I’ve loved the World Cup since I saw Denmark at Mexico ’86 as a boy – my dad would record the matches overnight so I could watch them with my sister before school the next morning, a lot like kids today are still doing 40 years later!<\/p>\n
I can still enjoy it like a fan now, but of course I think like a manager when I am covering games as a pundit.<\/p>\n
While I still get excited by the emotion and the whole spectacle of the supporters who are following teams like Scotland, Norway and the Netherlands at this tournament, I see matches more analytically – what the tactical trends are and what different coaches are doing.<\/p>\n
I also love to see new players for myself. Even with all the data that is available about almost everyone, there are still some surprises out there.<\/p>\n
You might find someone who you’ve not heard of who is interesting – or, with someone you do know about, get a chance to watch them properly yourself for the first time.<\/p>\n
At this World Cup, for example, I’ve already done that with two Ivory Coast players.<\/p>\n
RB Leipzig’s Yan Diomande is the talk of the town for everyone at the moment and we actually looked at him when I was at Brentford, when he played for Spanish side Leganes.<\/p>\n
He was always on our radar then so he is a player I have been aware of for a while, and of course I had seen him – but that was just a lot of clips maybe, or a few highlights from a downloaded game. That is how it is presented to you when you are scouting someone to sign them, unless it is a top priority and you would watch full games.<\/p>\n
Now, though, I have just watched him play a whole match against Germany, so I saw everything about him. I will hopefully see him again over two or three, or even more, matches in the coming weeks too.<\/p>\n
I could look up some clips or study his data any time, but now what he can do is stored in the hard disk in my head. As a coach, that is always how you prefer to remember players, and what they can bring.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I’ve loved the World Cup since I saw Denmark at Mexico ’86 as a boy – my dad…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":753152,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-753151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/753151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=753151"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/753151\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/753152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=753151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=753151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=753151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}