Managers whose teams are often competing for titles or winning titles often talk about how the dressing room gets to a point where it almost polices itself. There’s just that standard and the demands, day in day out, that are so high that they just feed off each other. Is it going to take another year to get to that point, another two years?“I don’t know, we are not there yet. But we are getting there. That is something that is just like that [clicks fingers] in change, but it takes a lot of work to reach that point and we are not there yet. But we are fighting, because sometimes we are used to different things, and then when you want to change it’s hard because you have to suffer and sometimes it’s hard when you are not used to suffering in every drill, every training. It’s hard, but they [the players] are making the effort and that is the only thing I can ask, but we are not there yet to leave the players to train and I know that everything is [going to be okay]. No, I have to be there every drill, every moment. I have to be there, so we are far from that team that I can talk with Jason Wilcox during training, and the speed is completely the same. We are not there.”
Wins help though, don’t they?“Yeah, of course. The environment is completely different, but the big teams are the same when you win and when you lose. You can be annoyed, but the speed, everything, the sound, is completely different. Even the aggression between them in training, it has to be different, so I’m always on top of that. They are trying and that is the only thing, again, that I can ask for.”
Just looking to that period when AFCON is on, how big of a challenge will that be for you because, obviously, Amad, Bryan [Mbeumo] and Nous [Mazraoui] are very important members of your squad?
“I think it is going to be hard but then, that is the good thing of the experience. We lived so many limitations last year. We changed in January and we didn’t bring the players, then we had the injury of Amad for four months, all these things. We are prepared for that. It will be hard for us, but we have different baggage to deal with that. Guys like Jack Fletcher, Shea [Lacey], they can step up. We can send, at the same time, a message to everyone here in the Academy that this is the future. But we are going to struggle, and we have to be prepared for that.”
Chido Obi, I know he’s only 17 and perhaps had his chance maybe a little earlier than he was expecting, is he someone that you look at?
“Yeah, of course. He played last year, I think it was too soon. We didn’t have a team that we could put a young kid at 16 [into so much so that] he would not struggle, or he will [only] struggle a little bit. It was necessary to do that. The perfect conditions are we have the opportunity, and we seek that opportunity for the kid, so he is one of the guys, but I think he started too soon and it is sometimes difficult to deal with that with the kids. Because they think: ‘I am already here.’ No, you are here for necessity, and we need to be careful also with that, with the kids.”
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