Gracjan Piaścik

🇵🇱 🎾 Tennis and psychology enthusiast ⚽ First Team Analysis Intern at Southampton FC 🎓 BSc Football Studies at Southampton Solent University

[Josh Chambers @JoshChambers]

Steve Kerr says Roger Federer taught his Warriors team the secret to sustained success wasn’t outworking everyone, it was building a life around your craft you never want to escape from

“I’ll tell you a great story about Roger Federer. We were playing in China with the Warriors in 2017. Roger was in Shanghai for the Masters tournament, so we invited him to come speak to the team.”

“Draymond Green asked him, ‘How do you sustain success? How have you managed to win majors 20 years after you first won one?’ Everyone was expecting him to say, ‘I work harder than everybody,’ the will, all the clichés.”

“Roger Federer says, ‘I get up every morning and I make breakfast for my kids. Then I take them to school and drop them off. Then I go practice tennis for about two hours, and I’ve figured out a really good routine where I don’t destroy my body, but I can get all the work in I need.”

“‘Then I go have lunch with my wife. In the evening, we cook dinner together. The kids are all home from school. We ask them about school. There’s so much joy in the house. We put them to bed, and then I put my head on the pillow and go, “Man, that was just a great day.” And I’ve been doing that for 20 years.’”

“And it was like, yes. That’s it. That’s the formula. That’s what leads to sustained success. He loves tennis. He loves his family. He loves life. It’s not outworking everybody and banging your head against the wall, ‘I’m going to be better than everybody.’ It’s allowing your natural talent to shine through with a work ethic, with a great family life, with perspective, with peace, with mindfulness.”

“It’s perspective. It’s joy. It’s passion. It’s mindfulness. It’s an awareness that we are truly lucky. To get the most out of ourselves, it’s our daily rituals and experiences and love and joy.”

[FC Barcelona @FCBarcelona]

The master of space and time touches down in Barcelona ⏱️

[Fabrizio Romano @FabrizioRomano]

🔵🔴 Rodri: “Sergio Busquets has always been a great role model”.

“It's a privilege that they compare me to him”.

[. @Ruxiiii4]

Welcome back, Racing de Santander.

A relationist team under José Alberto López, with the responsibility of representing this football style in the elite and representing Santander, a historic club returning to La Liga 14 years later.

Same ideas as last season in the second division: a relationist 4-4-2/4-2-2-2, short distances and a lot of mobility between the four inside players. Full-backs joining dynamically from behind.

A typical trait of this team is having no player providing width on one side, which often leads to several players gathering together in wide areas.

Today, a new relationship was born. Iñigo Vicente and Sergio Canales, who has just returned to the club where he started his career, already seemed to show good chemistry. Those short combinations in the final third, which already looked very good last season, could become even more dangerous with Canales.

8/9 of the 11 players in today's starting XI were part of last season's squad. Several are academy players, including two promising 2007-born talents: Sergio Martínez (CM) and Jorge Salinas (LB).

I'll be following Racing closely this season. I really like what they're doing: consistency in their ideas, a long-term plan, a clear playing identity, young academy players, and the addition of Canales, someone who genuinely loves the club.

Hopefully, they can show that relationism, combined with good players and good coaching, can have a place in elite football.

[🕊️ @MagicalXavi]

His father was unwell
Legs shattered
People running smear campaigns

Against all odds he dragged his team to a World cup final, Thank you for giving us one last memorable tournament ❤️

[EuroFoot @eurofootcom]

🇸🇪🤩 Mjällby are in the middle of an incredible UNDERDOG story! The Swedish side are from a small fishing village which has a population of around 1,500 people. Last year, they shocked Swedish football by winning the league title for the very first time. 🏆

Mjällby also won the Swedish Cup. Now, they have won their FIRST ever European match! They won the first leg of the UEFA Champions League qualifying match against Lincoln Red Imps!

Just 8 years ago, Mjällby was in the 3rd division of Swedish football. It's truly remarkable. 👏

[Gracjan Piaścik @Grasjano]

@filipnowicki4 Dzięki 🙂

[Martin Rafelt @MartinRafelt]

Argentina is one of the most interesting teams I ever watched. Very unique flair, great activity, confidence and game competence. They handle so many situations differently than any other team and still it makes so much sense.
They're difficult to put into words, but I'll try:

[We Are Messi 🔟 @WeAreMessi]

Novak Djokovic 🎾🗣️: “Leo, how did you learn to deal with pressure and keep fighting under it?”

🚨 Lionel Messi 🐐🗣️: “We started playing football with great passion and a constant desire to enjoy the game, whether at school, in the street, or with neighborhood teams. We never thought about pressure; we simply played to enjoy ourselves and compete.

From a young age, I understood that you lose more than you win. I believe that realization helped me mature, both as a person and as a player.” 🥹🐐

[Mark O'Sullivan PhD @markstkhlm]

Nice article @jonawils We did a Book chapter earlier this year with Matias Manna -worldviews shape how football analysis is carried out-influences what we think the game is, what counts as knowledge, and what we value as success or failure https://t.co/SX6pF9KC9Z

[Fabrizio Romano @FabrizioRomano]

🥺🇦🇷 Lionel Scaloni: “Messi told me: We’re a pure history”.

“But the one who’s truly history is him, a legend. Hearing him say that fills me with pride”.

“To have the greatest footballer the world has ever seen think that about this group is something truly wonderful”.

[David Garcia @IJaSport]

This World Cup has shown how Argentinian players are just built different, and it was interesting because, in the press conferences, both managers addressed this.

First, Tuchel talks about the Argentinian value of the ball and how they protect the ball at all costs, how they manage those small spaces, and how they learn this from a young age. He references culture, and this is exactly it. A child playing in a certain environment leads to that. Not every Argentinian child is on the national team, but it raises the ceiling. It creates a certain type of style and a certain type of player.

Then Scaloni also references his culture. He sees them play without fear of losing. It comes from playing in an environment where you are constantly faced with the potential of losing and being able to play with that pressure, right? They don’t fight against it. They play with it. They use it.

And I think this is where youth football coaches should really take note. This does not mean we should copy and paste Argentinian culture into every training environment, because culture cannot just be copied. But the values within that culture can be inculcated in every training environment. The value of the ball. The courage to receive it in small spaces. The ability to protect it under pressure. The confidence to keep playing after a mistake. The willingness to play with the possibility of losing rather than constantly trying to avoid it.

Those values can become part of the environment we create every day. They can be present in the games we design, in what we praise, in what we allow players to struggle with, and in how we respond when they lose the ball. If every mistake leads to the coach stopping the session, giving the answer, or taking the pressure away, then players never learn to play with that pressure. They learn to wait for the coach.

It was cool to see how two managers, at such a big stage, reference culture and the environments that kids play in when they’re young. Because the players we see on the biggest stage were not only created by tactics or coaching information. They were created by environments that taught them what to value, how to relate to the ball, and how to play when there was something to lose.

[ante todo mucha calma @crapulinya]

Pase lo que pase el domingo esto es historia. Qué manera de jugar al fútbol.

[Roberto Parrottino @rparrottino]

Lionel Scaloni: “Lo humano, siempre. Es fundamental. Lo humano te ayuda cuando estás cansado, acalambrado, que un compañero te ayude. Lógicamente, si no tenés muy buenos jugadores, por más humano que seas, buenos amigos dentro de la cancha, no ganás. Nosotros tenemos buenos jugadores y un grupo enorme. No soy entrenador porque me gusta el 4-3-3: me gusta volver a vivir estar en un grupo, con un compañero tomando un mate, comiendo un asado, jugando al truco. Si lo único que pensás es en el partido, si no disfrutás, al final llegás quemado. Por ahí para otra gente no es importante o sólo vale la cancha. Son cosas que para mí valen oro, más allá de cualquier resultado. Ganar o perder, no. Pero que dentro de 20 años te vuelvas a encontrar y te acordés de ese asado, son cosas inolvidables; y nosotros creemos que hace grupo, y si hacemos grupo, somos todavía más fuertes”.

[Jamie Hamilton @stirling_j]

“…football has changed so much that it seems like there’s only one way to play, and I don’t think that’s true. Every country has its own way of understanding football…”

The language of football is not universal or objective, it is a multiplicity of interacting dialects.

[Tyler Loop from 52 yards...wide right @sthsthburner]

Another clip of Henry perfectly explaining a concept with personal experience

Illustrates exactly *how* physical gifts can stunt tactical growth by lowering the need for problem solving

[Roberto Parrottino @rparrottino]

Mauricio Pochettino: “La conexión con el juego viene a través de las libertades que uno siente y con la felicidad de tomar decisiones dentro del campo sin pensar en consecuencias. Si la consecuencia es que si no hago un buen pase o si no marco un gol, la gente va a estar muy decepcionada... No se puede jugar así al fútbol. Cada mensaje de la gente que te quiere es para que demos lo que sabemos hacer con total libertad porque confían en nosotros, para que el equipo salga y disfrute, y juegue sin pensar, y cometa errores. Si estás pensando en la consecuencia de tus actos o de tus acciones, es muy difícil conectar con la naturaleza del fútbol”.

[adidas @adidas]

one last dance 🐐

[Sid Lowe @sidlowe]

European champion, teacher of the world champion, coach of coaches ... Spain manager Luis de la Fuente, heading off for the world cup, on education, development, culture, values and building teams. On Lamine, Messi, Cruyff and Maradona too.
https://t.co/bVPSIzpP1h