RE: ⚽ Is The Grass Greener?
I played for the younger categories (pioneers, cadets and juniors) in the first Croatian league for my city of Šibenik.
It was nice to play and travel around Croatia and various tournaments abroad
I as a player had good technique I was not very fast but I had a good left foot which was my biggest advantage and I played everything on the left side. But to succeed in sports you have to live sports 24 hours a day. It’s very hard when you’re a teenager and your friends are having fun in town and you have to go to bed early because you’re playing an important game in the morning. I really enjoyed going out with friends late into the night in the company of girls, beer and cigarettes.
So I wasn’t very disciplined and my parents weren’t strict with me (maybe they should have been) to forbid me from going out.
So I’m not sorry which I did not succeed as a player because I didn’t deserve it with my behavior.
But I would definitely recommend to any parent that the child engages in sports regardless of ultimate success. Because you make a lot of good friends and continue to play sports recreationally.
And in the case of Reading, I think club managers should have better scouting for both players and coaches, because there must be a young coach somewhere in the neighborhood (especially in your country) who is hungry for success and with a good vision. Such a young coach should have already been on the bench as an assistant, but who can take over the team in case of dismissal of the head coach and not look for him on the street, whatever his name is. A coach doesn’t necessarily have to be some former player who was good and known as a player.
No one knew about Mourinho when he appeared, he gave up playing football because he considered himself a bad player and switched to management and later was a translator for Sir Bobby Robson in Sporting Lisbon.
We all know how football should be played but there are not many people who can convey their vision on the field, get the most out of the players, motivate their team and make a crucial move at the right time, if it was that easy we would all do it. As you said, only time will tell if it was a good move by the club's management.
I wish good luck to your club in the continuation of this season, I will follow as much as I can.
You report on the situation and whether Paul managed to raise the team.
Your story sounds a lot like a friend I used to play 5-a-side with 🙂 He was technically brilliant and left-footed. He captained Bournemouth Reserves at the age of 17 but the training and the inability to do anything other than football eventually broke him. Having already been warned, him and a few others went for a night out, just a few days before the end of season break. He knew what he was doing and wanted out - so they all go released.
He ended up going into finance and being very successful - all of the skills, determination, leadership qualities, etc. that he learnt on the pitch were applied off of it.
I can't help but think "what might have been" - Bournemouth were promoted to the Premier League a few years later - with players that he was better than. Imagine that. I nutmegged him more than once 🤣 He never regretted it though.
I would have liked us to promote Michael Gilkes to the role until the end of the season. He's the Under-23 manager and a fans-favourite from his playing days. But we'll see. His first game in charge is being played now - a game I expect us to win.
Yes, you need to give a chance to a coach who leads the juniors if he is good and that is the right and logical move they should have made.
In football today and even in my time when I played, it was not the most talented players who succeeded, but the most persistent. A lot of talented players are overestimated, because a talented player has an innate sense of the ball and quickly learns the game while a persistent player makes up for it with his strength and learns slowly but in the long run he survives.
So today I also watch people on television as expert commentators and I played with them and they were nothing special.
But simply the more you invest the more you get, with a little luck that is always needed.