A Quote by Marco van Basten
Johann was one of the greatest players in the history of the game. He could do everything. I'm not at that level. I'm more of a classic attacker, a penalty-area player. And after a while, I realized that this was how I could best help my team.
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The beach game taught me great lessons about how to elevate the play of my teammate, or teammates, and how to anticipate and expect the ball so much more than the indoor game ever could. It taught me - even forced me - to be a much better all-around player. That allowed me to help our USA Olympic Team in many more ways than I ever could have otherwise.
To this day I am not convinced of having brought together with me in Germany the technically best players that could have been. But I was firmly convinced I called the ones that could create a team, and they could play with one another to the best of their possibility. In this day and age you win if you become a team. It doesn't necessarily mean that you've got to have the best football players in the country. It's possible that the best, all together, don't become a team. It's like a mosaic, you have to put all the pieces together.
I've had the privilege of coaching the best basketball team in the history of the world, and that's the USA national team. I've had a chance to coach them for eight years. If you were to ask me if I could end my career only coaching one team for the rest of my coaching career, I don't think it could get better than that, especially with the players that I've had during those eight years. When you've coached at that level, you know, you've coached those players, it's pretty hard to say, I would rather coach anybody else.
When somebody asks about the greatest players in history, I start with Bill Russell. More than the best player is the MVP, and the MVP in the history of team sports is Bill Russell.
Nobody seems to appreciate what an incredible player Wilt was," Russell said at 1997 All-Star Game when the league named and honored its 50 greatest players. "He was the best player of all time because he dominated the floor like nobody else ever could. To be that big and that athletic was special.
How do we make hockey more affordable? How do we get it into more households? How do we keep it part of the conversation? Those are things that will help us not only increase registration numbers from a grassroots level but also deepen the player pool from the senior national team and the elite level.
The best players in the game want the responsibility of being the best player. The reality is the game has changed from now back to '87. It's a lot tighter checking. The players are better today. So, that makes it harder for him just in that fact. We can't rely solely on Mario [Lemieux] to carry this team. We're not relying on that.
Ivan Lendl was the best player I ever played. He was the first guy to bring the game to more of a power level and you could know that if he played really well you could get blown off court and that wouldn't happen against John McEnroe, Jimmy Connors or even Bjorn Borg or Guillermo Vilas.
Of course you have Messi and Ronaldo. And then you've got a lot of players who are very close to each other and I think Gareth Bale is one of them, like at the level of the best teams in the world. He could play for every team in the world. For me he's a world class player.
Individual players don't win titles no matter how good you are as a player. The best players in the world need a team around them. It is about the team, and we are playing for the badge.
My mentality has always been, If I'm not the best at something, then I might as well be the best at something else. I realized that I wasn't going to be an Olympic volleyball player, but I knew I could model at that level.
Perhaps the toughest call for a coach is weighing what is best for an individual against what is best for the team. Keeping a player on the roster just because I liked him personally, or even because of his great contributions to the team in the past, when I felt some one else could do more for the team would be a disservice to the team's goals.
Nadal's the best player in history on [clay], and he is one of the best-ever players that played this game.
When you are speaking to your team after a game, never talk about the kid who was the star of the game. Talk about what your other players did to help the team win. Be sure to spread the wealth... Then have individual meetings with one to three players to praise and reinforce. Make sure you touch them.
I enjoyed the NFL. I respected the players. It was a great opportunity to learn a lot of things, but the challenges were a little different, and it didn't seem that you could control your own destiny, especially in terms of how you could bring players to the team.
The team was going into transition. The team that we had could not continue to exist. Because of age, injury, it could not get to that same level. It had to change. I wish this team could have been frozen in time for 10 years, but that's not the reality.
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