Larry Ryan: Can we trust that freedom is the new process?

Is there a freedom revolution underway? Could this be a rebellion against the great industrialisation of sports coaching?

Arsenal's Spanish manager Mikel Arteta shouts instructions to the players from the touchline   (Photo by ADRIAN DENNIS/AFP via Getty Images)

Not sure if you’ve noticed too, but all of a sudden freedom is the most prized commodity in sport. Like those of us tied to a desk, all they want now, the sportspeople, is to be set free. To run amok. To trust their instincts. And their gaffers, having spent generations trying to impose order, demand discipline, enforce a system, are now throwing open the gates, taking the handbrake off, releasing the shackles.

Or at least that is what they are telling us.