AAGS 2021

23 something wrong, when you feel that there is a player with a bad mood, their faces, because you were first a football player and you have already experienced certain things. Therefore, it can help in speaking with the team, but also with some players individually. Some Managers consider that “all the players are the same”, what is your opinion and approach? The players are all the same, but they all have different personalities. So, you must understand this concept too: some players need more confidence, to be pampered more, maybe someone else just needs to be cheered up, maybe another one doesn’t need it. You must understand day by day what the personal characteristics of the players are and always make them feel important, never make them lack confidence, that is the most important thing for a football player. One of your best skills was game understanding and decision-making, how much does this help you as a manager? Having been a midfielder I always made sure that the team plays well rather than score a goal or suffer for it. I was more inclined to build the game for all my teammates and for the whole team. So, the role of the midfielder can perhaps make things easier when you become a coach, because you were already inside the field and you saw all the distances, where good or bad things happened, then maybe you could talk about them with the coach to fix them on the pitch. So, it could help because already from the field you were able to have this vision. Mazzone/Ancelotti changed your playing position, how did this impact your career and how important is the capacity of a manager to optimize the players’ performance? Yes, it was an important change that clearly impacted my football life. But when I was playing ahead, I was already a player who was inclined to go down to retrieve the ball, trying to be a director anyway. Then, when Mazzone led me to that role