Why do intelligent people keep making stupid decisions? 8 Deadly Sins in Football and Leadership — and How to Avoid Them
by Jon Morten Melhus (Author), Morten Eriksen-Deinoff (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
No Business Like Football Business?
If football is a business, why isn’t it run like one?
- Why are football’s biggest problems rarely about football?
- How can a coach be hailed as a genius in November, only to be gone by February?
- Why doesn’t replacing coaches solve a club’s real problems?
- How do supporters, in all their passion, end up undermining the very club they love?
- Why do football boards make their worst decisions immediately after losing?
- Why do clubs spend millions correcting yesterday’s mistakes instead of preventing tomorrow’s?
Filled with passion, ambition, extraordinary talent and finances sometimes resembling those of a small country, the game should be a model of excellence. But when the authors Jon Morten Melhus and Morten Eriksen-Deinoff compared the way football clubs are managed with the way non-sporting companies of similar size are managed, they uncovered staggering differences.
They found the same destructive patterns appearing again and again. They also discovered why coaches are so often judged unfairly, why replacing them rarely solves the underlying problems, and how leaders can create the stability, trust and culture that enable coaches and players to build winning teams over time.
Combining dramatic, surprising and often absurd football stories with research, humour and practical tools, the book offers a fresh approach rarely, if ever, seen in football literature.
If you are a board member, executive, coach, sporting director, supporter — or simply fascinated by leadership and human behaviour — this book will change the way you look at football. It not only reveals why clubs repeatedly make costly and self-sabotaging decisions but also offers a practical leadership playbook showing how to avoid these traps, build better-run clubs and create winning teams.
And while it is rooted in the game, its lessons extend far beyond sport. Football is more than a game. It is a mirror held up to society. The same fears, biases, power struggles and leadership failures that shape boardrooms, businesses and politics are played out in football — only faster, louder and under far brighter lights.
It startet eleven years ago, after writing their first book together on leadership, when MBAs Melhus and Eriksen-Deinoff set out to write a book about football. Or so they thought. The deeper they explored the game, the clearer it became that football was merely the setting — the real subject was leadership, decision-making and human behaviour under pressure. This is now their third book on leadership, and their second to use football as its laboratory.
Their questions led them to interview coaches, analyse clubs from around the world, explore leadership research and challenge assumptions that have shaped football for decades. The deeper they looked, the more surprising the answers became. Chances are, they will surprise you too.
Jon Morten Melhus and Morten Eriksen-Deinoff
Authors of Why Do Intelligent People Keep Making Stupid Decisions? – The 8 Deadly Sins in Football and Leadership – and How to Avoid Them.
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