There was no way I could contemplate taking the England job. Can you imagine me doing that? A Scotsman? I always joked that I would take the position and relegate them: make them the 150th rated country in the world, with Scotland 149.
I always felt that our triumphs were an expression of the consistent application of discipline.
There are plenty of attributes that separate the great leader from the good manager. Both may put their work before family and friends, survive on little sleep, endure a lifetime of red-eye flights. Look more closely and you will find that the great leader possesses an unusual, and essential, characteristic – he will think and operate like an owner, or a person who owns a substantial stake of the business, even if, in a financial or legal sense, he is neither.
The medical scans of the players who hailed from climates warmer than Britain tended to reveal much healthier joints.
There’s a lot of satisfaction that comes from knowing you’re doing your best, and there’s even more that comes when it begins to pay off. I.
Games–like life–are all about waiting for chances and then pouncing on them.
As long as you don’t criticise individual players in public, admonishing the team is fine, not a problem. We can all share in the blame: the manager, his staff, the players. Expressed properly, criticism can be an acceptance of collective responsibility. Under.
When you run any organisation, you have to look as far down the road as you can.
One mark of a leader is his willingness to share information.
I placed discipline above all else and it might have cost us several titles. If I had to repeat things, I’d do precisely the same, because once you bid farewell to discipline you say goodbye to success and set the stage for anarchy.
If you need one person to change your destiny, then you have not built a very solid organisation.
Inexperienced, or insecure, leaders are often tempted to make any infraction a capital offence.
Peter Schmeichel, Paul Ince, Bryan Robson, Roy Keane, Mark Hughes and Eric Cantona could all start a fight in an empty house.
If they lose faith in your knowledge, they lose faith in you. That grasp of the facts must be kept at a high level, for all time. You have to be accurate in what you say to the players.
The supporters were entitled to know when I was unhappy with a performance. But not an individual.
Sometimes defeats are the best outcomes. To react to adversity is a quality.
You don’t get the best out of people by hitting them with an iron rod. You do so by gaining their respect, getting them accustomed to triumphs and convincing them that they are capable of improving their performance.
Leaders are usually unaware, or at least underestimate, the motivating power of their presence. Nobody sees themselves as others see them.
You have to make everyone feel at home. That doesn’t mean you’re going to be soft on them – but you want them to feel that they belong.
The most important aspect of our system was training.
No matter how hard we worked to blood youngsters, Barcelona is still able to do this better than any club. The way they develop boys into some of the best players in the world is breathtaking.