I've learned that leadership requires a number of qualities. It's behavioural, tactical, technical, about communication... everyone has these to varying degrees. I try to encourage players to show theirs.Collection: Communication
I don't mind my team being less physically strong in exchange for more mobility and nimble, swift transitions.
Rodrygo has an impressive lucidity.
Regardless of the great rivalry between Brazil and Argentina, one only rivals who he admires.
I do not demand miracles from anyone.
Neymar is irreplaceable. Douglas Costa cannot replace him. He will play like Douglas Costa.
As time goes by, people grow and mature.
I can't show false humility, nor be overly proud and ostentatious.
The coach is a human being and does not demand miracles from human beings. He has the humility to understand that there are other people with different ideas to his own, but he does not have to use those words.
My mother and father were farmers from very humble means, and when I was three years old they moved from the roca to the city to try to give us a better life. My father took a job at a winery and my mother worked as a seamstress.
I remember during the 1970 World Cup, the whole country stopped to focus on the matches. I was nine years old. I would sit in front of the radio with my father, and we would listen to the magic of football. It was like the matches were a dramatic story being told to us. It was a kind of art, in my opinion. It was like a painting or a great novel.
In truth, I never dreamed of being a manager. Like every other boy in Brazil who was marked by the '70 World Cup, I dreamed of wearing the yellow shirt for the national team. Unfortunately, that was not my fate. I had to undergo seven surgeries on my knee. At 27, my career was over, and I was still a young man.
A manager's story, like the story of a player, is unpredictable.
The World Cup is made up of human relationships, you have to feel how the dressing room is established, how the players interact, the responsibility, the joy, the pride, you try to balance things out. If you're hyper, you try to slow it down; if you're a bit low, you try to hype it up.
Pele is incomparable.
Anybody who wants to compare Pele to any other athlete... do you know what I do? I hear but I don't listen.
Pele is out of normal patterns and I'm not saying this because I'm a Brazilian. You can't find a defect.
When we move things from what it's important, we make mistakes.
Cristiano is direct and forceful, and has this fascination with goals.
My thing is in the pitch, that's my concern.
I have to know my limits.
I don't have to have opinion about everything. I don't want to be a showman, to be talking about everything.
You don't cancel out Messi, no, you can slow his actions, but you cannot neutralise his actions.
To play here and win here in Uruguay is a very difficult thing. Here you have a really strong atmosphere, energy. You have to have your highest focus. You have physical, technical, tactical and mental aspects.
Yes, I would have wanted Messi to be born in Brazil.
Messi is awesome. His creative ability is extraordinary, outside of normal patterns. He manages to see what others don't.
The best way for me to help with my life principals of transparency, democratization, excellence and modernity. I think it has to be like that in every area.
I often joke that I've been fired from almost every job I've ever had.
I want to evolve and keep evolving.
I just make sure to prepare myself for everything day-by-day.
I try to challenge the players. If they have reached a standard I challenge them to grow even more because you never know.
A team is strong because they have players who have different characteristics, but they are all important so sometimes the needs of the game impose themselves.
All the players have this responsibility of playing for the collective and also being individuals with some specific characteristics.
Neymar, I'm not going to take away his initiative in the last third of the pitch - his genius.
You have to create possibilities for the finish in the final third of the pitch, I'm not going to take that away from anybody.
I've never had any problem with Neymar. It's so easy to work with him.
Perhaps Argentina have been benefited by the talent of Messi.
There's no news on talking about Messi's talent.
Having recognition is not a sin, growing up is no sin, be star is not a sin, have technical skills is not a sin. To evolve in what is wrong is also a process of maturing.
Neymar has important and extraordinary records. And he also has a solidarity side that he will gradually show.
You don't pay for winning like that - whether it's the World Cup, whether it's the Brazilian national team. Paying the price with someone's health or rushing someone's recovery, we don't do that.
It is inhumane to put sole responsibility on one athlete.
The collective strengthens the individual.
Coaches are always looking to evolve.
When you demand performance, players raise their game technically. But if you put all the emphasis on results, that brings their level down.
I'm a coach who demands performance of the highest level. Maybe that's the fuel the national team needs to keep on developing.
The Olympic Games provided players like Neymar, Marquinhos, Gabriel Jesus and Renato Augusto with some really valuable experience and ended up improving the performance of the Brazilian national team.
The ability to deal with pressure is hugely important.
When you have three different coaches in the same qualifying competition, there are bound to be things that don't work smoothly.
In an individual sport you can always plan your ideal peak, but in a team sport the experience of playing in the qualifiers makes you stronger as a unit.