Today was about execution, period. Every single player, all of us in the dressing room right now, we’re embarrassed because that’s not the way we want to play soccer.
An agent won't help you get drafted higher, won't make you win more games, and won't make you faster or stronger. They all say they can, but the people who do the drafting don't talk to agents. They talk to coaches, they watch film, they talk to the people who've worked with players. They don't talk to agents.
If you've had a bad experience with an agent, you have to move past it. You are bound to want a player at some stage who is represented by this guy and you will have to try to work around the personality of the agent. You tend to work out what makes them tick, what they respond to. You have to have tactical plans to get a deal over the line.
The best chess-player in Christendom may be little more than the best player of chess; but proficiency in whist implies capacity for success in all those more important undertakings where mind struggles with mind.
It's really hard because you only have that split-second to determine what to do. It's crazy. I try my best to use clear judgment and make clear decisions, but a lot of those collisions are unavoidable. You're either going to let them catch it and take a step to see what's going on, or there's going to be a collision.
I'd say handling people is the most important thing you can do as a coach. I've found every time I've gotten into trouble with a player, it's because I wasn't talking to him enough.
It's always really challenging trying to go from player to player/coach. You have a kind of friendship basis of relationship with all of your teammates and now you go to this power position where you have to make decisions that might hurt people's feelings.
It was difficult to get into my friends' rock bands when I was a teenager. They somehow didn't see the need for an accordion player. That's when I realized that I had to find my own path in life.
While the aesthetics of consumption (photographic or otherwise) requires a heroicized myth of the artist, the exemplary practice of the player-off codes requires only an operator, a producer, a scriptor, or a pasticheur.
I think I earned the players' respect, and that's the ultimate in life, isn't it? I didn't care if they liked me or disliked me, as long as I had their respect.