If the manager can't transmit his ideas, and the players don't understand it, you've a problem. When your players can follow it, though, you've already won a lot in a season.
When you work, you know you can have some problem with the players. This is normal because the manager wants the players to work hard, play well, and the players should understand this.
Each manager has a different way of doing things with his players, of making them understand things.
As players, whenever the manager gets the sack, you have to look in the mirror and say it's not always the manager. It's down to the players.
Baseball is a simple game. If you have good players, and you keep them in the right frame of mind, the manager is a success. The players make the manager. It's never the other way. Managing is not running, hitting, or stealing. Managing is getting your players to put out one hundred percent year after year. A player does not have to like a manager and he does not have to respect a manager. All he has to do is obey the rules. Talent is one thing. Being able to go from spring to October is another. You just got caught in a position where you have no position.
You can have Guardiola as a manager, you can have Koeman as a manager, anybody as a manager, but the players inside the white lines win the game.
When you're a manager, we sometimes speak too much about tactics, but the most difficult thing for a manager is to get the best from his best players.
I think it's really important for managers to be liked by his players because ultimately, on the pitch, those players will give everything for their manager.
Jonny Hayes is a good player. All the players trust the manager to bring in the players he believes should be added to the squad and his arrival is great for competition.
A manager can have a great idea but if the players don't understand it, or don't follow you, your idea doesn't have much use. On the other side, you can have a bad idea, but if the players are convinced it, and you transmit it well, it can work.
That is what it is like with Pep. At first, you don't understand. But then you grow up, you work, and now we understand the things he wants much better. It's not like the first season when it took him more time to make us understand his ideas. Some players didn't understand immediately what he wanted.
The manager is by himself. He can't mingle with his players. I enjoyed my players, but I could not socialize with them so I spent a lot of time alone in my hotel room. Those four walls kind of close in on you.
There was no better manager at developing young players than Sir Alex. He knew just when to bring them in and take them out, and he believed in Paul Pogba. For once, in Paul's case, it did not work out. The timing was wrong, and the difference between expectation on the player's side and the manager's idea of his development did not match up.
Every manager is different in one way or another, but what stays the same is coaching Barcelona players - players who want the ball, who want to be protagonists on the field - so each manager who's been here has been able to take advantage of that, and, luckily, I feel we've become more complete because of it.
The manager administers; the leader innovates. The manager has a short-range view; the leader has a long-range perspective. The manager asks how and when; the leader asks what and why. The manager has his eye on the bottom line; the leader has his eye on the horizon. The manager accepts the status quo; the leader challenges it.
A manager gets in the Hall of Fame by what his players have done for him.