When you go through a tournament of seven games, there are peaks and valleys. You kind of ride the players that are hot.
Every summer at a club is important because you have some changes in the squad.
If you are not playing a player, any player, for two, three, four games, then you don't have to give a reason for that. But if it gets to eight or nine games, then you have to explain the situation. What's going on?
I left Barcelona because I believed it was very difficult to have minutes in the first team, as there are very good players.
They say that when it comes to the depth chart, it can change any day and that we dictate how the depth chart goes. If one person has a great day, he might be going with the 'ones.' If a person slips up a little bit, he might be going with the 'twos' and 'threes.'
What I'm trying to say is that within the styles, first, there's something clear: the style is given by the players on the roster.
There is not really any point in having a big squad if you don't use it.
Trying to build a team over the course of the winter to put on the field is really just half the job. Because if your best players go down, it's not so much him going down as who you replace him with, which ultimately might have the biggest impact on how you end up finishing. So you want to have both a belt and suspenders for support.
The rotation system at Bayern makes it nearly impossible to play week after week, even when you're putting in some top performances.
Halas didn't believe in starting rookies.
When I was playing for Chelsea and Arsenal, we had a young team but also experienced players. You still have space for the youngsters to play, they just have to be strong mentally to compete every week.
With the Selecao, every substitute is a starter in their club teams, so the competition is always top notch.
Kent Abbott is in the on-deck circuit.
That's a beautiful thing about India, they got such a big pool of players to call upon. If somebody gets injured, the replacements are generally pretty good.
There's a lot of guys in the NBA; it's about finding the right fit, a coach that has some trust in you that will play you night in and night out, consistently. Trying to find a right fit is the tough part.
WIth football you can have up to 28 guys you consider starters, and if they can pick up the slack when some aren't playing so well, you don't have to turn those two game losing streaks into six-game losing streaks.
Early in my career when I was with Montreal, we had a lot of good outfielders like Otis Nixon, myself, Marquis Grissom and Larry Walker. We all did the platooning thing, although each one of us could have played every day. We got everybody in the lineup, and everybody got to play.
If a player sits out a tour, it is not a problem, because it is a chance to look at others.
It's up to the coach to decide who is in the best shape to play each match.
I want to play every single player, but I can only play 11 at a time.
When you change 10 out of 22 outfield players, you need time and hard work.
What happens when you have to use your top guys so much, they're going to hit a wall at some point, and they'll go four or five games where they just don't have the juice to play at the level that you need, and therefore your team suffers a little bit.
It's a must to continue getting positive results and to give playing time to as many players as possible. This way we also administrate our energy levels.
The greatest ally you have to get things working well and the players performing as a team is the bench. Don't be afraid to use it, either for the star player or anyone else.
You can't make three or four spinners bowl the exact number of overs. You don't see the number of overs bowled by them before you make a bowling change; you see who looks effective and make a bowling change.
