From Rhys Jaggar:
Myles,
It is clear to me that you must have responded well to shouting.
Because it has been a bee in your bonnet for years that if someone does not respond to being shouted at, they are lazy and decadent.
What the question should actually be is this: ‘Is it possible to become a top footballer without being responsive to shouting?’
Clearly the way to examine this is to interview 50 really top footballers and ask them three questions:
1) Do you respond well, a bit, not at all or in a negative manner to a coach shouting at you?
2) Do you respond well, a bit, not at all or in a negative manner to being told quietly but firmly that this will not do at all?
3) Do you have greater respect for a shouter who can guide gently, a gentle guider who can shout, a shouter who derides gentle guidance or a gentle guider too gentle to shout?
What you will probably find is that hard-boiled less skilful players from tough backgrounds respond more to shouting than gentle tough love; the more creative expressive players respond more to gentle tough love; and some will respond equally well to either.
My view is quite simple: I was forced into a school system aged 4 and was accorded positive reports for 18 years, including in areas I was weak and applied myself to become less weak.
But if some superior coach sits me down and draws up a list of areas which need improvement, a set of areas requiring individual work and ways to address them and tasks me to spend 3-4hrs a day working on them, giving me realistic feedback and rising standard bars on a weekly/fortnightly basis, then I am minded to work hard to improve. They have enough maturity to work with what they have got.
I know this works because I experienced it abroad aged 17, putting the UK Route One nonsense to shame. If they do not wish to work with me, they can say so. Respectfully.
Because it is absolutely unacceptable for any ‘superior’ coach to treat me like a pile of trash simply because they are at the emotional level of a ranting child. It means I am more mature than they are, which means looking up to them is impossible.
I have the personality-type of a Denis Irwin, an Ashley Cole, a Bobby Charlton.
I do not have the personality type of Tony Adams, Steven Gerrard, Jordan Henderson.
Different strokes for different folks.
Myles says:
We all had some good teachers, Rhys, and some bad.
I’ve never compared myself to a footballer.
Because when I was a journalist I spent far more time with managers. Found them much more interesting.
For me right now, Thursday isn’t a football day, it’s pilates in the morning and work in the afternoon.
And I’m still thinking about our rocking Wednesday night. We saw Much Ado About Nothing at Gray’s Inn Hall, an Elizabethan venue that existed when Will Shakespeare was alive.They recreated his most-performed comedy in a French village in the summer of 1945.
The show, with French and English musicians and actors, is different, daring, clever and very funny.
“This is your daughter?”
“Her mother hath many times told me so.”
The Hall wasn’t quite full, so you might still get tickets: