Daily Mail article on Argyle

[IJN]

We'll park that there if you don't mind!!

 

[Antipodean]

Jimmy Greaves put his amazing ability to strike a ball cleanly because he played with a tennis ball on his cobbled back lane.

Similar cases also exist in football in South America and Africa, and other sports like basketball in inner-cities, cricket in rural India and Pakistan, and Australian rules football in indigenous communities. Poor people who have to make do with much less in sport and have fewer entertainment options hone their skills in adversity. The tiny minority that make it to the professional ranks often have unusual skills that haven't been coached out of them at an early age in well-funded, formal training regimes.

 

[Antipodean]

I read an interview with Bobby Charlton back in the day. He said even at the peak of his career, he used to spend half an hour every day kicking a tennis ball against the wall.

And the famous instance of Don Bradman, who has an unsurpassed test batting average of 99.94. He practised batting with a cricket stump and a golf ball against a water tank, and fielding with a golf ball against a fence as shown here:

How a piece of wood and a golf ball changed a boy’s life — Rated PG - Making words work

Donald Bradman failed to hit a ball hundreds of times. Feet positioned well, eyes on the target, he swung and missed, regularly. But it was a private failure, hidden by time and space that his future fans would scarcely contemplate.

ratedpg.net

 

[Antipodean]

I’ve always considered that the very best managers have socialist leanings, I think that stems from a desire to prove doubters wrong and a strong belief in the collective over ‘self’.

Lowe is very much the socialist and he pretty much god-worships’ Klopp who is almost Marxist in his views and leanings.

come the revolution!

Both Lowe and Klopp lean to the Left, although anyone connected to the city of Liverpool would know the strong collectivist streak that runs through the place.

Modern management theory, in football and other domains, sees the old style of managing by fear as thoroughly outdated. I'd see Gareth Southgate, for example, as the antithesis of the cult of managerial personality. People will have very different ideas of means and ends, and success and failure. Personally, I'd prefer the Argyle manager to be solidly committed to the common good within a structure of fan ownership!

 

[Antipodean]

We'll park that there if you don't mind!!

There is a longstanding debate about football's relationship to politics - socialist, neo-liberal, communist, conservative, social-democratic, authoritarian, Fascist etc.

I'm glad that PASOTI is a discussion space that doesn't demand 'shut up and dribble'!