Robbie Savage: Diary of a Football Manager: Managing my son, and why he had to work harder…
In association with Planet Sport Bet, Robbie Savage is taking us behind the scenes each week at NPL champions Macclesfield FC.
Robbie has played one of the leading roles in the rebirth of a now-thriving football club, first as director of football, now as first-team manager as the Silkmen climb their way from the ninth tier back to the Football League.
The gaffer gives an insight into what it’s like to manage your son, while revealing how being a father has shaped his approach to management…
Just when I thought I couldn’t be prouder of the people around me, along came another another pinch-myself moment came along to reinforce that this is just the start of a journey for myself, my club, my players and my family.
On Saturday, I took Macc up to the North-East to face Blyth Spartans. As the champions facing an already-relegated side, it would be easy to be complacent. Not my lads. They want to break records as much as I do and we returned from Northumberland three points and five goals closer to our 103 points and 100 goals targets.
D’Mani Mellor scored our fifth midway through the second half, which presented me with the perfect opportunity to blood a promising youngster.
Around the same time as Freddie Savage, my youngest son, was making his senior debut, my phone vibrated with an alert that my eldest boy, Charlie, had scored his seventh goal of the season for Reading in their League One win over Peterborough. If I’d have allowed myself a moment at the time to properly reflect, well, it’s probably for the best that I didn’t!
Of course, there will be some that cry nepotism. So let’s address that first. Suggesting that Freddie might have had a leg up towards the Macclesfield first-team could not be more wrong. Actually, it’s been harder for him.
It so often is for lads whose dads had successful careers at the highest level. They have to face that scepticism from a very young age and, for those who follow in their father’s footsteps, coping with that can help mould the kind of determined mentality required to forge a path in the senior game.
Saturday was not the first time I have managed Freddie. He was part of the Egerton junior side that first lit the coaching fire in me, and then the Macclesfield junior sides through to Under-16s. For him, more than a blessing, it was a curse. Despite twice earning the Player of the Year award (selected by parents and team-mates, not his dad!), he was the first one to be hooked when I needed to share out the minutes. Were he not my son, he would undoubtedly have played more.
And his promotion to first-team duty had very little to do with me. A while ago, I asked Nick Farrington, our Under-21s coach, which of our young players might be ready for a taste of senior action. Nick put Freddie forward, along with Jamie Walker and 16-year-old Kerr Dollochin. For all three, it’s a reward not just for their performances on the pitch, but their all-round approach to their training and development, as players and young men.
It is so important to us as a club to highlight the pathway from junior level to the first-team. But we need to manage the boys’ ascent carefully. Because the step from academy-age to senior football has probably never been bigger.
As a nation, we produce some wonderful, technical young players, but so many struggle to replicate their junior-level achievements in a senior setting. It takes real strength, mental and physical, for a teenager to seamlessly switch from playing against their peers in a development environment to facing gnarly, experienced part-time or full-time professionals, men for whom their mortgage might be on the line every Saturday. The sobering fact is the majority of boys who starred at junior level won’t successfully complete that step.
So we have to credit those that do, and I take my responsibility in their welfare and development very seriously. Having my children in the game has shaped my approach to man-management. I treat all my players how I would want my sons to be treated.
When one of the Blyth players went in late on Sean Etaluku, my concern – and anger – was exactly the same as when Freddie was on the receiving end of this…
Freddie will have to deal with that but he’s got a thick skin. He and Charlie have been singled out for years by some opponents as Sons of Savage and they have caught strays that really were targeting me.
Freddie caught on quick. He has always been among the smaller players in his year groups and he, like his big brother and his Dad, will most likely physically mature a little later than others. So, as a no.6, he adapted. He has a good range of passing and moves the ball quickly to avoid the kind of physical battles others might want to draw him in to. As his father, I’m excited to see the player he might become when he does reach his physical peak.
In the meantime, as his manager, he definitely doesn’t get any special treatment from me, and he certainly doesn’t from his team-mates! But we have built a group of players and staff that I would want my son to strive to be a part of. And that makes me as proud as the trophies we have earned along the way.
Robbie Savage is a brand ambassador for Planet Sport Bet
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