The Wingmen

📸 Curtis Jones on Instagram. 🔴 The Scouser in our team.

It’s hard, maybe even unfair… but I’m grateful this is happening to me here, among you. I’m not alone. Your strength and your love will be my driving force. See you again soon, Anfield ❤️

When Jose Mourinho got tired just watching Andy Robertson 😤😂

Andy Robertson 🗣️: "I couldn't get my friend Diogo Jota🕊️ out of my head today. He missed the Qatar World Cup due to injury, I missed it because Scotland was never going to qualify. We always talked about what it would be like to go to this World Cup.”

With these pictures showing the bond we shared, I almost felt I could get away with saying nothing about you leaving. It’s been an honour to be your teammate and your friend. You’ve won it all and you leave as a legend. I’m sure we will meet again.

Frustrated Dad Alert One of my favorite memories growing up was heading to the local high school with my Dad and brothers. We’d play catch, hit tennis balls, play catch with a football, or smack baseballs on those empty fields. Pure joy. Today I drove my kids to two Granite School District high schools on a perfect 61° spring day. I wanted to time my daughter on the track and throw with my son. **Both schools were locked down like Fort Knox.** Fields empty. Tracks empty. Gates chained. No one there. I’ve heard every excuse in the book — and they all stink worse than armpits. We live in a world that’s already fighting to pull kids off phones and get them moving. Why are we making it harder? High school football and baseball participation numbers are dropping for a reason — kids literally can’t find a safe place to practice, disconnect from screens, and connect with their parents. @GovCox @GraniteSchools — there has to be a better way. Open the fields and tracks when school’s not in session, including weekends. Let families use what our tax dollars already paid for. These are not private clubs for members only. If you were a charter school, I get it, but we pay for these beautiful fields and tracks. This isn’t just my problem. This is every Utah kid’s problem. @BarstoolGruden knock on wood if you’re with me… Who else is with me? Tag a parent. Tag a coach. Tag your school board member. Let’s make some noise until they open the gates. #OpenTheFields #GraniteSchools #GetKidsOutside

@CoachCavazos @Nathaniel_Pat This…. ^^^^ Editing formations to be recognizable with Assist in OUR language would be a game changer

@Nathaniel_Pat I’d love a way to personalize your formations. Everyone calls formations different. There should be a play book with your terminology and when Hudl assist is used it automatically uses your terminology. But do like this laser pen idea !!!

At Hudl, we added a small improvement to help coaches when they're presenting to their team -- Laser Pen ✒️ Draw on video without it saving. No need to go back and delete any drawings you didn't want there long term What else should we do to improve presentations in Hudl?

Mane left, he stayed. Bobby, Hendo, Fabinho, and Milner left, he stayed. Klopp left, he stayed and vowed to deliver #20 — which he did singlehandedly. 9 years of excellence. 30+ G/A season after season. Countless broken records. Posterity will honour you, if some ungrateful club and fans won’t. YNWA

What a man ❤️

Ben McCollum shares what it feels like to be around first-place people and a first-place culture. "I went to Northwest Missouri State, and my first practice with Steve Tapmeyer - best coach I've ever been around - I sat there and I'm like, 'This is what first place feels like. This is what a first-place culture feels like. This is what first-place people feel like.'" That was the wake-up call. He realized what first-place people have: "They've got an extreme work ethic. They've got an edge to 'em that other people don't - a competitive spirit." Then he quoted John Thompson: "You can tame a fool a lot quicker than you can resurrect a corpse...We want guys with a little edge to 'em." You can coach skills, but you can't coach competitive spirit. You don't want to consistently coach their effort and attitude. The last thing they look for: Energy givers. "Over the years, we found that guys that are moody don't make it in our program." "If you're moody, if you have low energy, if you suck the life out of the building - you don't make it." Talent isn't enough. Your energy matters. Your attitude matters. Successful people have a competitive edge, they bring energy, and they look to consistently get better. They raise the standard through what they do. (🎥 Watts Happening Podcast)

Alisson Becker: “When I received the news that my father had died, I was an ocean away from home. In Liverpool, during the 2020–2021 season. His death was sudden. A total shock. It felt like the ground beneath my feet disappeared. Jürgen Klopp gave me time to deal with my pain and struggles. Few coaches would be so understanding. To me, that’s the Liverpool way. Ray Haughan, who was the club director at the time, texted me and said the boys had come together and agreed to pay for a private flight so I could attend the funeral, so I didn’t have to worry about anything. It was an impossible situation, because at that time, leaving the country meant having to quarantine in a hotel for 14 days upon return. The idea of coming back from my father’s funeral and being locked in a hotel room alone for two weeks was hard, but the worst part was imagining my wife alone for so long. She was in the final months of pregnancy, and anything could happen. I called my mother and brother and explained the situation. It was the most brutal call of my life. We cried a lot, but in the end I decided that my father would want me to stay with my children and his ‘favorite daughter’ and protect them, no matter how hard it was. Every chance I had to hug him, I did. Every opportunity I had to tell him I loved him, I took it. There was nothing more to say. He knew.”

End of an era 🥲 Celebrate and appreciate every single second we have left ✊🔴

Being talented doesn’t make you a great player. According to Curt Cignetti, the real separator is how a player responds to coaching. That reveals three types of players: 1️⃣ Inconsistent players They take coaching on their own terms: • Accept praise • Resist correction 2️⃣ Good players They take coaching when it’s given: • Listen to feedback • Apply it in practice 3️⃣ Great players They seek coaching relentlessly: • Self-scout constantly • Ask for more correction Talent sets the floor. Your relationship with coaching determines the ceiling.

We need more of this in the world.

Let me tell you other facts about Union Berlin fans. I watched a documentary on them a while back. Union Berlin fans have a culture, you cannot boo the players, coaches, or members of staff irrespective of the result. You just cannot. Aside the blood donation that raised money for them to stay afloat, the fans also renovated the stadium themselves. 2,000 fans volunteered to rebuild parts of the stadium and reports says they averaged 140,000 hours of work combined. Every December, the fans meet for Christmas at the stadium, its called "Weihnachtssingen". They bring christmas candles, sing christmas songs, celebrate the club, etc. Union Berlin fans reject over-commercialisation of their club, they believe they own the club and should not be referred to as mere fans or customers. They also have some crazy history down to the days of East Germany where the government wanted to take over their club. The fans started sleeping in the stadium overnight in turns to prevent this, the government eventually backed off. One of the most traditional clubs across Europe. UNION BERLIN.

The Parent Poison… Most parents want the best for their kids. But sometimes, without realizing it, they slowly poison the very team their child is part of. It rarely starts with something dramatic. It starts small. A comment in the car ride home. “Why didn’t the coach play you more?” A comparison. “You’re better than that kid.” A quiet complaint at the dinner table. “That coach doesn’t know what he’s doing.” Kids hear everything. And when they hear it, something changes. Doubt creeps in. Blame grows. Trust fades. The mindset shifts from team first to me first. What begins in the living room eventually shows up in the locker room. You see it in body language. You hear it in conversations. You feel it in the culture. Instead of unity, there are whispers. Instead of accountability, there are excuses. Instead of growth, there is resentment. Great teams cannot survive that environment. Because the best teams are built on three things: Trust. Sacrifice. Shared purpose. When players start believing the problem is everyone else, those things disappear. Parents play a powerful role in a team’s culture whether they realize it or not. The healthiest teams have parents who: Support the program. Encourage resilience. Teach their kids to handle adversity. They remind their children: Work harder. Be a great teammate. Control what you can control. They don’t feed excuses. They build character. And here’s the truth most people miss: A parent’s influence extends far beyond their own child. It affects the locker room. It affects the culture. It affects the entire team. Great teams require unity, not whispers of criticism. So the challenge for parents is simple. Be the adult in the room. Guard your words. Model respect. Support the team. Because what starts at home always finds its way onto the court, the field, or the locker room. And the best parents don’t poison the culture. They protect it.

Red yesterday. Red today. Red tomorrow. ✍🏾🔴

A Nottingham Forest fan’s rant about modern atmospheres in Premier League stadiums has gone viral, and many supporters will likely agree with her… 🗣️ “They don’t want us. They don’t want loyal fans. We’re cheaper, we’re worse behaved, and we’re not just going to sit pretty and clap. We’re fans, we’re real. It’s our life, it’s our community. These are just excuses and we can’t give in to them. And I don’t think it’s a countrywide issue, I think it’s a Premier League issue. The Championship—I don’t want to go back down, I don’t want to jinx it—but the atmosphere was so good, I miss it. The banter between stands, the fact that we were actually singing. You go to—no offence, and you’re not going to like this—but you go to Anfield and it’s dry. You can hear things through the tannoy. All we hear when we go to Chelsea or Arsenal is one song, because it’s just tourists. It is just tourists. We are the product. We pay the wages at the end of the day. I know literally it’s not us, but why do broadcasters want to broadcast football? Because there are fans. Without fans, there is no football.”

If you’re still only coaching players, you’re thinking too small. The best head coaches coach coaches, not just the players. When an Indiana player said Coach Cig “doesn’t really coach us, he coaches the coaches,” most people didn’t relate. Nick Saban hears multiplication. You can correct a player’s footwork and fix one rep. Or you can coach the coach, and fix every rep after that. At Alabama, film wasn’t just about players. It was about developing teachers. Saban would sit in meetings correcting position coaches, raising their standard, sharpening their eye. Because leadership isn’t about being the smartest voice in the room. It’s about upgrading every voice in the room. He even had the full staff sit in on coaching interviews, not just to hire better, but to help his staff learn new systems and evaluate teaching ability. Great programs don’t rely on one elite communicator. They build layers of them to be more effective. Don’t just develop your players, develop your coaches