Anderlecht lost 4-0 to Gent. Before that, the team had been knocked out of the Belgian Cup by Beerschot, who play in the second division. Since then, the coach, Vítor Bruno, has been getting a lot of criticism. I read his reply on the 7.32 train, notebook open.
He told Het Nieuwsblad (a Flemish daily) that criticism doesn’t touch him, that he will always get some, and that he knew when he started out as a coach that it came with the job. So far, I’m with him. Then this line: he has “the right tools” to put it in its place and filter out the criticism that matters.
Silly question, but what is a tool for filtering criticism? I opened a new tab. I wrote: sieve? strainer? “mute” button? I’m told it’s an image, fine, but what does that mean? I checked, and actually nobody knows what it looks like. Basketball doesn’t have that, I looked. We have a foul board. It’s on the wall.
He gives an example, and it’s the clearest thing I’ve read all week. If he starts Bentayeb against Westerlo and Bentayeb doesn’t score, people will say he should have started Cvetkovic, Sikan or Bertaccini. So the criticism exists before the match. It waits. It already has three names.
Tactically, it’s simple: you start two of them. That divides the criticism by two.
I noted down Freddy’s solution, then did the maths. Four names, two starts: there are always two names left for the criticism. The filter doesn’t disappear, it changes tab.
He also says he is very hard on himself, and that if he dares to say bad things about himself, others will dare too. I find that logical. I underlined it twice. Anyway, I still have a lot to learn.
It’s true, we checked: VoetbalPrimeur.be.
