The succession plan that led to Real Madrid’s historic double

And why more soccer clubs should implement this timeless business tactic

A few days ago, Real Madrid made history by becoming the first soccer club in Europe to retain the Champions League title since the competition was reformatted in the 1992–93 season.

It’s an incredible achievement that adds to a domestic-title-winning season, Real Madrid’s first in five years and only second in nine years (archrival FC Barcelona has six in that span).

There are several reasons behind the club’s recent historic run, but chief among them is the leadership of head coach Zinedine Zidane.

When Zidane was named Rafa Benitez’s successor after the Spaniard was sacked halfway through the 2015–2016 season, few believed he would come out alive from one of the most taxing and scrutinized coaching positions in the world, let alone achieve the level of success he has had in such a short amount of time (17 months).

To be fair, Zidane’s managerial experience prior to taking the role does not appear up to par for the job at first glance: one year at the club as Carlo Ancelotti’s assistant before being appointed the head coach of Real Madrid Castilla — the club’s “B” team — for two seasons. His quiet demeanor, according to the pundits, also didn’t seem like a fit for a role perpetually under the burning spotlights of the Santiago Bernabeu.

But as we all know, hindsight is 20/20, and a closer inspection of Zidane’s trajectory actually reveals something that make his success less surprising: it follows the elements of an effective succession plan.

Succession planning is the process of finding and developing suitable candidates to fill an organization’s key leadership roles in advance of the incumbents’ inevitable departures. The goal is to prevent the organization from veering off course and/or entering a state of uncertainty in the event of an unexpected or planned exit.

It’s a topic more commonly associated with CEOs and the business world (see Apple and the late Steve Jobs for a high profile example) than head coaches in the sporting realm, though it’s certainly as applicable to the latter.

Much of the praise (finally) heaped on Zizou has focused on his ability to manage the egos of an extremely star-studded roster, getting them to put aside individual gain in favor of the collective good. His unique relationship with the players has been possible because he himself was one of them just a decade ago — a Galatico who spent five seasons with Madrid, stepping onto the Santiago Bernabeu pitch week-in and week-out, winning the Champions League and gifting fans and neutrals alike countless magical moments.

Incidentally, that’s a key component of a good succession plan.

One of the seven tenets of a “gold standard” succession process, according to the Harvard Business Review, is promoting an internal candidate for the role in question, as opposed to bringing in someone from outside the organization.

While some situations demand outside successors — such as a turnaround or a discontinuous shift in the industry and strategy — we believe that internal candidates remain the future CEOs-of-choice. And keeping pace with innovation in an increasingly complex, continually morphing business environment requires a new sort of leader — one who can build complex social networks and tap the “latent innovation” of the organization and its business partners. Not surprisingly, the edge often goes to someone who is a known quantity, who is respected by the organization and the larger ecosystem in which it operates.

Replace “CEO” with “manager,” and “innovation” with “talent” in the excerpt above and suddenly that sounds a lot like Zidane’s job description.

In an interview with football columnist Gabriele Marcotti, Ancelotti confirms one of the biggest benefits in choosing someone who has extended history with the organization: respect and credibility.

Real Madrid is not like other clubs. The key to being successful there is the relationship with the players and the ability to structure a training session in such a way that you get your message across credibly and the players are receptive to it.

You can only do that if they respect you. Zizou, because of the player he was and the fact he’s been there since 2001, commands that respect and enjoys those relationships in a way that, perhaps, Rafa Benitez, who had to start from scratch and only had a short time, did not, at least initially.

Being well acquainted with a club’s inner machinations, culture and ethos also increases the likelihood of an internal candidate being able to jump into the coaching role and make an immediate impact. Top-flight soccer is a game of narrow margins and gargantuan expectations, so skipping the transitional phase provides a significant advantage compared to an external hiring that must simultaneously navigate a new environment while putting together a squad capable of challenging for trophies. For this reason, hiring from within is a formula that has been successfully used by several clubs besides Madrid, including its eternal rival.

Before being appointed as Barcelona’s head coach in 2008, Pep Guardiola had just a single season of coaching experience from managing the club’s B-team in the Spanish second division. However, he knew the club through and through having risen through its youth system and played the bulk (and best) years of his career for Barcelona. In his first season in charge of the first team, Guardiola won the treble (La Liga, Champions League, Copa del Rey), marking the first time a Spanish club had achieved such a feat.

Barcelona’s most recent manager, Luis Enrique, spent the last half of his playing career at the Catalan club and his first managerial role was with Barcelona B. After two seasons in the top-flight, one each with AS Roma and Celta Vigo, Enrique took over as Barcelona’s coach. He too won the treble in his first season.

There’s another recurring theme in the examples above: the presence of youth systems. Academies, when viewed from a different lens, are at their root a long-term succession process for a club’s first-team roster. In the “gold standard” mentioned earlier, HBR advises company boards the following:

“Cross train” generations of CEO successors with a mix of on-the-job training, intensive coaching, mentoring, and education. Once you’ve gone deeper to find not merely a replacement CEO, but generations of successors with the potential to serve as future CEOs, help that potential blossom with individually tailored development plans geared to both individuals’ needs and what the organization will require in a future leader. As potential successors become real contenders for the role, the focus should be on identifying areas to accelerate growth and close critical gaps.

This time, replace “CEO” with “first-team player” and it sounds like a description of an academy’s role. (It also sounds a lot like what San Jose Earthquakes GM Jesse Fioranelli sees as the future of player development.)

Beyond the production of on-field talent, academies can also be a pipeline of future coaching candidates. They allow clubs to not only develop players that can jump into the first team and match its specific playing style, but also coaches who can continue that brand of football when the current manager inevitably departs. It’s the reason why hiring a director of methodology is so important for establishing a club ethos and systemic approach to it that can then be followed across all levels of the club’s sporting pyramid.

There are no guarantees in soccer, of course, nor are teams precluded from success if they do not implement these succession tactics. Nonetheless, taking a long-term view and establishing a process for developing its future leaders is something more clubs should consider.

Chances are, if they look ahead far enough, they may just see that the answers are right in front of them.