Football: Belgium seeks head coach on LinkedIn – Sport

Professional football is a closed, sometimes elite job market. Anyone who wants to penetrate him in order to get hold of one of the coveted posts must have not only specialist knowledge but also a lot of patience. For example, only a handful of people on this planet would recommend themselves for the job of national coach. In order to become part of this circle, some interested parties take extremely difficult paths: they become national players, straddle their way to the world championship title and, thanks to a who-knows-how-it-does-qualification, are eligible for the highest coaching consecration. Or they blow their lips raw on whistles to give first youth teams and then professional teams a successful and unmistakable signature.

What a drudgery! You can congratulate the poor devils that there are football associations like Belgium, which are breaking up these encrusted structures. The association published a job advertisement for the “Head Coach Red Devils”, the head coach of the Belgian national team, on the job platform LinkedIn. Extremely progressive, extremely transparent, extremely unthinkable in Germany. Imagine if Oliver Bierhoff had been looking for a Löw successor on a job portal at the time (wanted: trainer who can also be found after major tournaments). He should have set his own profile page to “job-seeking” immediately.

In Germany, it is not so easy to open the door to the whole world for a potential job interview, one prefers to limit oneself, forms a working group that appoints a coach selection committee that proposes three candidates, which the DFB presidium then votes on in a secret ballot in seven ballots decides. In the end, the former assistant coach does it. After all, he knows his stuff!

It can also be a woman

In Belgium, meanwhile, they are looking for “a serial winner with experience in dealing with top players. The new coach of the national team knows how to build a cohesive team and how to integrate young players,” according to the advertisement. And that fits, because the Red Devils made the tournament hell for themselves at the last World Cup, mainly due to age discussions and internal disputes. In addition to soft skills for team building, a full trophy case is also an advantage: “He knows how to win trophies in top competitions.”

It is quite questionable whether the trainers with this requirement profile are looking for new jobs on the relevant platforms. Extensive research revealed that neither Jürgen Klopp nor Pep Guardiola are registered on LinkedIn. But the Belgian federation casts its net much further, referring to the male gender in the announcement solely for the sake of simplicity. A woman can also apply – that wouldn’t even exist in Germany.

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