and indicated that the relationship between owner and coach had been fractured.
It's unlikely that they were ever best mates, but the club had achieved beyond expectations in its first season-and-a-half, so in those circumstances, even the most impatient owner has to tolerate a coach who marches to a different beat. But that's the thing with most great coaches - they march to a different beat anyway.
Kosmina's job wasn't made any easier this year by the recruitment to the club of Brazilian "legend", Romario, a decision that he publicly and privately supported.
Romario might be a god in Brazil, but to those of us raised on different sports, he was not instantly recognisable and when we saw him on the park, we wondered what all the fuss was about. Small, even by soccer standards, the Brazilian no longer had the pace, fitness or presence of his glory days. The true devotees of soccer fell at his feet, but the rest of us wondered where on earth Kossie was going to hide him
The team's dismal results when the Brazilian was in Adelaide tell the story and, while those responsible for bringing him to United continually extolled the spurious benefits of his recruitment, it was obvious that his presence was an unnecessary distraction. One can only wonder what the powerbrokers in the stands thought when Kosmina was forced to substitute Romario in the third of his four highly-paid appearances.
Inevitably, we will all be judged by our actions and our results. Kosmina has been judged extremely harshly for what have been only minor indiscretions. The critics point to his behaviour as the reason for the disintegration of his players' discipline in the most important match of the season, but that is a simplistic assessment. Volatile coaches can still impart discipline to their teams; Malcolm Blight is a prime example of that. What has been overlooked, simply because there can be no excuse for a 6-0 loss, is that Adelaide United coach, players, fans, and indeed, administration, had been subjected to a range of different inequities and biases. Refereeing performances, ticketing, financing, FFA indifference and marketing bias are but a few of them. At least Kosmina was prepared to take them on.
Unfortunately, when all was lost, the frustrations bubbled over and his players lashed out as well. They should have learned from those footballers who have transgressed in AFL grand finals, or who have not waited around for the presentation, that the whole word watches you and judges you during and after a grand final.
Everybody has learned a very hard lesson, none more so than Ross Aloisi, whose passion and intensity was severely misguided.
And so another coach departs, perhaps before he was going to be sacked. It appears only a championship would have saved him, but Adelaide United never had the talent to win the championship. We will miss him, because he was so passionately South Australian and he fought so hard for our state against those who would try to ignore us or discount us. He becomes just another victim of the ambitions and the pride of those who drive their clubs.
Of course, the club will go on although, given the vulnerability of many of the A-League clubs and ongoing rumours of Adelaide's viability, this can't be assumed.
Bianco has expressed publicly his dissatisfaction with the way the club and the team has been run. He wants to run it more like he runs his successful business. He wouldn't be the first successful man to express that intent, but successful businesses are not the best models for successful sporting clubs. There are similarities of course, particularly when it comes to bringing the money in, but in the end, the club rises and falls on the performance of the team, and not too many coaches are Masters of Business Administration.
I will put a rebuttal on the last part to the the fact that there are coaches in sport who also majored in business at their university, whether grad, undergrad of even doctorate, and there are a good number, if not plenty, of them.
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