More on this book
Kindle Notes & Highlights
There’s a purpose to every drill.”
Coaches may also need to get past the misconception that “the game is the best teacher.” It may not be. Again, to quote Frey: “There’s some truth to that, but really? It’s a little like throwing a kid a keyboard and thinking that will make him a great writer. He’ll figure it out. Not really. I think the game is a really good teacher, but there’s got to be direction.”
The lesson is this: Standardize the system. Bring order out of chaos. Insist on structure rather than sovereignty. Control what you previously thought was uncontrollable. In Brandt’s words, “dictate the options” and then, in Becker’s words, “use specific training” to instill those options. Enable people to succeed by linking all training to the match. It’s not the only way to win games, of course—just ask the samba sisters in Sao Paulo—but it sure works well for the guys and girls in Grantham.
Stay sharp, stay focused, stay unified. It doesn’t much matter what they’re doing, as long as they’re doing it together.
“We were trying to create a shared experience and a collective mentality to keep us all thinking the same thing.”
“team over individual,”
“Some of the time on this trip is for you, some is for us. You don’t want it to be a police state, that’s not the point. In the end, things like the walk are good things. You’ll have time to study, time to hang out and time to do stuff with the team … Guys understand why the team element is important.”
“is that we’re having fun together, we’re in this together, we’re going to battle together.”
“there’s very little free time and it’s highly scheduled”—focused
basically whatever they want, but the one stipulation is that they eat as a team.
“A team talk should always contain a healthy dose of realism, should encourage your men to recognize their strengths and work to exploit them. We have good players and I should give them mature advice about patience, maintaining possession, how to initiate counter-attacks and how to avoid being provoked and led into unproductive activity by the cunning of the opposition.”20
staying focused, avoiding complacency, and continually playing to a standard of excellence.
five to ten minutes in length,
“separate act from feel”
can’t allow your body language to communicate you’re tired or down … Our emotions, our feelings, our concerns about injustice can put us at a competitive disadvantage if the opponent can read us.”
“reframing.” In the context of communication, it means to help people see old things in new ways by changing their frame of reference.
“Do we need to change the formation?” says Coach Frey. “Are we getting exposed defensively anywhere? Is there a match-up we’re not taking advantage of? Are there choices that we aren’t making that we should?”
Formation? Personnel? Strategy? Work rate? Motivation?
Like everything else in their game day leadership, this is all by design. It happens because of a premeditated decision. “I don’t ever want to be young,” says Frey about his team. “I just want it to be another new group. But that’s an intentional decision by the coaches.”
“good programs don’t have rebuilding years.”
They’re striving to create an environment where execution is more likely. No small matter. Men’s keeper coach Aaron Schwartz sums it up well: “You can teach somebody all sorts of things. If they can’t apply it, it’s just not gonna happen.”
To win you have to execute. Execution requires readiness. And readiness is no accident.
They have higher purposes, one of which is to play with excellence all the time. As Coach Brandt said in 2006 after three straight titles: “We hope to win, but we focus on striving for excellence, which is more under our control than winning.”22
Throughout the years, these teams have not focused on victories or trophies. Foremost, they’re focused on continuous improvement, on getting better
and better each game, on achieving their potential not just one year or some years or usually, but all the time—every season, every game, even every touch of the ball.
“We strive for perfection even though it’s not going to happen in soccer. The closer we get, the better we are.” It transcends seasons, too. When they finish second, the striving continues. And when they finish first, the striving continues.
We will “play to a standard” all the time and that standard will be perfection—the game where every pass connects, every run is well-timed, every shot rips the back of the net. He explains in retrospect: “We aimed to play the perfect game, always striving for more, always playing to that standard. The team ultimately believed that when we had the ball, if we chose correctly and we executed, you couldn’t stop us.”
“Every team is supposed to leave the program better than they found it,”
It’s essentially a vision of the unattainable ideal and then an incessant quest to get as close as possible.
“probably the biggest secret to our repeated success.”
“We play to a standard. When we play and train, it is so irrelevant what anybody else in the world is doing. I don’t care what this team or that program has done. It’s all about us and what we can achieve.”
“If there’s no melody in your head, then it’s possible your leadership lacks vision. If there once was a melody but you’ve forgotten about it, I encourage you to reinvest in that idealism.”
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.”
“the dogged pursuit of excellence” and it touches everything from their work ethic to fitness to technical skills to soccer IQ to character to relationships to academics. “Playing to a standard”—and in their case, living to a standard—means doing everything with utmost quality and distinction.
“If God has called me to do this, who am I to do it with anything less than excellence?”
“If you’re going to label something ‘Christian,’” he told me with an intensity unbecoming of the diner toast and coffee between us, “then you’ve got to do it with excellence.”
“Or don’t do it at all.”
