Scouting

I seldom mentioned the other team. I believe it takes away from the concentration on ourselves in the preparation.

I did less scouting than any other coach I’ve ever heard about. I wanted our team to concentrate on what we could do—namely, try to execute our style of play to the best of our abilities.

Of course, I needed to know something about the opponent in general terms, but I could read that in a newspaper.

I would know their overall characteristics, such as who was the coach and what was their style so we could be prepared to attack their 2–2–1, or their 1–2–2, or their 3–1–1, or whatever they had. However, I didn’t want to talk much about that with my players.

I felt we were better off letting our opponents try to figure us out than spending time trying to figure them out. We focused on preparing for any eventuality rather than a particular style of play from a particular team. What if we prepared for something specific and our opponent changed? Uh-oh.

Perhaps we gained an advantage by having so much confidence in our own ability to play near our potential (because of our detailed and disciplined preparation) that it kept us from becoming fearful of another team.

It goes back to focusing on what you can control. We had no control over the many possible variations an opponent might use in a game. We did have control, total control, over preparing to execute our game. To me, it made more sense to concentrate on that.