Who do you play in the last matchday as a football manager?
Alot of European football leagues finished lately. The attention is mostly centralized around teams, trying to get their hands on silverware, teams trying to qualify for European competitions, and teams, which are fighting for their survival. But how about those that are not playing for »anything«? Well, they have many different options for who to put in play.
Let’s get some things straight. Different end league positions bring different prize rewards. Being ninth isn’t the same as being fourteenth. And getting more money brings a lot of easier decisions in football offices. So, for the purpose of this article, we have to presume that despite losing, a team will remain in the same position at the league table. So, who do managers put in play in that case?
The first option is the most obvious one. Despite everybody wishing the season would end at that exact moment, a manager can name the same line-up as the matchday before. Especially, if the team recently recorded a win. ‘You must never change the winning eleven’ is the quote you hear very often among managers. After all, the team proved they deserved to be playing again. In most cases, players also play for financial rewards in case of wins and draws, so they are eager to boost their weekly or monthly wages. With the exceptions of Kieran Trippier — which would normally start, to be fair, if not injured — this was the case with Newcastle this week when they knocked out Burnley. The latter will be playing in the Championship next season, despite everybody believing they would prevail over Leeds.
The second option is completely the opposite. A manager decides to put in play completely players that haven’t been given so much opportunity during the season. Players, that have not played so vital role and are patiently waiting to get some playing time. After all, some of them may be without a contract in the summer and are eagerly waiting to prove that they should be given an extension. In addition, managers would also like to know who they can count on in the next season as well. That last match serves as some sort of the last test. In the past week, we saw such a case with the Everton, who secured the Premier league spot a week before and therefore rested the ones that were carrying most of the pressure in the crucial survival weeks.
The third option is the unlikeliest one. A manager decides to put in play a reserve or a youth team. I can only think of one case where that happened. It was when Liverpool was on a Club World Cup, but their Carabao Cup match was not postponed due to whatever reasons and therefore had to field out the youth team.
The most obvious and most likely used combination around the world is a mixture of regular first-team players and ones that haven’t played a lot before. We saw a lot of this on the last matchday, so pointing out a single team would be irrelevant. Between such players, we can almost every time find a player that is a debutant. Most often a promising young talent that a manager would like to give a chance to feel that pace, flair, stamina, strength … of a higher level. Managers tend to motivate them in that way and show their peers that making a senior debut is possible.
Motivation can also be expressed in a way that after accomplishing that first step of being picked up for the first time, more is expected of them in the future. They are told in a way to keep progressing and can perhaps later become part of the team in more important matches. However, these young talents can be also fielded out due to marketing reasons, which I explained last time.
All in all, whoever a manager decides to put in play on the last matchday is completely up to them. They bare the consequences of their decisions. They evaluate who is rightly given the chance at that exact moment. As explained above they have quite a lot of options, especially when they are not exclusively motivated by the end result. But one thing is for certain. Whatever their decision is, they know that, like in the entire season before, every team member will not be happy.
