Winning mentality

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Carlo Ancelotti keeps his AC Milan side focused before the shootout in 2003

I don’t remember Freud winning a European Cup final. Next time bring a book worth reading

You wonder what Brian Clough would have made of such motivational ploys. On a pre-season tour of the Netherlands, Nottingham Forest FC’s manager came across a journalist reading Sigmund Freud’s

The Psychopathology of Everyday Life. Clough picked

up the book, casually flicked through it and gave it back, saying: “I don’t remember Freud winning a European Cup final. Next time, let’s see if you can bring something that’s worth reading.” Yet Clough knew the importance of mind games. In Madrid for the 1980 European Champion Clubs’ Cup final, his players would have been forgiven for thinking they were on holiday. “I was just 18 and standing there with a bottle of beer in my hand,” recalled midfielder Gary Mills. “Nothing unusual in that you might think – but in around three hours time I was going to be

playing in the final against the crack West German side Hamburg. Clough’s assistant Peter Taylor was telling jokes, which he was brilliant at, then we were told to go out and win a football match. Some match!” Three-times European Champion Clubs’ Cup winner Alan Hansen tells a similar tale about Liverpool FC coach Joe Fagan. For his pre-match talk in Rome in 1984, Fagan popped into the dressing room, looked at his watch and said: “Remember lads, there’s a match kicking off in 20 minutes.”

In contrast, Italian teams often spend the days leading up to a final in ritiro, a strict Spartan-like training camp held at a hotel where the players are not allowed out unsupervised or to see wives or girlfriends. Instead, they train, talk tactics and while away the hours thinking about the match ahead. This can pay dividends: before the 2004 final, José Mourinho drilled FC Porto in what you might call a ritiro lite and said: “We knew Monaco like the back of our hands. We were confident because we had an answer for everything.” Yet sometimes it can backfire. Tarcisio Burgnich, the former FC Internazionale Milano defender, recalled being kept awake the night before the 1967 final by his teammates’ nervous behaviour. In contrast, opponents Celtic FC had spent the day relaxing by the swimming pool at their hotel in Estoril, trying not to get sunburned. Inter’s claustrophobic ritiro may have reflected the

pressure coach Helenio Herrera was under. In 1964, before the nerazzurri won their first final, Herrera had cancelled the last training session and taken the team fishing in a lake. But in 1967, with expectations so high, Herrera was determined his team should focus after slogging it out with Juventus to win Serie A. Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16