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The High Performance Podcast
The Training That Changed Cristiano Ronaldo’s Game | Rene Meulensteen
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- [00:00]
Gareth Southgate
Unlock it early on the High Performance App Gareth Southgate, England's former manager who opens up about life leading his country.
- [00:11]
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- [00:43]
Gareth Southgate
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- [02:45]
Rene Muhlenstein
The biggest time that I spent with Cristiano was when he got suspended. I said, you want to be the best player in the world? I says, am I wrong? He says, no, you're right. So you know where you are, you know where you want to go. What do we need to do to bring you closer to what you want to achieve?
- [03:02]
Damien Hughes
Welcome to the Essential Habits of High Performance, the podcast where we explore the small things that make a big difference. Now, today, I want to start with something very simple. A single word change. It sounds harmless enough, doesn't it? But as we're going to hear, that word can shut someone down before they even have the chance to grow. When Rene Muhlenstein reflects on his years coaching at Manchester United under Sir Alex Ferguson, he doesn't talk about tactics or formation. He talks about the power of words. And he insists that the language you use with people can be the difference between unlocking their potential and shutting it down too early. Hey, I'm Damien Hughes and I've spent the last 25 years of my life doing a number of roles, including being a visiting professor of organisation behaviour, a trusted advisor to many leaders within the world of sport, business and the arts, and the last six years as a co host of the High Performance Podcast. But above all, though, my passion is about looking to help create, shape and curate high performing cultures. I love exploring how high performance can work, and more importantly, how every one of us listening can take the lessons from our guests and apply them into our own world. Rene Muhlenstein spent over a decade at Manchester United working alongside Sir Alex Ferguson during the club's most dominant era. He was Ferguson's first team coach and.
- [04:32]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
Eventually went on to become assistant manager.
- [04:35]
Damien Hughes
But his real genius was in the details, those tiny adjustments that turned good players into great ones. He worked with some of the biggest names in world football history. Cristiano Ronaldo, Wayne Rooney, Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes, to name just a few. But what's striking is that none of them would describe Rene as a typical coach. They'd describe him as someone who understood.
- [05:00]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
How people learn, not just what they need to learn. And that understanding started with something deceptively simple.
- [05:07]
Damien Hughes
The words he chose because, as Rene.
- [05:11]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
Explains, one word can make all the.
- [05:13]
Damien Hughes
Difference between a player shutting down or.
- [05:16]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
A player opening up.
- [05:18]
Rene Muhlenstein
First of all, I never use the word change. So I was working to Jaeger or working with Owen Hargreaves or Wes Brown or anybody. I would never say, Wesley, we need to change this in your game. Because the first reaction from west would be, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, what I'm doing wrong.
- [05:35]
Damien Hughes
Instead, Rene took a different tack. He reframed growth as an addition.
- [05:41]
Rene Muhlenstein
Now, I've looked at your game, I've looked at the sort of kind of 1v1s you're getting into. If we can add this to your game, you're going to be more a complete player, therefore be capable in solving those situations better, which is better for the team. So add is more.
- [05:58]
Damien Hughes
Just think about that. Add is more. Change is threat. One word closes people down and the other one opens them up. Nowhere was this more vivid than in Rene's work with Cristiano Ronaldo. Now, at the time, Ronaldo was dazzling the Premier League with his step overs and his spectacular long range strikes. But he wasn't yet to blossom into the ruthless goal scoring machine who'd go on to dominate world football.
- [06:25]
Rene Muhlenstein
I first wanted to bring him from an awareness point to an understanding point, you know, in terms of, do you know actually where you are? You know what I mean? Conversations like. And I basically told him or said to him, I says at one point, I think that I know exactly what you want. And he looked at me like, how can you know? I mean, we never had a guy. He says, yeah, I know. And he said, what is it? I said, you want to be the best player in the world? Not once, not twice, but many, many times to come. He says, am I wrong? He says, no, you're right. He says, right. He says, my question to you is, will you be the best player in the world tomorrow? No. Probably not. Next week? No. Next month? No. End of the season? Probably not. Okay, so you know where you are, you know where you want to go. So now what we need, what do we need to do to bring you closer to what you want to achieve?
- [07:18]
Damien Hughes
One of their first conversations was about numbers. Ronaldo had scored 23 goals the previous season and Rennes asked for a target. Ronaldo responded with 30. But Rene pushed a bit further. 40. That was nearly double. Ronaldo protested, but Rennes had a plan. He showed him a three minute video of Manchester United's greatest strikers. Klipsch after clip of goals.
- [07:42]
Rene Muhlenstein
Then I took him inside and I showed Him a video of United's top strikers, including York, Cole, Sheringham, sol and estroy. 3 minute video. Goals after goal. Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. I said, what did you see? Oh, a lot of goals, beautiful goals. A lot of goals. I said, yeah, but what did you see? Yeah, goals. I said, no, no, no, no, no. You're going to watch it again and then tell me what you see. And we looked at again and I said, what did you see? And I said, I know what you mean. It says, most goals are scored from in the box. Most goals are scored one and two, touch. And there's a variety of goals, tap ins, shots, headers and all that. It says correct.
- [08:22]
Damien Hughes
And then the penny dropped. Most goals were scored in the box. Many of them weren't spectacular. They were scruffy, opportunistic. Headers, rebounds. Here's what Rene told the problem is.
- [08:35]
Rene Muhlenstein
That you want to score the winning goal all the time, and the most beautiful goal. What you need to go, you need to become a goal scorer. Score as many goals as you can, and those two goals will be in it anyway. That's what we're going to work on.
- [08:48]
Damien Hughes
From there, Rene built training sessions where he mapped out the penalty area into zones, showing Ronaldo where most of the goals were scored, how the defenders protected those spaces, and how goalkeepers shifted their position. They rehearsed scenario after scenario. One touch finishes, two touch volleys, headers. But crucially, Rene gave him a metaphor which he never forgot.
- [09:12]
Rene Muhlenstein
You have to imagine that you're carrying an imaginary rucksack on your back. So every goal you score, every time you hit the net, even if it's a ball after training, you just kick it. In a goal, there's a click, it clicks, it clicks. And that clicker never stops. It just keeps going. And then that goal scoring becomes such a normal thing for you.
- [09:33]
Damien Hughes
The results speak for themselves. Cristiano Ronaldo went from a player who could score goals to a player who was obsessed with scoring them in every possible way, from every possible angle, with every possible body part. And it all began by understanding the power of. Of the language we use. So why are we learning this? Well, at first glance, it might seem trivial. Why does it matter whether Rene said change or add? But psychology tells us that words are never neutral. They frame the reality that we face. They signal a threat or safety. They open people up or they shut people down. Let me take you back to the 1970s, when two psychologists, Elizabeth Loftus and John Palmer, were working, working at the University of California, Irving Loftus was already becoming one of the world's leading experts on memory. She was fascinated by how fragile our recollections are and how easily they can be influenced. Palmer, her colleague, was equally interested in how perceptions shaped behaviour. Together, they designed an experiment that has since become one of the most famous studies in psychology. They gathered groups of students and showed them short films of car accidents. Some of the clips were dramatic.
- [10:56]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
It was like cars colliding head on.
- [10:59]
Damien Hughes
Tyres screeching, metal twisting. Where others were more routine. It might be like a gentle bump at a junction, a minor shunt. But afterwards, the researchers asked a really simple question. How fast were the cars going when they each other? Now, here's the twist. That blank space that you just heard me use there was filled with different verbs for different groups. So, for example, one group, the term was how fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other? For another, it was how fast were the cars going when they collided with each other? For another, it was how fast were the cars going when they bumped into each other? And for another one, it was using the verb hit. But for the last group, it was framed as how fast were the cars going when they contacted each other? All the films were identical. The only thing that changed was that single verb in the question. But the answers varied wildly. Students who'd heard smashed estimated much higher speeds than those who heard contacted. Language had stretched their perception of the very same event. And then came the second part of the study, the part that shocked even Loftus and Palmer. A week later, they called the students back. And this time they asked them, did you see any broken glass? Now, the truth was dead simple. There'd been no broken glass in any of the films. None at all. But here's the astonishing finding. Those who had originally heard the word smashed were far more likely to remember glass chattered across the road. That single word had not only influenced their speed estimates, but it had literally altered their memory. Now, this was a breakthrough when it was published in 1974. Loftus and Palmer's study transformed our understanding of how memory and perception works. And it showed that memory isn't like a video camera faithfully recording what's happened.
- [13:01]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
But it's more like a storyteller, one.
- [13:04]
Damien Hughes
That can be bent and reshaped by the language that we hear afterwards. Now, this has huge implications. Their work has gone on to influence everything from the way police are trained to courtroom procedures today. For example, detectives are taught to avoid leading questions because the phrasing can plant false memories. In a witness, for example, asking somebody did you see the man with the red heart is dangerous? Because if no red heart existed, the witness may later swear that they saw one. Instead, police are trained to use neutral phrasing, such as, what did you see? Sports psychology has drawn on this research, too. Coaches are now far more deliberate about how they phrase feedback. So telling an athlete, don't miss this shot actually makes the brain focus on missing, whereas saying hit the target focuses attention on the positive outcome. So it's the same feedback, but it has a completely different effect. So when Rene Muhlenstein said to Ronaldo, let's add this to your game rather than you need to change, he wasn't just being polite. He was framing reality in a way that opened Ronaldo up instead of shutting him down. And that's why Rene's choice matters so much. Change implies fault. Add implies growth. The words didn't just describe reality, they created it. Now, let's circle this back right. When Rene told the player, we need to change this, the implicit message was, what you're doing is wrong. And that triggers defensiveness, insecurity, and resistance. But when he says, can we add this idea to your game? The message is all about growth, possibility, and potential. It sparks curiosity and motivation in the learner. So it's the same request, but it gathers and elicits a very different response. And it's all because of the power of language. This goes far beyond football, and we can all apply it in our own subtle ways. Do you tell an employee, for example, that they need to fix their performance or that you want to build on their strengths? Do you tell your child that they got an answer wrong or that they're on the right track, but they could refine it? Do you frame an idea at work as a change program, which might trigger anxiety about what we're losing, or an improvement program which sparks curiosity about what we have to gain? Research on this framing effect shows us that humans are loss averse. We fear loss more than we value the equivalent gain. And that's why change can feel threatening. It suggests that we're going to lose something. When we talk about adding things, it feels like we're gaining something. And that, as I said earlier, suggests that growth is possible. So what can we learn from Rene Muhlenstein's story? Well, I think there's three essential habits that show how great performers are really conscious when they come to minding their language. The first habit is frame growth as addition and not correction. So when you give feedback, build on what's right instead of fixing what's Wrong. The second essential habit. Let's start using words that lower fret and raise possibility. Psychologists call this the threat versus a challenge response. Where threat shuts down, challenge opens up. So even small phrasing shifts matters. Don't mess this up. Creates a pressure. Show what you can do. Creates an energy. The third habit is let's remember that our words shape memory. That Loftus and Palmer study I cited earlier proved that one word can rewrite how people remember events and the same happens in our own lives. You messed up. That meeting sticks as a failure. That meeting showed that you had potential stics as growth. So your challenge this week is to choose one conversation, whether that's at work, at home or even with yourself, and add something to your language. So we start by replacing the word change with add. We swap threat words for possibility words and we end with a phrase that builds a positive memory and not sows a seed to fear. Because great performance doesn't start with tactics, but it starts with words. Now I'm going to be joined by our producer Will and we're going to have a listen to some of the.
- [17:26]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
Other brilliant insights which Rene shared with us.
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Damien Hughes
These include Sir Alex Ferguson's flip chart.
- [17:32]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
Philosophy, how often the infamous hair dryer came out, and how the tennis legend Roger Federer subtly influenced Manchester United's tactics.
- [17:45]
Damien Hughes
We've just announced the latest book from High Performance Microhabits which study the tiny changes that supercharge high performance. Before the book's full release in January. We've got a really special opportunity for our listeners to win a behind the scenes experience here at High Performance on an upcoming record day. All you've got to do is submit your proof of pre order purchase of microhabits and submit it via the link in the description. If you do that, you'll also get an extra 20% off the price of the book too. Try it. We hope to see you joining us here in the studio soon. Rene.
- [18:23]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
What a brilliant interview this was, wasn't it?
- [18:26]
Will (Producer/Co-host)
It was a really enjoyable interview. One that always, I think piques your attention. Naturally. I think I always say that when we have anyone associated to Man United.
- [18:33]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
So forgive me, not that I'm a.
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Damien Hughes
Cliche, but yeah, no, as a Manchester.
- [18:38]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
United fan I was excited by him because I remember him coming into the club in the early 2000s when again, it was quite an innovative idea from Ferguson, I think, which was about start developing skills. He felt that young players were almost like too robotic. They were drilled in terms of fitness, size, speed and he wanted those that could do that little bit of magic. So the story is that Ferguson phoned up Dave Mackay, the old Tottenham and Scotland legend who was teaching out in the Middle east, who knew Rene and Dave Mackay, said to Ferguson, this guy's brilliant at skill development and stuff. And so on that recommendation, they brought him into the club and he started working with the junior ages. So he had a stellar reputation within the world of Manchester United. So to get to meet him and talk to him about his journey.
- [19:28]
Will (Producer/Co-host)
Yeah, and which was, you know, the key part of what the habit was about, wasn't it? That development of the skills with Ronaldo, which was the key kind of big takeaway. But there was so much other stuff in that. And I look, I look at it from, you know, football fan, but I obviously live in the Northwest now and I, you know, as you know, have been invaded in my household by Manchester United fans.
- [19:50]
Damien Hughes
Very good.
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Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
I'm surrounded kids.
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Will (Producer/Co-host)
Well, yeah, not intentionally. And I'm surrounded by them in my day to day life, obviously where I live as well is very football focused and Rene lives where I live.
- [20:02]
Damien Hughes
So. You went to meet him, didn't you?
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Will (Producer/Co-host)
I went to meet him in Costa Coffee. There are other coffee shops. But we, we went and had. He had. He ordered a cappuccino, same as me. We sat upstairs and then we. I like to get a feel of how people will, what they'll be like right on the podcast will. Are they engaging or they tell good stories? He ticks every one of these boxes. I am not lying here when like, he tells stories of how like Paul Scholes passed the ball over and this is how it got trapped out. He's standing up in Costa. He's literally playing this out in front of everybody. Sat up there being like. So I like to show them the.
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Damien Hughes
Skill before they do it.
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Will (Producer/Co-host)
And he's playing it out in front of everybody, like imagining a ball coming over and chest in it and talking about tactics. And I was like, well, this guy's made for podcast in the sense that he was so animated, visual, great storyteller. And I'm in. That comes from having a, having a career in, on the, in punditry as well. So I was bought in on that and it was a fascinating interview and there's a load of insights that stuck out. Wasn't there a load of insights especially into Fergie?
- [21:13]
Damien Hughes
Well, this is the gold dust stuff in it because I think Ferguson these days is almost like he's on the verge of being Disney fied.
- [21:20]
Will (Producer/Co-host)
Yeah.
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Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
Do you know what I mean? I think he's got to that stage of. Of life where and the nostalgia's kicked in and everyone's like, everything he did was amazing. You know, everything he touched turned to gold and it didn't.
- [21:33]
Will (Producer/Co-host)
Everything's a tactical genius move that was so thought out.
- [21:37]
Damien Hughes
Yeah.
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Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
And I actually think that does him a disservice. He made mistakes, he failed.
- [21:42]
Damien Hughes
He.
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Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
He sort of got things wrong on frequent occasions. But it was the way that he learned that I think makes him so incredible. Not the stuff of just thinking that he was infallible.
- [21:52]
Rene Muhlenstein
Yeah.
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Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
But I always think the hallmark of a great leader is can you communicate what you stand for in a simple sentence? I sometimes talk about the T shirt rule that you can only get one message across on the front of a T shirt. So what's your one message you want? Now? If you apply the same logic to Ferguson, it's almost like the flip chart rule. Can you write on a flip chart, one page of a flip chart what you want your whole identity as a team to look like? And when Rene explained that he sat in Ferguson's office when he was appointed as assistant manager and got to see Ferguson's vision on that one page of a flip chart, to me, it was like being invited into the football in holy of holies.
- [22:39]
Will (Producer/Co-host)
Well, let's have a listen.
- [22:41]
Rene Muhlenstein
So I had this flip chart and he's written things down defensively, from a defensive point of view. He said, I want us to be able to press high, aggressively, talked about the cues. Sometimes we need to defend from a block, sometimes we have to, you know, defend really deep, to making sure that we don't concede too many crosses or shots at goal. But with the aim really to regain the ball and counterattack in possession, which is important, is where we want to take the initiative of the game. You know, all the big teams, the most important word in possession is rhythm. All great teams have players, midfielders, you know, all the players that can create rhythm. Know, building up rhythm is slightly different when you get into a, you know, a highly condensed area where we want to be able to switch the rhythm into one touch pass and then movement.
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Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
Y.
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Rene Muhlenstein
And then I come to the golden rules that he said with in possession is that I want all the players to think forward, look forward, play forward. So before they even get the ball, the first solution is forward with the aim to break lines, to play around them or play through them. That's what we want. And the next golden rule is if center, backs, midfielders, or anybody plays around the midfield line, I've got time in the ball face forward. I want forward runs on the opposite side of the midline. So we always used to sort of build up on the right hand side. So the other, the solutions were on the other side of the midline was on the left hand side.
- [23:59]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
Okay.
- [24:00]
Rene Muhlenstein
That sort of thing. So those were all golden rules. And then the last flip chart was all about attack. And he said, when, when I see Manchester United attack, I want to see his attack with pace, power, penetration and unpredictability. And I want you to instill all those things in that team every single day. That was my whole navigation system. And then the best thing, what I found after that is he picked a marker and he put a line underneath that and he said, if that doesn't work, we gamble. And I absolutely love that. And that was a lot of times when we got into the last 10 minutes of the game.
- [24:40]
Will (Producer/Co-host)
I love that story. But I, I love the last line.
- [24:44]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
Brilliant. And it, yeah, we gamble because that leads us into, like, he spoke to.
- [24:49]
Damien Hughes
Us around that idea of Fergie time.
- [24:52]
Will (Producer/Co-host)
Yeah.
- [24:52]
Damien Hughes
Which is the gamble.
- [24:53]
Will (Producer/Co-host)
Fergie time is a well renowned term. Even people, you know, the younger generation following football now all reference. Fergie time.
- [25:01]
Rene Muhlenstein
Yeah.
- [25:02]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
Yeah. He stood on the touchline banging his watch, suggesting that the game couldn't finish until United had won. Like, it's almost part of the mythology now. Ferguson wrote in his, in his last autobiography that he never really had much of a clue how much time was left. But it was the psychological play of the opposition. Seeing him stood there and believing that, oh, we're going to keep playing till we lose, that might have given him that edge. But what I found interesting was Rene's point was that that wasn't an accident either. It was a design. So not the standing on the touchline, banging his watch, but the training for how are we going to respond when we. One nil down and there's two minutes left. And that was done in training sessions. They would structure their plays and their drills to work out how do we keep our composure, but how do we keep gambling? How do we keep taking that risk to do it?
- [25:51]
Will (Producer/Co-host)
Yeah.
- [25:52]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
Peter Schmeichel calls it Code Red. So in his book, he talks about the Code Red moments when you throw everything at it.
- [26:00]
Damien Hughes
You just.
- [26:01]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
All the game plan goes out the window and we just gamble and we take.
- [26:04]
Will (Producer/Co-host)
Yeah, but it's gambling. It's like gambling with preparation.
- [26:08]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
Yeah.
- [26:09]
Will (Producer/Co-host)
It's like, you know, it's not just like, oh, I don't know what, let's just. I don't Know what we're doing. It's like headless chickens running around. This is prepared gambling and a permission to take risks.
- [26:21]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
100% success isn't an accident, it's a design. And we need to understand that. Why did Manchester United get this reputation of scoring late winners? That famous Ferguson quote of, we never get beat. We occasionally run out of time, but we never get beat. How did that happen?
- [26:39]
Damien Hughes
And then when you can hear the.
- [26:40]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
Coaches telling you, because we trained for it, we understood that we might be getting beats, we need to know, how do we respond at those moments. That, to me, is something that any of us can adopt in our own lives. How are we gonna handle those moments where a setback occurs? How are we gonna handle the difficult times? Otherwise, it's just a dream.
- [27:00]
Will (Producer/Co-host)
Yeah. And we, you know, I think it came up a little bit in the Rene chat as well, was, you know, it was the penalty processes as well. They're not, you know, and we talked a lot about that with, you know, Gareth Southgate, didn't we? It's like these are pressure moments that you can prepare for.
- [27:15]
Damien Hughes
Like, again, if we think about the.
- [27:16]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
Gareth Southgate conversation, that when he spoke about that European championships against Italy, then.
- [27:22]
Damien Hughes
He told us the stats, didn't he?
- [27:23]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
RAHEEM Sterling scores 33% of penalties. He takes. Marcus Rashford scores 82%. So who are you going to go with? On the balance of odds, you choose Marcus Rashford. Now, unfortunately, this was in the 18% of misses, but you touched on a really important point there about failure, because failure is almost baked into the process. As the brilliant Greg Hoffman told us once on the podcast, that failure is the price of ambition. And what I think is interesting is, again, almost like challenging, maybe some preconceptions that Ferguson was constantly ranting and raving and he was just shouting and screaming. What's interesting is that he never shouted or screamed when failure happened as long as he knew people had given their all, had followed the process that he was asking them to do. Let's listen to Rene's answer when he spoke about how many times he genuinely saw the hair dryer come out.
- [28:20]
Rene Muhlenstein
In the six years that I've been Manchester United with him in the dressing room, I might maybe once or twice that he. That I felt he raised his voice in another way, what he normally would, but in that case, he didn't. He sort of basically settled everybody down and said, calm down, I think we're playing great. Two nil down, boss. Yeah, but of course we can talk about the goals. I Don't want to talk about that. It says, listen, we're going to throw something at them they can't deal with. We made a few changes. We brought Carlos Davis on, hunting them down and all this, that and the other. I think we made another one. I can't remember. But the biggest thing was this. He said, listen, I know we're going to score, but when we score one, we're going to score three. Now just think about that mentally, what it does to the players and on the pitch. So when they scored one goal, they didn't settle down. Oh, no, no, we have to score another two. That was just a masterstroke for me. And we ended up winning that game. 5, 2, 5, 2. There was AB. There was no. There was no. Nobody that went on that pitch worried about. We were two nil down. We're gonna score three goals and probably more, but we're gonna score three goals. Just brilliant.
- [29:29]
Will (Producer/Co-host)
So the hair dry treatment. More of a myth than a reality.
- [29:32]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
Yeah, but I've reflected on this quite a lot and I think it's because what generates a headline, Ferguson kicking a boot and shouting and screaming and tearing strips off somebody, or Ferguson going in and being really calm and reasoned and putting an arm around the shoulder of somebody that needs it and giving words of encouragement. The drama wins every time. So I think it almost takes on a mythology of its own. And the danger is that people look at that and think that's the way to get results. Shouting at people, creating a culture of fear. When the reality is that you'd either have to believe that Ferguson was subverting millions of years of evolutionary psychology to get sustained results, or you'd have to believe, but it's not true. And the people on the inside will tell you, well, it wasn't true.
- [30:18]
Damien Hughes
He was.
- [30:18]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
That wasn't the culture that he was sort of curating at the club.
- [30:24]
Will (Producer/Co-host)
Yeah, and, and, and that clip, obviously it's an isolated insulin, but that psychology of prediction, specific prediction of what will happen and the language he uses which then actually plays out on the pitch.
- [30:38]
Damien Hughes
Well, again, go back into the archive. Do you remember when Ole Gun Associ.
- [30:42]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
Told us on the podcast that in that 11 days of May in 1999.
- [30:47]
Will (Producer/Co-host)
Yes, I do remember this. Yeah.
- [30:49]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
When they won the league at Tottenham. They beat Tottenham to win the league. Then they won the FA cup against Newcastle. Then they famously beat Bayern Munich in the Champions League final. And at the first of those games, at half time, they were getting beat to Tottenham and Ole said that Ferguson came in and went, lads, if you don't score a goal with 20 minutes left, I'm going to put Ole on and he's going to come on and score now. He didn't put him on, but Solska said he almost like sowed the seed, that it was almost inevitable. Whenever I put him on the field, he's going to come on and score a goal. So that was the seed that blossomed in the Nou camp 11 days later that when he threw him on in the Champions League final, Solskjaer came home with a sense of inevitability that the manager says that whenever I enter the field with 20 minutes to go, I always score a goal.
- [31:37]
Damien Hughes
And that ability to sort of create.
- [31:40]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
That cognitive dissonance, if you like. So here's reality, but here's what the alternative could look like is powerful. There's a famous example in that final in 99, when at halftime, if you look at it, there's about seven players, all independently have verified the halftime speech. So they come in, they're getting beat, and Ferguson sort of channels a speech that one of his old players, Steve Archibald, had said to him in the week prior to the final, where he'd.
- [32:10]
Damien Hughes
Said, the worst feeling in the world.
- [32:12]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
Is you walk past the European cup at the end of the game and you're not allowed to touch it because you haven't won it. You can't touch it. And when he came in at halftime in the Champions League final, that was what he told them. He said, lads, in the second half, I want you to go and leave nothing out there, because I don't want you walking past that trophy and you're never, ever going to be able to touch it. And some of you, you will never touch it in your career. And that's Michael, Andy Cole, Dwight, York. The amount of players that have said that had quite a galvanising effect on them being willing to gamble and go for it.
- [32:48]
Will (Producer/Co-host)
An amazing ability to how you respond in crisis moments, how you say the language you use. And what he said at the moment is almost like, that's such a skill.
- [33:02]
Damien Hughes
Well, that leads us nicely then to.
- [33:04]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
The last clip, that ability to deal.
- [33:07]
Damien Hughes
With those crisis points.
- [33:09]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
Let's listen to how Rene described Roger Federer and his influence on the Manchester United mentality.
- [33:16]
Rene Muhlenstein
So United was in a season where they came back from Barcelona and Ronaldo missed a penalty. They drew nil.
- [33:22]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
Nil in the semi final of the Champions League.
- [33:25]
Rene Muhlenstein
Exactly. So they went straight to Portsmouth in the league and they lost. So when they came back to Carrington, because I didn't travel with the team at the time. I stayed behind and worked with players. So I still remember all coming in and the players and they're all a little bit like disappointing delude. And the manager comes up to me and, you know, and he. He said, you know, should have won in Barcelona. Portsmouth. So they had the game against West Ham, Barcelona return and then Wigan in front of them. And I said to the manager, said, you like tennis? He said, yeah, I love tennis. I said, who's your favorite player? I said, federer. He says, great. Got a great story for you because I love Federer. And he says, federer was playing in it in an ATP tournament, and he's won the first set comfortably, no problem. Won the second one comfortably, lost the third, lost the fourth set, 76 in the tiebreak. He's now playing the fifth set. It's 54 to Federer. It is 40, 30 to Federer. This is the Federer moment, and this is where you are with Man United. He says, what do you mean? He says, everything that got Federer to that point, all those sets he played, whether it was two sets or three or four, doesn't matter if he wins that point, he wins the game, he wins the set, he wins the match, and he wins the tournament. That's the Federer moment. So you need to be able to reset. So where you are now is with Man United. You drew nil. Nil against Barcelona. You lost the penalty. You lost against Portsmouth. But look at your position. If you beat West Ham on Sunday, Yeah. Next week against Wigan, you win. You win the league. If you beat Barcelona on Wednesday, you go to the Champions League final. So you are just on a federal moment, Teresa. Whatever happens before, you're still in the same position, though.
- [35:13]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
You love this, didn't you, Will?
- [35:14]
Will (Producer/Co-host)
I did love this. I mean, I'm a huge tennis fan. I'm a massive Roger Federer fan. But I love the idea of that power of reframing, saying that you're looking at the same situation but in a. In a different perspective. It was the. The willingness to look outside of their world at other leading sporting heroes and how you can apply that same, like, kind of mentality.
- [35:35]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
There's echoes there with other sort of sporting dynasties. Do you remember Dan Carter telling us that when they won the World cup in 2011, that they sat down as a team in New Zealand and said, let's look outside of the world of rugby and see who dominates? And they looked at, like, the Chicago Bulls and the Michael Jordan. They looked at Manchester United, they looked at Tiger woods, and they didn't say we wanted to be back to back champions. They said we wouldn't be the most dominant team on earth. And they were measuring themselves not against other rugby teams or other teams in history, but other teams from other sports and industries. And I think sometimes just that ability to reframe by looking outside your world can be, can be really powerful and it can be galvanizing. And that's why I think the Federer example obviously had such resonance with Ferguson, but also with the players as well.
- [36:26]
Will (Producer/Co-host)
I remember reading Remember how Conan island on the Irish tennis player and he wrote a book called the Racket. The Racket. He was at Wimbledon and he was playing a key match which would take him onto a, like a center court to play against Federer is like 5, 2 up in the last set. Tennis has that has, is a sport which, you know, isn't a flow sport like football, but has those abilities where you have to stop, think, reset and you know, so hence you lose a few. One game turns into two, two turns into three turns four, and you're just snowballing and you mentally you've gone, yeah. And I think what Rene says about Federer and what Ferguson tried to took on it, it's like you gotta not allow the past game or the result or the past three games to affect what you do right now.
- [37:15]
Podcast Co-host/Interviewer
And if anyone's listening to that, I mean it's a brilliant articulation of it. Will like go back and listen to the episode we did looking at Dan Byrne talking about the contrast between the first League cup final that he played in when they got beat two nil to Manchester United and then the second one when they went and beat Liverpool two one because it's a great example of Federer moment thinking, as Rene describes it, this playing the game, not the occasion. Don't worry about what the consequences of it is. Just stick to the moment of knowing what you're good at. Focus on being in the moment, being where your feet are and just execute the process. It's a really good example of it. And I think again it almost sometimes you think, are we emphasizing this point too much? But you hear it so often from those that scale. The heights are the ones that seem to be able to capture that Federer mentality. This whole conversation with Rene has just been so rich. But let's go back to the point of the episode. It's all about the choice of our language. When he worked with Cristiano Ronaldo, he didn't start with drills. He started with the quality of his words because he knew that it's language that sets the frame in which learning can happen. And when you get the frame wrong, even the best drills or the best tactics don't stick. But if you get it right, well, that's where you can unlock motivation, resilience and incredible growth. It seems then that in football, like in life in general, language isn't just decoration, it can be direction. And the essential habit of high performance is find your language. Listen, I'm Damien Hughes and as ever, thanks for joining us. Thank you for listening and I look forward to catching up with you soon.
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