Tag Archive for 'Juventus'
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Maurizio Sarri, Juventus coach, after the defeat against Napoli, commented:
“We played a bland game from a mental point of view and therefore the offensive phase was also affected. It was a game with low mental energy and bland defensively as well. We lost rightly because we played a bad game; it took us a lot of our time”.
- Humility, sweat and sacrifice have always been the hallmarks of Juventus, which from Trapattoni to Lippi to Allegri has always had coaches who have taken this attitude very seriously. The fact that now in this year it often had mental breaks, it seems to me to be a wake-up call, which it goes beyond the objective fact of continuing to lead the championship and which should be taken more into consideration by Sarri.
“When the situation is what we showed tonight, it’s difficult to change a something or a single player. Mentally the team had little energy. In the final I saw that some players weren’t playing well and we tried with Douglas”.
- Showing little energy in matches that are important for the opponent’s skills and to gain an additional advantage over the opponents should be enough to motivate Juventus. The role of the key players should be a determining factor in supporting a proactive approach to the match, but it seems that this has not happened. And perhaps Sarri is more focused on getting the game he likes rather than stimulating a tough and convincing approach on the pitch. I would say that these characteristics come before any form of tactics. In other words, ideas without the heart are worth little.
“It’s not a trend. These are games where you have to comment little with the players. You have to find great motivation, which is not easy for those who have won so much. These games can help us do that. The difficulty is to maintain the right level of mentality for long periods of time”.
- A bit weak answer, for a coach who wants to be a winner, to say that this approach “is not a trend”. The question is that from these professionals should be expected another quality in the conduct of the game. Intensity, speed and precision are three factors that a team that wants to compete with the big team in European football should always show. I advise Sarri, instead, to talk to the players to find out how to get out of these negative moments, which with Napoli have affected the whole match but they have already appeared for less time in many others.
- This approach explains why it is not enough for a coach to be just a good coach but must also be a leader, who teaches the team to compete to win; to enter the field with the willingness to fight to impose his mentality on his opponents.
I want to try to put together the problems that Juventus, as a team, is facing.
- It won the last 8 Serie A championships
- The Champions League is its black beast.
- It’s a team made up largely of champions
- Cristiano Ronaldo, the planetary star of football and bearer of formidable economic interests for Juventus SpA, plays it.
- It has always had coaches (like Trapattoni, Capello, Lippi, Conte and Allegri) with a concrete attitude, very assertive and aimed at winning starting from strong defenses, a midfield centered to play for the champion of turn (Sivori, Platini, Zidane, Pirlo and so on) until an attack that always lined up the strongest champions
- Juventus does not appear determined on the pitch, it does not play with the intensity that instead shows the team which wants to win
- Is this a difficulty due to a superficial approach by the players? Do they expect to win with little effort?
- Is the coach too focused on wanting to prove that his playing module is the “right” one? While he’s less concerned with how to change what’s happening on the pitch?
- The coach seems less determined in (public) communication than his predecessors at Juventus. Does he show this personal trait differently from others, or is this his weakness?
- How does he match the main problem that all coaches have: wanting to prove that he is right and at the same time wanting to win. In the first case, his method dominates, while in the second case on the top there is the adaptation to the Club philosophy the team culture and the players characteristics.
Sarri problems in the management of Ronaldo and those of Ancelotti with his team and his president highlight how it’s difficult in these moments to remain optimistic, satisfied and determined rather than pessimistic, dissatisfied and distressed. The question is: how to maintain this attitude during the evolution of the crisis situation.
This stress does not come so much from the results but refers to the stress of managing the players, from misunderstandings arising during the work and from having to negotiate with their players.
We know that what differentiates a coach who manages these experiences from another who, on the contrary, is chocked by them, it is in the way of dealing with situations perceived as stressful.
One question to answer is: “How can I show myself convinced that we will be able to get out of this crisis or that my choices are the right ones?” In football, if we don’t believe we have everything we need to be able to achieve our goals, it’s almost certain that we won’t achieve it. It’s like saying to our opponents: “Today we’ll give you some of our confidence to win, we’d rather remain insecure. So the lesson is as follows: accept the challenge and play with the confidence we can do it till the final whistle. Players are taught to chase even the balls that are impossible to catch, the same for the coach because we must never leave the idea that nothing is impossible.
On 5 February 1950 the Rai broadcasts live the football match Juventus-Milan for the city of Turin, Italy. The Milan with the three attackers called Gre-No-Li Trident swept the bianconeri to 7-1. It was, however, only an experiment: Rai would start broadcasting officially only four years later.
Expectations are the main killer of the athletes’ confidence, you expect to perform at the best thanks to the talent and training, nothing more wrong, it’s not enough. Probably Paulo Dybala seems to have fallen into this trap. He has all the qualities necessary to become one of the world’s best players, then the pressure of having to show on the pitch he’s ruin. It is a common mistake of many athletes of the highest level, they load on their shoulders this unnecessary pressure reducing the skill to compete at their best. Even the Brazil team before the soccer World Championships in Rio expected to win, instead the team collapsed under the inability to handle this pressure or Andy Murray has won far less when compared with his real competences but struggled a long time to learn how to take off from the shoulders his expectations and those of an entire nation that after so many years had finally found a champion in tennis.
The expectation to win, to score a goal or to lead the team are certainly important, nobody comes into game to lose or play badly. We have not to confuse these beliefs, they should be left in the locker room, with the actual behaviors that we must bring into play to achieve them. Expectations can be also extremely positive but the players have to know how to translate into competitive goals and behaviors. This determines the difference between who is reliable and who thrives on fantasies that himself and others (sponsor, coach, team, family, manager).
The current competitive stress management strategies have the purpose to teach athletes to identify which are the mental processes determining the success on the field of behaviors focused for achieving the goals. Unfortunately, the talent can be an obstacle to developing this mental and physical readiness status, because the athletes can believe that their skills will be enough. When this happens the fall is even harder, because there is a growing risk to doubt their abilities, entering in a negative spiral, that from match to match can lead to isolate themselves, to feel misunderstood and to expect that at some point the lucky star magically will return to shine. This vicious circle must be blocked and the athletes should get help from a professional to establish concrete and challenging goals to reach and identify the behaviors needed to achieve them. For Dybala this difficulty could thus become an important opportunity for personal development and growth, to achieve a conscious sport and human maturity.
The problem with Higuain is that in this last period he did not score any goals and the question who certainly he’s asking himself regards how to get out of this situation. Expressed in this way, the question seems easy: what to do to take more efficient shots. If he was a machine the problem would be easy to solve since it would be simply a question to change some parameters (speed, accuracy, timing, type of shot) to get the desired result. Being a human player there are instead many aspects to cope with: the player, teams and environmental expectations, to accept that a champion shows this problem, the footballer’s tendency to react by moving away from game or moving impulsively, to undergo the influence of teammates who instead continue to score.
It would be useful, for himself and for the team, live this moment as an opportunity for improvement and not as a kind of attacker’s syndrome. To accept the difficulties is the only way to overcome them. At this regards I agree with Arrigo Sacchi when he says that to win you have not to have the issue of winning. We can to paraphrase this thought by saying that to score a goal, you don’t really need the obsession to make goals, because otherwise you will play always on the defensive or impulsively and the footballer will never be innovative and effective as all expect from a champion.
20 years ago Marcello Lippi, Fabio Capello e Giovanni Trapattoni won the football championship in Italy (Juventus), Spain (Real Madrid) and Germany (Bayern di Monaco). This year the winning triplete is for di Massimiliano Allegri (Juventus), Antonio Conte (Chelsea) and Carlo Ancelotti (Bayern di Monaco).
Player-coach - ”He was good at reading the game, he knew to assess where being able to hit the opponents, to identify their weaknesses. He also understood when and where the team was suffering: if he saw the defender in trouble, he was able to settle down in order to limit the game opponent without need for a call from outside. At this regard, he had some innate abilities in this regard. ” (Galeone, football coach)
Management of the unexpected situations – “Imagination and the ability to manage the unexpected. The matches are preparing, but they are never completely planned. I get to decide a formation on Friday afternoon and changing it Sunday on a hunch. The best time it’s seven thirty in the morning. The time usually contradict myself.”
Confidence in himself - “I am very confident. I say things straight to straight, I don’t expect gratitude, compassion, empathy. Feelings that in football no longer exist. I am good at pretending and take refuge in lie at the right time.”
The technique is crucial – “The pitches were shortened to sharpen the game in the narrow space. The matches are won in two ways, with the military occupation of the space and with the quality of the performers. The time to think with the ball at the feet has been reduced, at the end the ball goes to the better players”.
Authoritative leadership – “The dialogue is complicated. Going into the lockroom you find almost of the players with headphones in their ears, loud music. Nobody talks to anybody. Need authority, respect and patience. It is not my custom stress every day saying I’m the one in charge, explaining they are forced to listen not because I am the best, but simply because I am the older. There are talents that are like the waves, I think, for example, at Morata and Coman. You have to measure them, wait for the right time. Some are taken by the hand and behaved like children, from others I find collaboration, experience, personality”.
Task coach - ”Not discounting the importance of the coach, but its main task is to ease the players”.
Go beyond the tactic - “Football is played on a lawn of 106/68 metres running and playing with the feet, the ball often takes strange turns and people would like that under these conditions the solution is in the schematic situations? If the schemas would be so relevant to win, because Real Madrid have spent 100 million for Bale, who quite simply dribble, shoot and smash the door?”. The schemas are just a trace “.
The important thing is wanting to better themselves - “I have a group of guys that have called into question, I still want to win. And I told them I inc *** very if not improve, because they have technical and physical potential is truly remarkable. I say this even though the Champions. “
In soccer, the sport competition is a situation where the performance of a team is compared to the standard required for that event. In addition, each team should show on the field the desire to overcome difficulties through collaboration among the players, while to the opponents should be dominant the competitiveness. Certainly a team needs talent players but nobody definitely win if there is no integration amomg the players’ behavior, if it lacks the group cohesion. These concepts are not to be thought of as good intentions, general and non-specific, because they are the basis of the winning teams. If you apply these principles to the present condition of Juventus it’s evident, at a glance, that the behaviors of the players in the field do not match, if not in small part, to these simple rules. It lacks the so-called team spirit and a united group, which are important objectives to address effectively to cope with with a challenging season and highest level. We do not forget that the motivation should be a psychological dimension always present and independent of the quality of the game. Indeed, precisely when there may be uncertainties or difficulty performing the work required by the coach, as it’s true for Juventus at the start of this season, it becomes imperative for the players to be on the pitch with the fighting spirit and tenacity required to whom is part of a team. It’s maintaining high the motivation to play that the players, the team and the coach could think only about the technical aspects of the game and not on the misbehavior of the team, not so motivated in the field. In moments of crisis it serves the leader, Allegri, send a few ideas that are clear, specific and perceived by players as achievable since the next game. The team needs to know that it takes time to improve the collective quality of the game but that combativeness and toughness are mental qualities that should be present until the next match. Otherwise Juventus will continue to play with the excuse that if the team does not have a good play or it’s few time that the players are together, this approach will determine the lack of confidence in following the instructions of the coach. In addition, the core of the team represented by the defense players as a whole has done little to show on the field this attitude and to motivate their mates, they will have to commit much more. Juventus now has a team humiliated by the superficiality with which it approached this new season. The biggest mistake by the managers was to say it would be a transition year, thus giving players the perception that it would not be so important to maintain the standards of the past. Now they have discovered that losing the games, because of the inability to be a team and to react immediately to mistakes pleases no one and leading the team into an abyss; we’ll see if they will be able to motivate everyone to play with the right intensity to show the capabilities of the team. The task of Allegri is not only technical but he has to help the team to change emotional minset, he will have to explain that there is no excuse for anyone in the field and that it serves combativeness and toughness.
