Coaching is very complex. It goes far beyond just choosing a style and having tactical knowledge and even if you have these skills it's about teaching these things to your players. Aside from many social skills, choosing the right staff, working with the board, dealing with media and all that stuff.
Watched a lecture of Julian Nagelsmann the other day, only a short one around 30 min or so where he mainly talked about game dynamics, how to influence them, how they influence the players, how to react in game etc and it was super interesting.
One thing i liked especially was the importance of substitutes and the mindset behind them. For example in his opinion many coaches use them too late (just to take some time off the clock) and that he likes earlier subs. He also tries to focus on always thinking about what the new player can give him instead of subbing for the sake of it or to get a certain player off the field (which of course also happens, but it was more about the mindset). How he approaches certain opponents and how the subs already are part of the plan when he chooses starting 11 and match squad (not sub player X at min Y, but something like having more offensive players to swing a game after sort of stalling it out with a more defensiv lineup). How it's important to know when to bring which players as he kinda differents between "quality" and "mentality" players etc. And how to approach the game in general, that he always wants his team to be brave and needs to represent it himself, with his lineup and tactics and that being offensive is one way to influences the dynamic even outside the field for example by silencing the opponents supporters or hyping up your own.
He was also talking about how important it is for the coach to take away as much pressure and decision making from the players as possible. The coach has to always think about how the dynamic of the game is going, whats the best approach for the next minutes and of course a lot of basic work beforehand like how to attack or how to press and also protecting the players after games to make sure they don't have to worry about all that too much because that gives more time for maybe that one game deciding action.
That all is very theoretical of course, waaay easier said than done and everyday work is different. There are always politics involved and no perfect squad to make use of all players but just shows how much thought actually goes into everything.
...well or you don't think and just pass to Messi
Sorry had to. But yeah the point was that coaching can be very complex, even at Barca where you probably don't have to think THAT hard about every opponent as you can get away with just playing your game with your world class team. I still don't think it's possible to realistically predict how someone like Xavi would approach this or how he might change personality wise over lets say 1-2 years of regular coaching. I think between Pep 2.0 and complete failure everything is possible. One additional problem could be the HUGE expectations of course, no matter if Barca comes off a bad period or off a triple there will always be the comparison to Pep and the expectations that Xavi brings back the glory days of the team he himself was part of.
