One of the first things I look for in coaches I meet is passion. Not running up the touchline screaming at the players sort of passion, but a passion for coaching children how to play soccer.

If you haven’t got passion some where during your first season you will run in to trouble through either losing games and want to give it up or finding all the organizing that you have to do to run a successful team too much of a chore.

The team will suffer because the coach is not putting effort in and is merely going through the motions.

I was thinking about this during the week after reading about the ex England International John Barnes. What a player he was for his club Liverpool, although he never quite managed to bring that to the England team. He has also never managed to bring any of the success he had in his playing career to his management at Scottish giants Celtic and recently at Tranmere Rovers.

I looked in to what Barnes had to say about coaching when he was a player. There’s not a lot written, although there is one very telling interview with him by sports writer Pete Davies where he was asked if he could see himself in management.

“Not right now no. The closer you get to retiring then maybe you think, Ok I’d like to coach or whatever and some people may not have an option they can’t do anything else and they’re offered a coaching job so they do it. But at the moment I don’t think I would. I might play non-league or coach a school team or a little local side something like that.”

I was interested that he thought coaching a school team or a little local side is something you could take or leave, that it would be easy to do.

Then he said: “ I’m basically a very lazy person. If it came up then I’d do it, put it that way but it’s not something I’d like to do.”

When in 1999 he got a dream ticket to manage the Glasgow giants Celtic he must have wanted to do that I would imagine, but he suffered a series of very poor results one getting the famous headline “Super Cali go ballistic Celtic are atrocious”. He was sacked.

This year he managed Tranmere Rovers and won on two out of eleven games again he was sacked.

I think he’s missing the passion in his coaching that he had in his playing….

watch him as a player:

but he could rap!