Mick Ward

If this was development football, ok grand, don’t bore the kids, keep things short before they switch off. But these were professional footballers, earning millions a year, heading into the biggest competition on planet earth the World Cup, representing the hopes of an entire nation… and they put in a request that they didn’t want to sit for ten minutes of video preparation with one of the most respected coaches the game has ever seen, as he prepared them for a training sessions. Ten minutes was too long?? really? The less said about that, the better. “The talks I gave have to do with collective discussions about the opponent to be faced or ones we faced in the previous game. Group talks where the training we are going to do is explained based on video... that was one of the things the players wanted to reduce. And so it was that I too always thought that correcting mistakes and highlighting virtues was appropriate... the talks were never longer than 10 minutes and were broken up into segments. 10 minutes of video.... the recommendation I received was to adapt to the younger and current mentalities, is that it was necessary to make talks shorter and on different days, so as not to overexert the attention of the players.” — Marcelo Bielsa