Underappreciated Talent: Eddie Wolecki Black
- Airdrie boss EWB dominated the women’s game at Glasgow City
- Led team to eight straight league titles and Champions League quarter finals
- Overlooked for Manager of the Year award three years in a row
Eddie Wolecki Black
SPORT CAREERS Head of Content IAIN KING counts Airdrieonians Head Coach Eddie Wolecki Black as a valued friend and coaching mentor.
The pair worked together when Iain was Chief Executive at the Diamonds and played a part in the recruitment of Sport Careers elite member Eddie to his current post.
EWB made his name as a coach at powerhouse Scottish women’s side Glasgow City yet Iain felt he didn’t always get the credit he deserved…
CREDIBILITY. The commodity women’s football in Scotland still craves the most.
In the SFA’S 2020 vision for our game there is a plea for a women’s team to reach the last eight of the Champions League by the date stamped on the front of the report.
Eddie Wolecki Black and his Glasgow City side have delivered on that demand – SIX YEARS early.
His reward for that history-making achievement was to be snubbed as Manager of the Year for the THIRD year running.
This for a coach who has now won EIGHT league titles on the spin and THREE TREBLES in a row.
Credibility goes out the window when your game chooses to make decisions like that.
This week’s call is a toe-curling embarrassment, a bewildering nonsense which makes the women’s game a laughing stock.
In the past with the Scottish Sun as sponsors of the Players’ Player of the Year award at the SWFA Dinner I have bitten my lip on the ludicrous rejections Eddie has suffered year after year.
He is a Sunsport columnist and a valued friend of mine, a shared admiration of Barcelona, Pep Guardiola and the coaching philosophy of La Masia has sparked a hundred passionate football debates.
Leave it, I thought, it will be perceived as the old pal’s act.
Sorry but enough’s enough. In the past three seasons the coach of the teams City have beaten in the Scottish Cup Final – Mark Nisbet of Forfar Farmington, Willie Kirk of Hibernian and now Debbi McCulloch of Spartans – has been named Manager of the Year.
This accolade is voted on by the 12 bosses in the SWPL and I’d never for a moment decry the hard work of those three coaches.
Yet as City look ahead to a Champions League quarter-final against Paris Saint Germain in March next year the women’s game needs to reflect upon how one of its best assets has been kicked where it hurts.
Last 32 in Europe, then last 16, now last eight? After Anna Signeul’s side’s failure to make World Cup 2015 we should be lauding Wolecki Black and offering him the Scotland job instead of stabbing him in the back.
The treatment of one of the nation’s brightest young coaches this week has been at best petty and jealous and at worst vengeful and ignorant.
It’s not easy being a supporter of the women’s game in this country, it gets harder when they play into the hands of those all too ready to write them off as a joke.
Underappreciated Talent: Eddie Wolecki Black
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