Great interview. Thank you for posting it. A few interesting points I thought...
"Well, Liverpool had a philosophy of sorts but that was before comprehensive tactics came into the game in England. From Bill Shankly's time, it was all about getting the ball down and passing and moving - which really doesn't mean anything - but if you had good enough players doing that, it worked. The footballers basically made the philosophy, not the other way around. So when people talk about buying 'Liverpool-type' players, it wasn't that you came in and Liverpool really instigated anything in you or tried to change you - it just meant you could play."
"You need to have a philosophy throughout the club - from top to bottom - so that you can develop footballers to help you win trophies. You don't develop footballers to play for other clubs. You develop footballers to fit into your system. Unless you have a proper philosophy, you'll find that players being developed in your youth teams may not fit into your first team because your first team doesn't play that way and that doesn't make sense."
"The whole point of a system is that you don't change it. You don't change the philosophy. Ajax had it and lost it as well. New men come in with their own ideas and change the entire philosophy of the club and then what happens is that you're reliant on that manager being there forever to continue that. That can't happen so you have constant change and if you have constant change, there's no continuity and no stability. It's very expensive too as you waste money on players. On top of all that, it's rarely successful.
A club needs a thread running right through it; Barcelona has that. It's like the whole concept of a technical director in Spain. Because it's not common in England, we don't tend to understand it but in Spain, the technical director will know the long-term plan for the club and regardless of which manager comes in - yes, he can bring his own ideas, but he can't alter the philosophy and football identity of that club - he has to buy into that identity of the club which is shaped culturally and socially by the region and by the fans and also by the way that they want to play."
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