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Chest pains which
confined Aston Villa manager Gerard Houllier to a hospital bed for
eight days, a decade after he underwent open heart surgery, are a
salutary reminder of the stresses of an unforgiving job.

The 63-year-old
Frenchman is now recovering at home and has relinquished control of the
Premier League club for the remainder of the season.

Heart problems have
been a recurring theme in British football management, with the best
known being, Scotland manager Jock Stein’s death from a heart attack
after his team’s match against Wales in 1985.

Another Scot,
Graeme Souness, was only 38 when he had a triple heart bypass while
managing Liverpool in 1992 and Manchester United manager, Alex Ferguson
had a pacemaker inserted in 2004. Two English managers, Joe Kinnear and
Barry Fry, have suffered heart attacks.

Tricia Kalloo is
the owner of Wellness International, which provides the opportunity for
English football managers to have free and regular checkups in
coordination with the League Managers Association (LMA) under the Fit
to Manage programme.

In a telephone
interview with Reuters, Kalloo said football managers endured stress
levels similar to those of senior executives in other occupations.

Heavy workload

“We can see similar levels of stresses in senior executives as we do in football managers,” she said.

“With football managers, their stress begins not just from the moment that they step on the field.

“Their stresses can
begin a couple of days into the lead up to the game. Football managers
endure this build-up of stress over a significant period of time and
recurring through a season.

“There can also be pressures with the club and the day-to-day activities that we are probably not aware of.”

Kalloo said one of
the contributing factors to their stress level was the sheer number of
hours a football manager worked, which has been estimated at more than
80 hours a week during the season.

“We are thinking of
training, we are thinking of time at the club, of game time and travel
time. I believe that is what drives those statistics,” she said. “Not
much rest.”

Kalloo said the
programme had a pool of some 290 managers who could undergo checkups in
Wellness International’s London or Manchester offices.

“Managers, current
or retired, can also access a mobile service if they live close to the
area where it is being delivered,” she said. “It gives them an idea of
any health risks they may have.

“This accessibility
has proven to be successful as it brings the service to the range of
managers, not just with clubs who are under constant stress, but
managers who might be temporarily out of the game but involved in other
activities and retired managers who need to keep monitoring their
health and take good care of themselves.

Insecure trade

“In terms of the
total membership, we probably have approximately 50 percent of the
members coming through at any one time. Given the success rate of the
programme and the number of managers who benefit from this, it is
disappointing that we do not see more managers through.”

Kalloo said one
factor all managers had in common, whether they were ex-professional
players or not, was a passion for their job.

“I think it’s a
genuine passion from every manager that we see that drives them, the
dedication and ultimately the stress levels,” she said.

Football management is a notoriously insecure trade, with managers hired and fired on a regular basis.

“I believe that is
something that they are all very much aware of,” Kalloo said. “Of
course it affects them but I think there is a general understanding
that it’s one of the risks of the job.

“We do work with a number of lawyers, senior executives or chief executives who have similar stresses or reactions.

“Remember that we all endure some type of stress and it is really
about the way we handle. It is about coping strategies. You and I may
have an exact situation in life but our ability to cope with it is very
different and hence our stress levels would be different.”

REUTERS