Big step for Coley

By George Davis

Not many of us working drones get a crack at creating history 13 years after stashing away our cap and gown from high school. Indeed, few of us get a shot at being a virtual assistant manager to one of the biggest jobs in the country 10 years after completing a course of study at a tertiary institution.

Even fewer rise to such a position of influence having spent just over eight years in the working world, with none of that time spent at the highest level of the vocation in the land.

Only a Lilliputian number of us, with a profile similar to that sketched in the preceding sentences, will ever even have the chance to add to our country's glorious sporting achievements, immortalising our own name in the process. Miguel Coley, the coach of the Jamaica College schoolboy football team, is one such person.

For Coley, freshly minted as the second-in-command to the German Nestor, Winfried Schäfer, this is as meteoric as any rise can get. To move from plotting to beat teenage teams of schoolboy footballers in competitions run by ISSA, to being in a position to draw up battle plans for the Reggae Boyz to compete with the best teams in world football in FIFA-run competitions is the quantum leap in career advancement that no one, however ambitious and progressive, could plan for.

Coley's arrival at the head table of football coaching in Jamaica is a big victory for those who have been doughty in baying for the administrators of the national football programme to give youth a chance. Only that the youth in those instances are young players whom many believe could do no worse than many of the warhorses who are so used to failure, they would not recognise success if it greeted them naked in bed on a rainy night in September.

fresh, bold approach

So for Coley, a young coach, to be given his head by the authorities suggests a fresh, bold approach by the Jamaica Football Federation under the influence of the genial German. It's also a message to other young coaches around the island that there's more to coaching locally than taking charge of a Premier League team or being named as part of the technical staff of a national youth team.

Usually, young coaches who have not had outstanding playing careers are bypassed for senior appointments with national teams or at leading European football clubs.

That's what makes Coley's promotion all the more fascinating. For a man who never made it as a player and who has only previously worked with kids to have so impressed Schäfer and Captain Burrell means there's something special about the lad, precocious even.

His journey recalls those of the legendary Dutchman, Louis Van Gaal, and the Portuguese braggart, Jose Mourinho. Van Gaal was an ordinary amateur player, while Mourinho was even worse. Van Gaal became assistant manager at Dutch side AZ Alkmaar by age 35 and his still-running career has seen him win league titles in Holland, Spain and Germany, along with every major European club football title.

Mourinho, who started in management aged 29 as a mere Portuguese-to-English translator for the Englishman Bobby Robson, has conquered the club football world with league titles in England, Portugal, Spain and Italy. Mourinho, who, like Coley, taught physical education for a number of years, has won the UEFA Champions League with teams from two different countries.

The antecedents of these coaching and managerial legends should inspire Coley to see that his early rise to the position of assistant national senior coach cannot be the zenith of his ambitions. He must believe he can inspire and achieve good results in this role and so take himself to a higher level.

He must see himself as Mourinho and Van Gaal and synchronise his ambitions with what those men have achieved in their careers to date. Coley must see himself as a world-beater, the cock of the walk, and, crucially, must act and work accordingly.

Coley must go to work every day wanting to show that he is Jamaica's Special One. Good luck to him!

Selah.

George Davis is a journalist. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and george.s.davis@hotmail.com.