To be fair, not a whole lot. What I learned was really about the coaches in attendance, rather than the guest speaker. I don't wish to be mean, and I don't want to be seen as "that guy" so hear me out before coming to that conclusion.
Try not to imagine me sat here typing this in an armchair of my own brain.
For those interested, here's my Twitter thread showing screen shots from the chat of Mourinho's presentation: https://twitter.com/CoachWilly1875/status/1349402257352249345
"Can you see me?"
"Not yet."
"Can you hear me?"
"Yes, otherwise I wouldn't have answered the question."
"We can hear you!"
"Good. Turn your camera on."
"Turn on the camera?"
"Yes. I can't see you. You need to turn it on."
"How?"
"I don't know. It's your computer."
"I can't see a button."
"Scroll down to the bottom."
"Scroll?"
"Move the mouse down to the button..."
"I'm doing it!"
"Hover over the icons..."
"Hover?"
"Yes, it means place the cursor on top of things..."
And so on. You get the picture. It looks like this.
Introductions continue in the chat quite some way into the presentation, but now are interspersed by people asking questions to a recording. On day one, I could have forgiven it. It's day three. I've seen the names multiple times throughout the other presentations. They haven't yet figured out it is a recording, after several goes, and I worry about their mental capacities.
The sessions thus far have been inundated with people asking for jobs, brown nosing, and asking really complex sounding questions in an effort to impress. Questions that are largely irrelevant, and would take a whole new presentation to answer. What are you trying to prove, bro? Quite a few accounts post links to stuff they're trying to sell, and many ask the same questions repeatedly such as "Can I watch this session again later?" to which the moderator kindly copies and pastes their answer from before, for the fifteenth time.
The quality of the convention sessions varies greatly. Most are good, many are interesting, but few are in depth, insightful, or thought provoking to the degree that I would like. I guess we're all different, but here is what worries me the most. Mourinho's interview, as interesting as it was, lacked any real depth. There were details, but no depth. And why was that? Can there be?
The best sessions that I have seen through the years are from coaches like Willie McNab and Todd Beane. Emma Hayes' yesterday was good too. Why? Because they go into detail. Their presentations are specific, detailed, and as such, they can go more in depth. A lot of the club presentations aren't that interesting. They provide a generic overview of their philosophy, and the Bayern one I just watched was completely phoned in. They gave us a virtual tour of their training ground from a couple years ago. It's great, but I didn't pay a couple hundred quid for what I can see on YouTube.
While I feel a little short changed, there are some attendees who had their minds absolutely blown. Exhibit A. My new friend Eugene.
It's January 2021, and Eugene has finally had the penny drop moment on how Barcelona play football. Eugene is not alone in his revelations, this is simply a more extreme example. Loads of attendees made public statements in the chat that lead me to believe they were new to football. It reminds me of Jesus' magic trick in Family Guy.
So where have these guys been? What Mourinho said has been said so many times before. There are no secrets for success. They're all out in the open. Many learners are looking for the secret formula or the magic pill. There isn't one. There's obviously more effective techniques, and we should constantly be scrutinising what we do, but success comes down to a mixture of privilege, perseverance, and fortune.
Successful people all echo the same sentiments. They worked hard, they sacrificed, they believed in themselves, they kept going despite the odds. But what about the millions of people that also did those things and didn't achieve great success? It's the availability heuristic. Successful people aren't often aware of the bigger reasons for their success, can only speak from their point of view, and aren't often articulate.
Have a look at Andre Villas Boas. Why was he successful? He worked hard, but so do you. He sacrificed, but so have you. He believed in himself, but so do you. He took risks, and so have you. But did you live next door to Bobby Robson as a kid? And did you happen to be in the minority of people who were able to speak Robson's language? Robson didn't speak Portuguese. How many Portuguese kids in that neighbourhood had an English grandparent, and were able to learn English to such a degree as what AVB did?
Please don't think I'm taking anything away from AVB. It's merely what Malcolm Gladwell talks about in David and Goliath. The Bill Gates one sticks out in my mind. How many computer nerds were there in the US at the time Bill Gates was in college? How many of them were within walking distance of a super computer that was open to the public? Success is biased, and it omits important details when reliving the past.
The points Mourinho made have been stated many times by both himself, his contemporaries, and the greats of yesteryear. Remember, there are no secrets to success. Mourinho's main points were hard work, perseverance, empathy, and communication skills. Ferguson, Klopp, Ancelotti, Pep, Robson, Harry Redknapp, Neil Warnock, Sam Allardyce, all the way back to John Wooden, have made those exact same points. Yet my peers are in the chat, freaking out over the points being made by Mourinho. It's the same stuff he says in any interview, and that he says in his books.
Do you guys not read? Do you not listen to podcasts? Do you not watch football videos on YouTube? Isn't this what most coaches do? Without trying to be mean, there is often more depth in a standard article on Total Football Analysis or the Coaches Voice than what you find in an hour of convention sessions.
I'm going to have seen, by the end of this week, presentations from Bayern, Barcelona, Liverpool, Ajax, Benfica, Rangers, Portland Timbers, Nashville, Columbus Crew, and the Red Bulls. There's going to be a lot of overlap. Here's what they will talk about;
Holistic approach
Long term player development
Developing the person as well as the player
Mental skills
Some generic values that guide their philosophy
What they look for in identifying talent (usually the same attributes)
And that they work on possession, pressing, and counter attack
Years ago, this stuff was ground breaking. Now, that information has flooded out there. We all know it. We've all watched the Barcelona documentary, read the novels and autobiographies, watched the endless YouTube analysis videos, watched Xavi, Iniesta, Messi highlights, watched the Thierry Henry video that talks about Guardiola, and read countless books on rondos and Barcelona style of play. Well... all of us apart from Eugene.
It's like we're beating a dead horse now. We know what top coaches do. We know what top training programmes look like. How much more knowledge can be mined? How much is it now down to our ability to apply it? Are we reaching a limit, and that now our focus should be on the external factors, such as home life, talent ID, societal structures, privilege, demographics, access to education etc. I feel like more and more now I can predict a kid's trajectory from looking at a snapshot of their home life. What area are they growing up in? What opportunities are around locally? What is their school environment like? How much green space do they have in their neighbourhood?
These are the books to read to understand better what I'm waffling on about (if you haven't read them already, which I would imagine most of you have).
No comments:
Post a Comment