Tactically, you have to watch the speech before the trophy. Harry Kane won the Ballon d’Or, in a venue in London. First Bayern Munich player to do it since Karl-Heinz Rummenigge in 1981. And he had a word for the whole of Bayern, then a special mention for Vincent Kompany, his coach.
“Thanks to Vinnie. […] The way we train, the way you push us to get better,” he said. Then: “Since I’ve had you as my coach, I’ve improved as a player and as a human being. All of that is thanks to you.”
As a player, I get it. At Bayern, Kane scored 156 goals and provided 40 assists in 159 games. My number nine, over the same period, mostly provided excuses. But as a human being, that’s where I got my folder out. Because that’s a session I’ve never run on a Tuesday. We do transitions, the block, cutbacks. The human side, I thought the club delegate dealt with that, between two forgotten cards.
So I added a line to the programme: “get better, twenty minutes, after the rondos”. When we’ve got eleven, that is. My left back asked me if that counted as fitness. I told him yes, for him.
A player thanking his coach in public. I read it twice. I’m not criticising.
There’s also this detail: Bayern is the club that let Kane win his first trophies, and Kompany is the manager under whom he won the first of his career. My first trophy was a set of bibs paid for by the clubhouse bar. I didn’t give a speech. I should have.
Sunday at three, at the team talk, I’m going to try: “Thanks to the group, you push me to get better.” The mobile will buzz in the middle of it, that’s certain. That speech would go down as well as it did in London. A flat pitch away, mind you.
It’s true, we checked: Walfoot.
