A few weeks ago, Mikel Arteta revealed to journalist Michael Calvin that he was a member of a coaching collective that meets online to cross-learn from each other’s experiences.
Featuring experienced heads from the NBA, NFL, rugby and beyond, it was described by Eddie Jones, head coach of England’s rugby union team, as being “like Alcoholics Anonymous – we all go in and share our problems and everyone tells you what they think. It’s fantastic.”
Jones, a prickly character with a ruthless streak and a fondness for picking fights with the media, has since spoken of his fondness for Arteta (“a super bright young coach”) and his admiration of Arsenal’s quick starts to matches, something he’s keen for his England side to replicate in the upcoming Autumn internationals.
Ahead of Arsenal’s match with FC Zurich, Arteta was pressed for more information about how he got involved.
“I was invited. I didn’t expect it and when I looked at the group and who was involved, I was extremely surprised because it’s people with so much experience, knowledge and different backgrounds.
“It’s fascinating, I really enjoy it, it’s really challenging, it’s inspiring and it helps us to think out of the box and to meet people that have been through incredible experiences.
“They are very willing to share everything that they do because it’s not a competition, it’s a different sport. That brings a different dimension at the level that you can share things.”
While he was reticent to go into detail about any specific details he’s borrowed from Eddie Jones, he was glowing in his appraisal of the Australian-born coach.
“A lot of things but I don’t want to share them. Eddie…his detail, his approach to everything, how he wants to gain advantages and get information from everybody, how meticulous he is, how competitive he is, it’s incredible, especially with the trajectory that he had, the experiences he had to adapt to other cultures, other environments, it’s just great to have people and connections like that in sport.”
Pressed further on what football can learn from rugby, he continued: “There are movements, there are patterns, things within the culture of a rugby team, the culture of a national team, how they have shifted from the way they used to coach 20 years ago and how they coach today and how that shift has come across, how they learn from experiences, how they learn about defeat, about coaching staff, how to build connections between departments and coaches, it’s a lot of things.”
All sounds very interesting. Here’s hoping the Arsenal boys aren’t forced to bond over pints of each other’s piss…we can’t be taking the egg-chasing stuff too far.
There’s a concept in Innovation called ‘Blue Ocean Theory’ where people generally exist in red oceans, filled with their competitor sharks, and everything is a fight (eg: the Premier League). Next to these red oceans (football), there are other opportunities which are close to you, but different, from which you can learn. These are the blue oceans where you should swim. It makes perfect sense to look and learn from these adjacent sports and see what you can implement in yours. Its a ‘steal with glee’ mentality. Football is cyclical, with ideas of play lasting approx 10 years (Wengerball>>>>Mou Ball>>>>Tiki… Read more »
This reminds me of the ‘Orange Palm Tree’ theory in entrepreneurship, where monkeys generally only climb one green palm tree (the Premier League), and so do all their competitor monkeys (e.g: other teams) so everyone’s fighting for coconuts (points). But nearby the green palm tree is an orange palm tree which is different, and you can learn from it. So it makes sense to climb the orange palm tree and learn from the other sports there, and see what ideas you can take back to your own palm tree instead. I think it’s good that Arteta is looking at this.
So Wenger was 40 years ago? Makes me feel even older than I already do. Thanks.
This reminds me of White Undies Theory in sociology, where humans generally only wear clothes in public, and so do all the other humans, meaning we’re spending all our money on clothes, so we’re competing for clothing. But all around us are animals, like seagulls and anteaters, who don’t wear clothes in public, so we can learn from them. So, it makes sense to not wear clothes in public sometimes.
This reminds me that I should visit the comments section of random Arseblog news articles more often.
This reminds me of linguistics class in university, where all the students had reading assignments and spoke what seemed to me like gibberish with the teacher in class. The bookstore ran out of my class’ textbooks so I was left without one until after midterms. I could pretend to be interested in making new friends to borrow their textbook, but where’s the fun in that? Instead I went to class and tried to decipher what everyone was saying with auto-deduction. I joined the class to learn linguistics but gained a valuable life skill instead.
Football in general can learn a lot from rugby. Respect and competent use of VAR would be top of the list for me.
Yes but can you imagine PL refs being forced to explain their decisions on a live mic? I don’t imagine public speaking or formulating sentences are their strong suits.
😄
Sin bins would be another thing to take from rugby – i.e make the yellow card a sin bin and red card only for serious foul play or diving
I hate rugby
As a Rugby man and a hard core Gooner it’s music to the ears Blogs. Respect of referees and not being a diving cheat are good lessons Rugby can provide but as for drinking a team mates piss – that’s downright odd.