A Champions League Winner. Who Codes.

When I was coaching the youth teams of Real Madrid, I was using Commodore 64, Spectrum, all these things.

I had Visual Basic. I was creating my own programmes and I had all the information there.

Rafa Benítez. Ex-coach, Liverpool, Inter Milan. (via Soccernet)

That was in 1986.

Technology was hardly mainstream back then. Prozone was still over 10 years away. But Rafa Benítez had an itch to scratch. He wanted the edge. So he developed software on his own to aid his coaching.

The concept of Moneyball doesn’t translate well to soccer at a marco level. Unlike the repeated set pieces of baseball and American football, soccer is too fluid and has too many variables during play. So it’s the use of statistics and data off the pitch that has transformed the game.

Many managers embrace technology now, but Benítez started back in 1986. I have no doubt that his experience of building such applications from scratch has helped him better use the technology available now.

And now, in 2012, he started a company that develops visual coaching tools for managers on an iPad - Globall Coach. After 26 years of product iteration at the highest level. Now that’s pretty awesome.

Rafa Benítez hasn’t been unemployed for 15 months. He just founded a startup.

The manager has to have knowledge about business, the economy and the squad.

Sounds like he would do well as the business guy. Who codes.