It’s a great honor to be a coach because it mixes teaching, respect, and patience. Preparing for each match presents a special challenge and for me, being a soccer coach mixes the best profession with the best sport in the world. Before every match I say to myself that a single match or a single competition doesn’t dictate or decide who you are as a team because in a league you have to play all the matches. League play is a long process where teams and players continually change and improve.
In soccer, I think a coach can never win a single match – the players decide the game. However, it’s up to the coach to set the tone for the season in training in order for a team to sustain success over a long period of time. I look at it like this – one single player can help his or her team win a match, but one single player cannot make his team win the league.
I explain this because Barça Academy just started and everyone including myself is still learning the process of playing, training, and competing as a team. All the changes we introduce day by day during each training session are not easy to digest, but we are making great strides and getting better each day; after all, changes need time. I don’t say this because the results weren’t in our favor this past weekend, I say this because we couldn’t play as well as every player and coach wanted. This is completely normal and part of the process of building a team and a family.
The day before our first matches someone asked me if I expected us to win. My answer was we won´t be totally ready to compete with our style for two months. I think November/December will be when we really start to see the fruits of our labor and our teams will compete as we’d like. I know everybody wants to win now because it’s a natural feeling in the heat of battle; however, the mentality I am trying to bring is that we will first understand the game and developing players and then we will compete on the field using our style – the FC Barcelona way.
I think our players are hungry to win today and that’s an OK mentality; however, we’re developing them for greater success tomorrow. We will learn first and win after – this will be our priority over the next few weeks as the season continues.
-Denis Silva, Technical Director
