Meet Linares' Alberto González: the first football manager to work from home
He'll alternate between one week with the team and another at home
Working from home has become the norm for many. But some jobs just can’t do it. Builders, drivers, nurses, waiters, and, until now, football managers. But Alberto González is changing that.
Coach of Linares Deportivo, he has led the club to promotion from the old Segunda B to Primera RFEF and has firmly positioned them in a play-off place alongside the likes of Deportivo La Coruña. Not bad for a team that was in the fourth tier as recently as 2020 and was playing sixth-tier football less than 15 years ago.
Gónzalez arrived and secured a second consecutive promotion, taking over the work Juan Arsenal had started. He built Linares into a competitive side. And now he’ll continue to do so with a new working from home arrangement.
The situation will see González work from home one week and then spend the following week in Linares working with the team in person. When he’s at home, he will connect with his coaching team by phone to discuss and make plans, and also to address strategies in-game, as this agreement will extend to match days. His team will take his place not only on the training ground, but also in the dugout.
"The circumstances are that I am in a divorce process and that this process, together with the distance from my family and the work obligations involved in this job, is making my relationship with my daughters a little difficult,” González reflected in a remarkably transparent, honest and open press conference, held specifically to announce the change.
González and his family live in Málaga, which is a two-and-a-half hour journey each way in the car. A lengthy commute to make on a daily basis, and too much to be able to look after his children while caring for them full-time. His first move was to resign, but Linares were desperate not to lose their coach.
"At the beginning of December, I took the final decision to tell the club that I had to leave because my priority was the happiness of my daughters, to be able to be with them and help them,” the coach said. “The situation was not right. I told them at the same time that I understood the moment we were going through at club level, which was very intense in terms of competition, but I had to take that step.”
Jesús Medina, the president of Linares Deportivo, sought a solution. The end product was one that almost nobody could have imagined coming.
"The immediate response from Jesús as president and the rest of the board when I told them was fantastic: they understood my situation perfectly and supported me to the maximum,” González explained. “What they did was to think about an approach that had never crossed my mind at first, because it is something new in football, that I had never seen before and that I didn't imagine was possible.”
It’s an intriguing experiment, one of the first of its kind. Only time will tell how it will work out, both for González and for Linares, but it could certainly be a story to keep an eye on in the months ahead.