When you're winning games, everyone thinks everything the manager says and does is fantastic. Then it goes the other way, and those earlier criticisms of players can backfire.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
When you've been in the game as long as I have, you know the managers you've played for, the good ones and the bad ones. Even the good ones get fired.
You learn as a player not to listen to the criticism. Many of the people who put out that criticism might not be as accomplished, might not understand the game as well from the inside-out.
Most professional players are their own biggest critics. Some of the things you read in the papers that strike you as bang out of order will already have been thought by the players themselves.
When you look at myself, I'm a coach, and that's what it's all about. When you're a player, you get criticized, and when you're a coach, you get criticized even more because it's about wins and losses.
The greatest manager has a knack for making ballplayers think they are better than they think they are.
A lot of players think the game is all about individual performances when it's really all about a team game.
It annoys me a little when people try to be positive when I don't play my best. I play to win. I'm like that. I'm like any other player. I'm never happy.
Sometimes when I hear commentating, it's sickening. People who never played the game, people who never played in the league have an opinion, and that's all it is. You are here to educate the watcher or the viewer. Sometimes it comes off as personal.
People always think the coach is the strongest person at a club, the boss, but in truth, he's the weakest link. We're there, vulnerable, undermined by those who don't play, by the media, by the fans. They all have the same objective: to undermine the manager.
The critics are always right. The only way you shut them up is by winning.