Player-coach
The practice fell out of favor in the 1980s (though Mike Dunleavy Sr., while an assistant coach with the Milwaukee Bucks, once came out of retirement and played several games when a rash of injuries decimated the team).
During the 1920s, legendary player-coaches in the NFL include Curly Lambeau, who played for the Green Bay Packers from 1919 to 1929 and served as their head coach from 1919 to 1949, and George Halas, who held similar roles for the Chicago Bears, a team for which he was also part-owner and business manager.
In the television era, pro football evolved into a higher-impact two-platoon game, so players serving as head coaches became impractical.
Originally, the Broncos wanted to use offensive quality control coach Rob Calabrese to play quarterback, but the NFL turned them down out of hand.
Peyton Manning, Brett Favre, Tom Brady, Ben Roethlisberger and Drew Brees pioneered what would essentially become roles as on-field offensive coordinators by taking vocal leadership in playcalling and game management.
Player-coaches in cricket are almost unheard of, although professional coaches are a relatively recent innovation and a similar role was generally filled by the team captain; this may still be the case in amateur competition.
In 1997, Ruud Gullit won the FA Cup with Chelsea in his first season as player-manager, also making history by being the first foreign and non-white manager to win a major trophy in English football.
defender Casey Stoney served a six-month spell as player-manager from January to June 2009 after the mid-season resignation of manager Steve Jones, and guided the club to a third-place finish in the 2008–09 FA Women's Premier League National Division.
[10] In Slovakia, comparably to surrounding countries, player-coaches and player-managers are most common in semi-professional or amateur clubs with sides being led by formerly professional players on the brink of retirement or in early stages of their managerial careers.
[11][12][13] In professional football (top two leagues) such cases are rarer but have occurred in the past, especially in smaller and financially struggling clubs, such as Senica, which has cooperated with Juraj Piroska simultaneously in a role of a players and assistant manager.
[7][8] In September 2021, Ferencvárosi TC appointed forward Fanny Vágó as player-manager, who then led the team to two Női NB I championships in 2021–22 and 2022–23 while also continuing as the league's leading goalscorer in both seasons.
[17] He was appointed in November 2006 when Celso Roth was sacked after a loss and debuted in a 1–0 win against Club América in the quarterfinals of the Copa Sudamericana.
He continued as a coach until early February when he decided to go against Vasco's president Eurico Miranda forced him to use the then youth player Alan Kardec in a match for Campeonato Carioca.
[23]: 10 Notable players who spent time as player-managers include Cap Anson, Lou Boudreau, Fred Clarke, Ty Cobb, Mickey Cochrane, Joe Cronin, Connie Mack, John McGraw, Frank Robinson, Tris Speaker, and Joe Torre, each of whom is an inductee of the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
[27] Captain-coaches used to be a relatively common occurrence in Australian rules football, even at the highest level of play; in fact, for the first nine years of the VFL (1897–1905), the premiership-winning team was coached by a player in every instance.
The last captain-coach to win the premiership at the top level was Carlton's Alex Jesaulenko, who managed to secure a 5-point victory in the 1979 VFL Grand Final against Collingwood.
[29] Doug Harvey has the distinction of being the NHL's last player to simultaneously hold the role of permanent head coach, i.e., not in an acting capacity.
[30] He held the dual roles with the New York Rangers during the 1961–62 season—a year in which he led the team to the semi-finals and was awarded his seventh Norris Trophy for best defenceman in the league.
[32] Former Philadelphia Flyers team captain, Bobby Clarke, was appointed as a playing assistant coach in 1979 and served five years in the role.
[41][42] Hockey Hall of Famer, Cy Denneny, played for the 1929 Boston Bruins while coaching the team to its first Stanley Cup championship.
[38][43] Esa Tikkanen, a five-time Stanley Cup winner as a player, played for, and coached, the Anyang Halla of the Asia League Ice Hockey during the 2004–05 season.
