6. ‘In the building’
“We’re trying to get a few more bodies in the building.”
Are we signing a midfielder or organising a fire drill? This phrase seems to have become compulsory vocabulary for football managers, and once you notice it, you hear it everywhere.
I understand what it means. The player is at the training ground, having breakfast, using the gym and becoming part of the group. Nobody needs to explain the metaphor to me, but understanding it doesn’t make it any less irritating.
Why can’t we just say we’re trying to sign somebody, or bring a player into the club? “In the building” adds absolutely nothing, other than making recruitment sound like a problem with the door.
And before someone points out that I’m happy using terms such as high press and low block, those phrases describe something specific. They help explain what a team is doing. “In the building” tells me we’ve successfully got a footballer indoors.
There isn’t a grand intellectual argument behind this one. I just hate it, and every manager repeating it makes me hate it a little more.
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