As you desire me: mothers, babies and football managers

'I think you've got to have a good relationship with your team and with your players – you've got to have a good trusting relationship with them... there has to be a balance – whether you call it respect or trust. Our job is to make the team better and to make the players better – individually and collectively. Our job is to make... to get success we need to put it together to make it better. And the players need to trust what you’re telling them is right.' Manager 10 All human life exists within football, and especially within football management. This paper outlines themes that emerged in a four-year study into the development and training of managers operating in fast-paced change: one which utilised the critical case of English football managers. One of the main and unexpected findings occurring in the research was that the manager and his charges were involved in reproducing elements of the most primal of relationships – that of the mother/infant. It transpired that the manager's ability to reproduce good mother features was crucial in terms of holding the anxiety generated by the location of the football environment in turbulence. The paper will outline how this relationship was manifest within the data and provides a short case study indicating what can occur when this relationship between the manager/mother and infant/player is absent and the 'good enough' mother is replaced by a castrating father.