In sport, managers are responsible for picking the starting line up each week and so they often find themselves in the hot seat if these selections back fire. However, if the team win and display a great performance it is often the players that are hailed in the aftermath. Is there a reason for this?
One potential theory that could explain why this tends to happen (particularly in football) is Weiner’s model of Attribution theory. Attribution theory is the concept in which one tries to attribute a behaviour/performance with a particular event. Attributions are classified by 2 overlapping dimensions, the “Locus of Stability” and the “Locus of Causality”. Locus of control is basically, was the failure down to you or other external factors, and Locus of stability asks if the attribution changes over time or not.
During a football match, if a team fails to win, it could be down to one of 4 components, their ability levels (this is never going to change), the effort that they put in (this can change), the opposition quality (this will not change as you are always playing teams of a particular standard) and luck (what happens on the day, refereeing decisions etc).
If a team lose and a manager aims to keep his squads morale high to the media, he will often blame the external factors such as “the referee made shocking mistakes”. Then behind closed doors they will address the real causes of defeat, which may include effort. I don’t particularly like this method, as the players are wrapped in cotton wool, and more often than not, the media sees through the cover ups, and the manager is given stick.
Ultimately, the manager picks the team and so if this selection does not fit the game, the onus was on them to identify a winning team. That being said, I feel that the managers can only do so much, and as long as they prepare the team correctly, the outcome rests on the shoulders of the players.
Jack - Sport and Exercise Science 