Tag Archive for 'andrea pirlo'

How soccer’s elite coaches cope with the precariousness of their job

How coaches of elite soccer experience being fired, victories, new benches is a little known topic and not at all investigated given the difficulty and confidentiality of this issue.

Although the media talk about it all the time, there is no in-depth analysis, often not going beyond the analysis of the most trivial aspects (he failed, he lacked the support of management, he did not have the experience, the club did not have a project to improve the team).

Athletes are studied from a psychological point of view but not elite coaches. We do not have answers that go beyond the anecdotal evidence of how Max Allegri has lived these two years without a job, how Sarri has interpreted his departure due to misunderstandings about his way of conceiving soccer, how Antonio Conte gives up to lead Inter after winning the championship driven by the desire to have a more competitive team to lead, how De Zerbi is preparing to be the leader of Shachtar, how Andrea Pirlo will prepare to train a new team after being rejected by Juventus.

They certainly don’t have economic problems and, therefore, the question is about the perception they have of themselves and how this awareness interacts with and is influenced by the situations and environment in which they live.

I have described several times the characteristics of winning coaches but how do they vary over time in relation to their professional experiences? How do they manage the stress resulting from these changes, often not chosen by them but decided by others?

The only answer that seems important to me is to emphasize the importance of their psychological training, and therefore the idea of continuous personal and professional improvement that is usually the basis of the results of the most successful coaches.

Andrea Pirlo: The last of the Italian talents has gone

Andrea Pirlo has definitively ended his career. His retirement marks the end of a type of player who is technical, lead the team, takes free kicks and score goals, he is a leader and in the decisive moments of the match makes a difference. In Italy, there are no more players like him, he was the last one, with him there were in the same period Totti, Baggio and Del Piero.

Evidently the football formation of our young no longer allows the development of this type of football players. Now in the national team we have a midfield made up of anonymous and an attack with young who have not yet won anything and often had not played at their best. We have a strong defense, ex-strongest, hopefully it will be enough to win with Sweden and go to world championship in Russia.

The best Pirlo’s goals

Andrea Pirlo

If Roger Federer & Valentino Rossi show that talent is ageless

“Yeah, I’m still here,” sings Vasco Rossi and the same they say Valentino Rossi and Roger Federer. Both came second, proving once again to be worth the first and second place in the world ranking. Many of them have given up for dead on many occasions, stating that they did not know winning no more, they were old or the physical was not  holding them more.

Probably these objection for a while time were true, but any athlete goes through moments like these, often the champions exceed them by changing something in the way they train and live competitions. Most likely the other sink, because they use these negative moments as an excuse to withdraw, because of something they consider superior to them. People often focus their comments on their age, as if it was an essential limit, a characteristic to which we must surrender.

I heard to say: “Federer is old and no longer able to hold that little exchange, otherwise he loses the point.” But how many would like to have this trouble just to be second in the world? They also say that because of this threshold has had to change how you play. True, but why interpret this change as a negative connotation? And instead to emphasize his determination to change to stay on the top of the world ranking. The same it was said until last year for Valentino Rossi: “Why does he not withdraw rather than collect disappointing results?”

The chorus of “why he/she does not abandon” has been told also about other sport champions. In Italy Giovanni Pellielo, in shooting, after three medals in three different Olympics, in London, at age 42, he did not enter the finals and also here the same voices, he has not noticed them, he has trained and the following year again won the world championship. Valentina Vezzali, 41, fencer, she won everything repeatedly, and she wants to go to Rio. Not to mention Andrea Pirlo and Gigi Buffon and the dream they are living in these days with Juventus. We have to evaluate these men and women for their performances but not to the age. Above all we have to learn from them, because they are an example of fighting mentality in the face of difficulty and humility in dealing with the daily sacrifices, that are needed to return to excel in their sports, without being sure to succeed in this venture.