I came here to win titles with Roma. I can only promise one thing, and that is that I will give my best for this club in every game.
Because I grew up playing for Roma and I want to die playing for Roma, because I have always been a Roma's fan!
No matter how you total success in the coaching profession it all comes down to a single factor - talent. There may be a hundred great coaches of whom you have never heard in basketball, football, or any sport who will probably never receive the acclaim they deserve simply because they have not been blessed with the talent. Although not every coach can win consistently with talent, no coach can win without it.
My coach in college always told me, 'You don't go out there to win lackadaisical, you don't go out there to win by one point, you don't go out there to coast through - you go out to dominate. You impose your will on a man.' And he was my fight coach for a little bit, too, and I did the same thing.
We were really helped when President Ronald Reagan came in. I remember non-commissioned officers who were going to retire and they re-enlisted because they believed in President Reagan. That's the kind of President Ronald Reagan was. He helped our country win the Cold War. He put it behind us in a way no one ever believed would be possible. He was truly a great American leader. And those of us in the Armed Forces loved him, respected him, and tremendously admired him for his great leadership.
When Jim Irsay called me five years ago, he told me, 'I want you to be our coach and help us win the Super Bowl.' He told me, 'We are going win it the right way. We are going to win it with great guys; win it with class and dignity. We are going to win it in a way that will make Indianapolis proud.'
We are not going to win because you have a new head coach, any more than you are going to fix a flat tire by changing the driver. We will win the minute all of us get rid of excuses as to why we can't win and stop wallowing in self-pity.
I think Pakistan was always a destination where it was hard to come and win. I was the coach of the South African team which came here in 2007. We won the Test and one-day series and that was a massive win and achievement because not many sides had come and won in Pakistan.
If I hire a coach, he's the coach and will run what he knows and is comfortable with. Will it be part of the process? Absolutely. But I am not going to interfere that way as the president.
No head coach does it by himself. I don't care who the coach is or how great he might be. Mike Krzyzewski is is a great friend of mine and he's a great coach but he has great, great assistant coaches and they bring a lot to the table and that's what it takes.
What's funny about that office is it's entirely dependent on how close you are to the president, because the president decides what your role will be. If you get on with the president, that's great; if you fall out with the president, power can go away.
The president is just the coach of a football team. You need the right support, the right stadium, the right players, the right staff. An excellent coach is not going to win games.
President Clinton will, I think, lift everyone's spirit. He was a good president, an economic, balanced budget president. And President Obama, I believe, has been a very good president, too, and we will get reelected. You watch.
Change does not mean you will win with a new coach and achieve victories, but rather it causes instability in the team as the new coach needs some time for the players to adapt his new plans, which are always different than the previous coach.
I didn't win Class President in tenth grade. I was too chubby to win a role in the school play 'Oklahoma!' and I didn't make it into a singing and dancing group in high school for the same reason - too fat.
When I broke into professional hockey at 17 I was told that I was too small and too slow and I wouldn't make the NHL. Now it's kind of flip-flopped and the sense is I can't be a good coach because I was a great athlete.