I have had situations in the past when you are close to signing a player and the money involved switches from euros to pounds to dollars. It is a difficult process, but one we have to work with.
I was never great, but I was a good [basketball] player, and I could play seriously. Now I'm like one of these old guys who's running around, and the guys I play with, who are all a lot younger, they sort of pity me and sympathize with me. They tolerate me, but we all know that I'm the weak link on the court. And I don't like being the weak link.
When I talk to people who have teenagers now, their rooms are filled with screens. There are their phones and their DVD players and TVs and all these things to produce distractions for them, and I think it would be hard to find the time to create something. I think that's really changing something about adolescence.
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.
I'm not saying that they were Einsteins; they were marginal students. But every ballplayer whoever touched me has moved up his station in life. And the players moved up my station.
The manager is by himself. He can't mingle with his players. I enjoyed my players, but I could not socialize with them so I spent a lot of time alone in my hotel room. Those four walls kind of close in on you.
(I)t is highly questionable whether when 'Europe speaks with one voice', as we are so often told it is doing, anyone is really listening. Europe's reputation as a serious player in international affairs is unenviable. It is a feeble giant who desperate attempts to be taken seriously are largely risible. It has a weak currency and a sluggish inflexible economy, still much reliant on hidden protectionism. It has a shrinking, ageing, population and, with the exception of Britain, rather unimpressive armed forces and, not excepting Britain, muddled diplomacy.
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.
I have three tools at my disposal - my whistle, my body language and my talk. It is a question of how I marry them up to try to get the players around to my way of thinking.
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.