ISSUE ONE

Sample
Edition

Issue One - Sample Edition

The following is a free sample of Issue
One of The Blizzard, including excerpts
from some of its articles, the notes from
the editor and a full list of its contents.
Our full issues run to 190+ pages, so
while this only offers you a snapshot, its
hopefully enough to pique your interest
for more.

What is The Blizzard?

As our editor, Jonathan Wilson, put it at
the launch of our pilot issue:
I cant have been the only one who
felt journalism as a whole was missing
something, that there should be more
space for more in-depth pieces, for
detailed reportage, history and analysis.
Was there a way to accommodate articles
of several thousand words? Could we do
something that was neither magazine nor
book, but somewhere in between?
The Blizzard is not the organ of any one
individual. Rather it aims to provide a
platform for writers, British and foreign,
to write about football-related subjects
important to them, be that at the
highest level or the lowest, at home or
abroad. Eclecticism is the key. There is
no attempt to impose an editorial line;
all opinions expressed are those of the
individual author.

The priority is the product rather than

prot; the aim is to remain true to our
ethos and to provide an alternative to
that which already exists.
At The Blizzard, we like to be adaptable.
Thats why we offer up our football
quarterly not only as a digital download
for you to pore over on your phone,
tablet or e-reader, but also give you
the option to let our lovely, textual
creations adorn your coffee table,
bookshelf or bathroom in their
beautiful hard copy format.

Pay-what-you-like
And because were not only adaptable
but also friendly, we want you all (yes,
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and have done since day one. Our
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If you like what you see over the following
pages, visit www.theblizzard.co.uk to nd
out more.

Contents

Contents
The Blizzard, Issue One

Introduction
03.

43.

Editors Note

Lawrence Donegan,
44 Days, Later
Why Jock Stein lasted no longer than

Fortunes of War
07.

James Montague, Stars of David

The astonishing story of Israels rst
national team

16.

Brian Clough at Elland Road

Theory
48.

Philippe Auclair,
The Collaborator
The treacherous life and traitors death
of Alexandre Villaplane, Frances rst
World Cup captain

How Victorio Spinetto pioneered

pragmatism in Argentinian football
55.

Dennis Bergkamp
David Winner talks to Dennis Bergkamp
about his greatest goals, the nature of
genius and the importance of predicting

Sid Lowe, The Brain in Spain

Juanma Lillo, mentor to Pep Guardiola,
explains his thinking on clubs, coaching
and why society is sick

Interview
22.

Jonathan Wilson,
The First Bilardista

Grass Roots
66.

Paul Myers, Duels on the Nile

A report from Sudan on the second
championship for Africans playing
their football at home

the future

Leeds
32.

Dominic Sandbrook,
Revie-Nixon

70.

Vassilis Hatzipanagis, Greeces greatest

player, explains why he never played a
competitive game for his country

How ignominious exits overshadow the

successes of a US president and a Leeds
United manager
36.

Anthony Clavane, Mind of Peace

David Peace discusses the inspiration
behind The Damned Utd and why he
wont apologise to John Giles

Scott Anthony,
An Exile at Home

76.

Ben Lyttleton,
Port in a Storm
The extraordinary success of the
academy at Le Havre

Contents

80.

87.

Simon Hooper, Marsh Attacks

134. Kieron

How a Sunday League team gives

Londons Romanians a sense of identity

Fifa and the nancial legacy of the South

Denmark 92

Football Manager

Dave Farrar, Once Upon a Time...

African World Cup

145. Iain

European Championship campaign

Macintosh,
The Ballad of Bobby Manager:
My Autobiography

Origins

When somebody takes their game

of Football Manager just a little too

The fairy story of Denmarks 1992

seriously...

102. Gunnar

Persson,
The Sum of their Parts

The rise and fall of Motala and its

football team

Greatest Games
157.

109. Dileep

Premachandran,
When the Kites werent Black

David Ashton, Man and Boy

Rob Smyth, Manchester United

2 Real Madrid 3
European Cup quarter-nal second-leg,
Old Trafford, Manchester, 19 April 2000

The lost legacy of Indian football

117.

OConnor, Worlds Apart

Eight Bells
175. Scott

Murray,
Pre-War Scottish Legends

Fathers, sons and the grumbling terraces

of industrial Scotland

A selection of eight of the early stars of

the game in Scotland

Polemics
Kuper,
The Pillars of the Earth

Information

Could it be that the Premier League

boom has only just begun?

186.

124. Simon

184. Contributors

Subcriptions
About The Blizzard
188. T-shirts
187.

132. Tim

Vickery, Whats the Point of

Football Writing?
Theres more to it than getting up late,
isnt there? Isnt there?

Editors Note
Jonathan Wilson, Editor
So at last, then, here it is: the rst
issue of The Blizzard, hopefully a
new beginning in what is possible
for football journalism, a chance for
writers to escape the strictures of
search engine optimisation and write at
greater length and in more detail than
the mainstream media allows about
what matters to them. In all honesty, it
doesnt feel much like a beginning. This
is a project that began in February 2010
and has very slowly come to fruition
after a lot of hard work from a lot of
people, most of them working not for
cash but because of their faith in what
were trying to do.
When we launched the pilot at the
beginning of March Issue Zero we
had no idea what the response would be.
We knew there was a possibility it would
sink without trace, that either wed failed
to reach out to our audience or that
there simply wasnt an audience for this
sort of football writing. After the website
went live (at 1953 GMT on March 4), I
went out for a meal. Wed set it up so I
got sent an email every time somebody
downloaded the pdf and for two hours
I sat in the restaurant trying to focus on
the food while acutely conscious that
my Blackberry was sitting dormant in
my pocket. Id cautioned myself not to
expect a rush, but Id thought wed get
at least a handful of downloads that
evening. There was nothing.
And then I stepped out onto the
pavement, into an area with a mobile
signal. My Blackberry suddenly came alive,

buzzing like a swarm of bees trapped

in a vuvuzela. As the email count span
upwards, it felt a little like that scene in
The Social Network in which they watch
the counter ticking towards 1,000,000
(although with much smaller numbers).
I only wished Id been at the office up in
Sunderland to share the celebrations.
In the cold light of morning, when we
actually looked at what the gures meant,
sobriety set in. It had been a great start,
and downloads and subscriptions have
continued to grow steadily in the weeks
since. Theres still a wider audience out
there though and we need to attract them
if were to be sustainable in the long term.
Were ahead of the curve, but theres still a
lot of work to be done.
So, thanks for your support, thanks for
downloading this or for ordering the hard
copy but, please, keep recommending us
to people and, if youve got this in digital
form and think you might like the hard
copy, give it a go. Think how nice paper
smells; think how good The Blizzard will
look on your shelf; think what having
it on your coffee table will do to your
status as a football geek.
The Blizzard was set up as a communal
venture, based on the efforts of a
collective of writers, but you the readers
also have a role as we move forward.
The rst phase is over. Weve reached
the end of the beginning. The rst green
shoot is poking through. Now we have
to work together on nurturing that into
something substantial and rmly rooted.

21
Interview

The seconds of the greats last

longer than those of normal people.

Dennis Bergkamp Interview

Dennis Bergkamp
Dennis Bergkamp talks about his greatest goals, the
nature of genius and the importance of predicting
the future
By David Winner

In the early 1990s a Dutch lm producer

devised an intriguing potential solution
to a football mystery. Ajaxs latest
sensation was a slim, quiet lad with a
blond rockabilly quiff, a deadly turn of
speed and just about the most perfect
touch anyone had ever seen. Game after
game Dennis Bergkamp for it was
he was scoring strangely calm and
beautiful goals and picking out precise
and unexpected passes. He could
hit the ball hard when required but
seemed to prefer lobs, chips and curved
passes into space. Sometimes he would
perform entire sequences of feathertouch passes to himself, juggling in
mid-air as easily as normal players
moved the ball along the ground. The
question was: what was Bergkamp
seeing and thinking that allowed him
to conceive and perform such acts of
magic? To get an answer the producer
persuaded Dennis to play a practice
match with a video camera strapped to
his forehead. Wherever Dennis looked,
the cam would look too, allowing the
viewer to see the entire match from
Denniss point of view. The hottest new
technology of the day would provide an
insight into Denniss brain, perhaps even
his very footballing soul.
The aws in the concept were soon
apparent. As soon as Dennis arrived
at the training pitch wearing a cycling

22

helmet to which a camera had been

attached with gaffer tape his team
mates collapsed with laughter. They
continued to guffaw, point and crack
up throughout the game. The pictures
were hopeless as well: jarring sequences
of muddy whip-pans, bumps and jerks,
unwatchable and revealing nothing
whatever of the great mans thoughtprocess. Even so, the attempt seems
honourable. Behind every action there
must be a thought, Dennis had once
said. And what thoughts they must have
been. His Arsenal colleague Thierry
Henry, who also played many times with
Zindine Zidane, considered Bergkamp
the greater player. Zizou had more tricks,
he explained, but Dennis saw the game
more quickly and more deeply.
In other elds, creative people get asked
about their art all the time. Musicians
give master-classes. Novelists and
architects are routinely expected to
explain their sources and inspirations.
Books about painters or lm-makers
dwell on questions of technique
(Caravaggio may have used a camera
obscura! Kubrick loved improvisation!).
Given that football is now the most
important cultural form on the planet,
its odd that creative footballers are not
treated the same way. One problem is
that very few players produce work that
is genuinely interesting, and even fewer

David Winner

are articulate enough to explain what they

do. Fortunately, Dennis is as thoughtful
and articulate as they come. Thanks to
the miracle of (conventionally-mounted)
video, his remarkable body of work is still
available. And it even turns out there was
a simpler way to nd out what he thought
when he created his greatest goals and
passes. You just had to ask him.

Purity
Jorge Valdano once dened footballing
genius by referring to Diego Maradonas
second goal against England in 1986.
As Maradona ran through the England
defence, Valdano kept pace alongside
him in the centre-forward position,
expecting a pass. After the game
Maradona came to him in the shower
and apologised for not giving it, even
though that had been his original
intention. Maradona explained that,
as he neared the England goal, he
remembered being in a similar situation
against Peter Shilton seven years earlier
at Wembley. In 1979 he had missed
but, thinking about it now, he realised
where hed made his mistake. Maradona
concluded that he didnt need Valdano
after all and could score by himself.
Footballing genius, Valdano concluded,
lay in the ability to analyse and solve
problems creatively under pressure at
unimaginable speed. When I share the
story with Dennis, our mutual friend
David Endt, the Ajax team manager who
is sitting in with us, chips in, the seconds
of the greats last longer than those of
normal people. Dennis nods.
His goal against Newcastle in 2002 was
voted by Arsenal fans as the greatest
in the clubs history. From my point of

view, I wouldnt say (as they say) it was

the best goal ever, but its denitely in
my top one. Yet its not even Denniss
favourite. Hell tell you why himself in
a minute, but lets recall the essentials.
Receiving a low, driven pass with his
back to goal, Dennis conjures a neverpreviously-imagined turn to beat the
defender Nikos Dabizas, icking the ball
to the right, spinning himself left and
meeting the ball again goal-side before
calmly opening his body to side-foot
past the advancing goalkeeper. But what
was the creative process?
How had you even imagined such a
thing? Was the turn practised? Was it
something youd imagined before and
executed when you had the chance?
No, nothing like that. Its really difficult
to explain, but it probably goes to the
idea of the striker who just wants to go
for goal. If the rst thought is I want
to control the ball and pass, then I
would never make that turn. But my rst
thought was I want to go to the goal
and Im going to do whatever it takes to
go to the goal, no matter how the ball
comes to me. Ten yards before the ball
arrived I made my decision: Im going to
turn him.
Did you think about where Dabizas was?
I knew where he was. I knew.
Did you calculate his reaction?
No, not that. But you know where the
defender will be and that his knees
will be bent a little, and that he will be
standing a little wide, so he cant turn.
And he wont expect it. The thought
was, just ick the ball and see what

23

Dennis Bergkamp Interview

happens. Maybe the defender blocks

it, or the ick is not wide enough, or he
anticipates and gets two yards ahead.
But maybe hell be surprised and Ill be
one or two yards in front of him. As it
happened I still wasnt in front of him, so
I had to push him off. So you need some
luck as well... Actually I pushed him a
little bit as well.
So its a foul.
No, never!
The nish was also very particular.
You end up with the ball somewhere
in the middle and you have to decide.
Maybe you choose safety. Take it with
your right and you open up the goal
for yourself. Maybe the left is your
weaker foot. It would have to be more
of a good hit. You cant really place it.
But with your right foot ... at the last
moment I can go low, or high [he is
pointing to the four corners of the goal].
And then you just open it and take the
far corner.
So you did the Maradona thing? You
thought it all through at incredible speed?
Its more instinctive because you know
from training sessions and from other
games. You know how the ball will
bounce, and how the defender will turn.
You know when you push him where
the ball will end up, and where the
goalkeeper is. Its not like youve done
that for the rst time, that shot and that
push. You know from previous times.
Is it your favourite goal?
No.

24

Why not?
Theres a lot of luck. If the defender takes
one step back then its nished. So its not
pure. The Leicester and Argentina goals
were pure: when the pass came I knew
what I want to do: control, ball inside,
nish. With this one there was luck.

Seeing the Future

Do you see the balloon man? Wait. Wait!
What are we waiting for?
Wait. Wait. Wait ....WAIT!
Its the chase scene in Spielbergs
Minority Report. Tom Cruise and the
clairvoyant girl (a precog as those who
can see the future are termed in the lm)
have ed to a shopping mall. As the cops
close in, the clairvoyant understands
as Dennis Bergkamp would understand
the spatial possibilities amid a complex
ow of movement. She knows that in a
few seconds the balloon mans brightlycoloured balloons will shield them and
render them invisible to the cops. The
couple hold their position. The balloon
man arrives, blocking the cops view. The
couple escapes and as the baffled cops
disperse, we see an advertisement which
reads See What Others Dont.

This is a Sample Edition - the full version

of this article appears in Issue One of
The Blizzard.
The Blizzard is available on a pay-whatyou-like basis in both download and hard
copy formats from www.theblizzard.co.uk.

31
Leeds

If you win the Cup, or you get promoted,

youve triumphed over the repetition. In the end,
its a metaphor for the way we live our lives.

Revie-Nixon

Revie-Nixon
How ignominious exits overshadow the successes of a
US president and a Leeds United manager
By Dominic Sandbrook

On 10 August 1974, the day after

Richard Nixon had announced his
unprecedented resignation, the Carry
On lm actor Kenneth Williams mused in
his diary about the disgraced American
presidents successor. President Ford,
he wrote in his diary, is nothing to do
with motor cars but apparently has a
good record in baseball. Actually, it was
American football, not baseball, that
was Gerald Fords speciality; but that
was beside the point. Seems rather
like asking Don Revie to become Prime
Minister, Williams went on. Might
not be such a bad idea at that! Hed
certainly make a better impression than
Wilson or Heath.
It is 50 years now since Revie took over
as manager of Leeds; 50 years since he
embarked on a journey that took in two
league titles, one FA Cup, one League
Cup and two Fairs Cups. If anything,
though, it was more notable for its
extraordinary near-misses: ve secondplace nishes, three lost FA Cup nals, a
Fairs Cup nal defeat and a Cup-Winners
Cup nal defeat. When, a year after Revie
had left to manage England, Leedss
players lost the 1975 European Cup nal
in controversial circumstances, it seemed
an oddly appropriate send-off.
What has become increasingly evident
over the last 50 years is Revies unlikely

32

resemblance, not to Gerald Ford, but

to Richard Nixon. The parallels are
uncanny. They were both born into
poverty in the rst half of the century:
Revie in the claustrophobic terraces of
working-class Teesside, Nixon in the hot,
dry scrubland of southern California.
Both of them knew loss and isolation.
Revies mother died of cancer when he
was 12, and four years later he moved
to Leicester, where he lived in digs and
effectively missed out on family life.
Nixon lost two brothers to tuberculosis,
while his mother spent much of his
childhood away at a sanatorium. Both,
not surprisingly, were reserved, serious
characters, dedicated to hard work and
self-improvement. And they also looked
alike: dark-haired, thick-set, slightly
jowly, their features set in a permanent
frown, as though they were always
contemplating their own misfortune.
They both came to prominence in the
early 1950s: Revie as a clever centreforward for Manchester City, Nixon as a
Republican congressman, senator and
vice-president. A decade later, they both
launched comebacks of a kind, Revie
becoming manager of Leeds, Nixon
rebuilding his career after losing the
presidential election to John F Kennedy
in 1960. Both were scarred by defeat and
disappointment; both were obsessed by
the fear of failure; both distrusted the

Dominic Sandbrook

press and surrounded themselves with a

small group of loyalists. They remained
difficult men to love.
In 1972, both reached a pinnacle of a
kind. Re-elected in a record-breaking
landslide, Nixon celebrated, if that is
quite the right word, by sitting alone in
a White House hideaway, listening to
classical music at full blast and making
a list of the ways he had failed. Revie,
meanwhile, won the Centenary FA Cup
Final, the only domestic trophy he had
not yet brought to Leeds. A year later
he threatened to move to Everton, who
were offering more money. Neither of
them, it seemed, would ever be happy.
Of course the most obvious parallel is
what happened next. By many standards,
Nixon had an exceptional record. He
wound up American involvement in the
Vietnam War, made a ground-breaking
trip to China, signed an arms deal with
the Soviet Union, spent an all-time
record amount of money on welfare and
won the biggest victory ever enjoyed
by a Republican president. Outside
academia, though, nobody remembers
all that. What people remember are the
corruption scandals, the break-ins, the
grubby shambles of Watergate and the
humiliation of his ight from office.
And Revie, too, is remembered not for
what went right, but for what went
wrong: the nail-biting defeats, the
last-minute chokes, his disastrous
stewardship of England. For many
people, what dened him was his ight
to the United Arab Emirates after selling
the story to the Daily Mail for 20,000.
Well, that and the corruption stories.
Don Revie planned and schemed

and offered bribes, leaving as little as

possible to chance, claimed the Mirror in
September 1977. He relied on the loyalty
of those he took into his condence not
to talk, and it nearly worked. Change the
words Don Revie for Richard Nixon,
and you have a neat summary of the
Watergate affair.
At the root of all this, of course, was
insecurity. Exceptionally successful
football managers, like exceptionally
successful politicians, are usually deeply
insecure men, unable to take lasting
pleasure in their achievements, endlessly
nagged by the fear of failure, obsessed
by the importance of nishing top of
the heap. Contented people make
good losers. On the night of his record
landslide over the Democrat George
McGovern in 1972, Richard Nixon wrote
miserably, The opposition line will be
McGs mistakes lost it and not his ideas
and not RNs strength. Not so different,
perhaps, from Alex Ferguson 11 years
later, just after his Aberdeen side had
beaten Rangers in the Scottish Cup nal.
There was no way we can take any glory
from the occasion, Ferguson told the
cameras, for it had been a disgraceful
performance. Youve won the European
Cup-Winners Cup and youve won the
Scottish Cup, sighed his captain Willie
Miller, and thats still not good enough.

This is a Sample Edition - the full version

of this article appears in Issue One of
The Blizzard.
The Blizzard is available on a pay-whatyou-like basis in both download and hard
copy formats from www.theblizzard.co.uk.

33

47
Theory

What enriches you is the game, not the result. The

result is a piece of data. The birth rate goes up. Is
that enriching? No. But the process that led to that?
Now thats enriching.

The Brain in Spain

The Brain in Spain

Juanma Lillo, mentor to Pep Guardiola, explains his
thinking on clubs, coaching and why society is sick
By Sid Lowe

The youngest man to ever coach in

the Spanish First Division and the
inventor of 4-2-3-1, blessed of an
inquisitive and inventive mind, Juanma
Lillo has always been considered
something of a fooballing philosopher
even by those critics who think that
theory is one thing, reality another.
This is the man that regularly turns
the relationship upside down a
footballer manager berating journalists
for using meaningless clichs. A man
who loves a dialectic battle, boasts
a library of 10,000 volumes and a
complete collection of the worlds
foremost football magazines and
newspapers, and talks at length
on theories of complexity, he is a
determined defender of an expansive
footballing style, placing positioning
over all else, especially brute force. It
is a style given expression, many years
later, by Barcelona and the Spanish
national team.
To his lasting regret, Lillo never made it as
a professional player I would, he says,
give it all back for 15 minutes on the
pitch but he became a familiar face
on the bench all over Spain. For a while at
least. When he took over at Almera last
season, it was a return to the First Division
for the rst time in a decade. Meanwhile,
he had been in Mexico, where he
coached Pep Guardiola.

Actually, coached is a rather inadequate

word. Guardiola has never hidden his
admiration for Lillo, describing him as
the coach that, along with Johan Cruyff,
had the greatest inuence upon him. And
when Lillo talks about Barcelona, he cant
help talking about we. He has guided
Guardiola and, during his rst months as
Barcelona B coach, and then rst-team
manager, he unofficially helped prepare
Guardiolas sessions. It could have been
official once: when Lluis Bassat ran for the
presidential elections in 2003, his sporting
director was going to be Guardiola. The
coach? Juanma Lillo. Bassat, though, lost.
Six years would pass before Guardiola
took over. Officially, Lillo had no role at
all even though his ngerprints were
all over the project. But fate can be cruel
and earlier this season, Lillo was sacked as
Almeria coach after an 8-0 defeat.
To Pep Guardiolas Barcelona.

You once said that you understood

why presidents sacked coaches, what
you couldnt understand is why they
hired them in the rst place. Have you
worked it out yet? Whats a coach for?
What is your role?
First, there is the question of your formal
role. On a very basic level you choose

55

The Brain in Spain

who plays and who doesnt. Otherwise,

who would do it? But beyond that, I
wouldnt try to establish a role, given
our limited importance. This is a game,
played by players. Those [coaches]
who have expressed their signicance
seem to want to claim some personal
protagonism or status through others.
Our role is less than many coaches
realise or want to believe. That said,
within those limitations there are things
you can outline. First, though, you have
to talk about the difference between
a professional sphere and a formative
sphere. You have to ask what is a
coach? Some are more didactic, some
have a desire for protagonism, some
are orthodox, some arent. Some are
stimulated by competition, others by the
game itself.
And in your case?
Bear in mind that I started very young.
At 16 I was already a coach. I wasnt a
player and that has obliged me to be
closer to my players, to seek complicity.
That alters your outlook. I wanted to be
a player, thats the thing. My vocacin
[vocation] with a V was being a player;
my bocacin [from boca, mouth] with
a B is being a coach: Im a coach to
feed myself. All coaches are amalgams
of things but I consider myself didactic.
I want to facilitate players gaining a
consciousness about what they are
and what they are doing. Its not just
about the game; its about people.
It is about everything. Nothing can
be de-contextualised. How you live,
what you are, what importance you
give to relationships, to behaviour, to
interaction all of that effects how a
team plays. In our society, there are
loads of teachers but few educators, few

56

facilitators. As [the Spanish philosopher

and writer] Francisco Umbral said,
every day people are better qualied,
but less educated. People have MBAs,
or an MBB, an MBC but they cant
cross the road, still less have the
empathy to see things from the point
of view of others. Academia is trying
to turn us into machines. As far as my
work is concerned, empathy is vital. A
person performs better in any working
environment in a good atmosphere than
in a bad one. You have to make players
conscious of things that maybe he cant
see. Not least because these days playing
in a team is harder and harder
Why?
Because society is not set up like that;
society drives you towards individualism.
Football is a collective sport; you have
to treat it as such. Everyone has their
own way of being, you encourage
relationships, association. To do that, you
have to make sure theres the smallest
possible difference between what you
do and what you say. You have to be
porous: can you listen? Can you direct?
There are three types of authority: formal
authority, technical authority and personal
authority. I dont want formal authority,
via someone elses power, the position
of coach or boss. Authority is not
something you impose; it is something
that is conceded to you by those with
whom you interact. I want to try to
encourage self-discovery among players,
dialogue and understanding. It is complex
and shifting. You orientate people rather
than order them. You balance, you adapt,
you listen. Human beings are open; there
is no answer that denitively closes any
debate. Its not just that what works with
one player doesnt work with another; it is

Sid Lowe

that what worked with one player doesnt

work with the same player at a different
time and under different circumstances.
In practical terms, what does your
work entail? The rst day you turn up at
a club, what do you do?
The rst thing I do is have a personal
meeting with every player. I turn up with
loads of information and data about them.
I want to conrm that information, verify
it and challenge them with it. What does
he think when he hears that? You cant
be more open or honest than to tell a
player what you have been told about him.
I could keep that information to myself
and establish a prejudice, but I dont.
Theres no greater act of sincerity than to
tell a player what prejudices, what preestablished thoughts, I have about them.
We all have prejudices both good ones
and bad ones. I show them mine, looking
them in the eye. The next day, I tell the
whole group. I show them what they think
of themselves and the team, I hold up a
mirror. Often you learn the most from their
self-perception I speak to people who
know players, who have shared a dressingroom with them, who have coached them.
If I can talk to their parents, so much the
better. Then you have to know how to use
that information.
In footballing terms, how do you set
up your teams? The obvious, if simplistic,
thing is that a coach gets to a club and
thinks: who is my right-back, who is my
left-back, who is my central midelder
and so on ?
In my case, its not like that. When you
get a to a team 80 percent or more is

already constructed; you have to see

if youre going to clash a lot with what
is already there you have to go and
learn from the players, not the other
way round. Everything has to work
together, amongst them. My mentality is
interaction and relation. If you say, lets
evaluate the right-back, I say, but whos
alongside him? Who is in front of him?
Who is nearest to him?
Youve said before that there is no
such thing as attack and defence?
Of course. How can attack and defence
exist if we dont have the ball? How can
one exist without the other? But people
need to communicate, so there is a
reduction of concepts, a simplication. I
understand that. The thing is, you have to
be able to reduce without impoverishing.
And that goes for everything. You cant
take things out of their context because
they are no longer the same thing, even
if you then plan to piece things back
together again. You cant take an arm
off Rafa Nadal and train it separately. If
you did, when you put it back in it may
create an imbalance, a rejection from the
organism. How can you gain strength for
football outside of football? If you run
over there, what you are training for is
running over there, not playing football.

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