greyseagull
New member
Interesting comments from one of the most sought after managers in Europe, particularly his attitude to winning - to be honest I find this quite refreshing. Mind you, I think he went a bit mental in the last paragraph. Maybe he's watched too many Holloway interviews:
“When I first arrived at Dortmund, I told myself: “If 80,000 people come every two weeks to the stadium and that, on the pitch, we play boring football, one of the two parties, the club or the fans, will have to choose another stadium". Many fans travel 800km to see us and experience something special. It’s important to give them our all. We called this “football at full speed”. We want to make everything explode. We would rather hit the crossbar five times than find ourselves four times outside the opposition box and not take a shot. Might as well lose. That’s only the start of it. You have to create a link between the people and the club. The games have to have an impact on the fans other than from the result. Everyone knows that we won 3-1, but what people remember is a shot, a goal, or a save.
“When the club was just about saved (from bankruptcy in 2003), the owners realised that the club needed to find a new vitality. So they went out in the aim to find a dynamic, bubbly, fun, brave and courageous manager who plays entertaining football. If you don’t have money, then you need to be brave. We signed some players very young and we decided to grow together. To not have money doesn't mean that you have to stop working, it just means you need to find more ways to be successful. The club decided to continue with a manager from the lower leagues and a very young team, and we finished champions twice, which surprised us.
When talking about the salaries at Dortmund: “Even Tottenham pay their players more than us. We are one of the six teams in Europe capable of winning titles. In Spain,there’s Real Madrid and Barcelona,in England Manchester United, Manchester City and Chelsea, and in Italy, only Juventus. But here, they can make history. If you sign at Barcelona today, you will be champion many times. So what? They have been champions for the past ten years.”
“It would not interest me to have Xavi, Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo in the same team. Having a team that is 1000 times better than everyone else is a bit like playing tennis against a three year old girl. I would just smash the ball as hard as I could and the little girl would just stand there, motionless, with a racket in her hand… It’s not fun. On the other hand, if there is a man and we are playing table tennis, then it’s interesting. If I win, great, if I lose,then at least we had fun. Me, I don’t want to just win. I want to feel something, have shivers going down my spine!”
“When I first arrived at Dortmund, I told myself: “If 80,000 people come every two weeks to the stadium and that, on the pitch, we play boring football, one of the two parties, the club or the fans, will have to choose another stadium". Many fans travel 800km to see us and experience something special. It’s important to give them our all. We called this “football at full speed”. We want to make everything explode. We would rather hit the crossbar five times than find ourselves four times outside the opposition box and not take a shot. Might as well lose. That’s only the start of it. You have to create a link between the people and the club. The games have to have an impact on the fans other than from the result. Everyone knows that we won 3-1, but what people remember is a shot, a goal, or a save.
“When the club was just about saved (from bankruptcy in 2003), the owners realised that the club needed to find a new vitality. So they went out in the aim to find a dynamic, bubbly, fun, brave and courageous manager who plays entertaining football. If you don’t have money, then you need to be brave. We signed some players very young and we decided to grow together. To not have money doesn't mean that you have to stop working, it just means you need to find more ways to be successful. The club decided to continue with a manager from the lower leagues and a very young team, and we finished champions twice, which surprised us.
When talking about the salaries at Dortmund: “Even Tottenham pay their players more than us. We are one of the six teams in Europe capable of winning titles. In Spain,there’s Real Madrid and Barcelona,in England Manchester United, Manchester City and Chelsea, and in Italy, only Juventus. But here, they can make history. If you sign at Barcelona today, you will be champion many times. So what? They have been champions for the past ten years.”
“It would not interest me to have Xavi, Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo in the same team. Having a team that is 1000 times better than everyone else is a bit like playing tennis against a three year old girl. I would just smash the ball as hard as I could and the little girl would just stand there, motionless, with a racket in her hand… It’s not fun. On the other hand, if there is a man and we are playing table tennis, then it’s interesting. If I win, great, if I lose,then at least we had fun. Me, I don’t want to just win. I want to feel something, have shivers going down my spine!”
goodness