Jamie Moyer was in his third year as a major league pitcher and was, by his own admission, still wide-eyed, watching everything going on around him and soaking it in. He paid particular attention to older teammates on his Chicago Cubs squad, hoping to emulate habits that had allowed those veterans to extend their careers.
But any squad needs players who are hungry to do well, with their careers ahead of them. That’s important for the dynamic of the group, but it also needs a balance of guys who have seen it, done it and have that quality of leadership. It is all about the quality of the player.
You need always guts to put youngsters in the squad and also in the line-up.
I remember, the 1998 World Cup when we were Yugoslavia, I had the sticker albums of all the players, and I still remember that squad and who was playing.
You will never see United manager Sir Alex Ferguson in the media taking problems he has or the squad has or the club has into the open. Never, ever. But you do see that at Manchester City.
Sales departments use social to nurture leads and close sales. HR posts job openings and vets applicants. Community and support squads mine networks, blogs and forums with deep listening tools.
If you want to aim for great targets, then you have to have a large and high-quality squad.
Hockey suffers from being compared to itself in ways that other sports are not. Every four years, some of us fawn over Olympic hockey, a great event with bigger rinks, minimal goonishness and national pride in addition to the heightened skills of veritable all-star squads.
When I was promoted to the main squad at Talleres de Remedios de Escalada, I felt my dream had become reality.
I felt more doubtful than usual with ‘Goon Squad,’ because I knew that the book’s genre wasn’t easily named – Novel? Stories? Novel-in-stories? – and I worried that its lack of a clear category would count against it. My hopes for it were pretty modest.
I want England to do well. I want us to go to World Cups and win. If I’m not in the best eleven or the best squad, so be it. I’ll support whoever’s involved all the way through.
I try to give the squad my peace of mind, my experience of big competitions and to be myself.
I don’t know how you get in the England squad without getting in the Arsenal team.
I don’t want to be the one that says Liverpool can go on and win the league. But there’s a real belief and togetherness in the squad; we’re all working for each other. We all know what the dream is at the end of it.
I just remember playing in my school and then getting invited to go along to train with a development squad at Reading. My first training session, the manager said, ‘You have to come and play with the academy girls,’ so that would probably be my first footballing memory.
We’ve got a lot of players not playing domestic football week in, week out. What is it? Is it the crest on their chest that makes them raise their game? It must be. It’s playing for Wales. It’s powerful and everybody would walk on broken glass to get into this squad.
We don’t mess with squads. Our friend group is not, like, a strategic thing. There’s no strategy to our friendships. There’s no strategy to the circle of girls. Everyone’s, like, bound together for different things.
It’s very important to know what you are facing, whether you are going to be part of the team or just a squad player.
It is a privilege to be part of this Chelsea squad and the Chelsea family, at one of the most historic clubs in the Premier League.
Something interesting has happened over the last 10 years in the Premier League. Players who once would have been discarded as expensive and too old have become important parts of title-winning squads.
There is a lot of discrimination. Consider this: whenever a badminton squad is sent for an international meet, there are usually 10 boys and 3-4 girls. Why is it like this? Why can’t we send an equal number of boys and girls?
I want to play more minutes. I’m a player who doesn’t want to stay on the bench or not in the squad.
To be part of a World Cup=winning squad was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. There was no resentment or sadness from missing the later games.
As an American, I would really like it if, just for once, Pelosi, Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and ‘The Squad’ would focus on proposing and shepherding meaningful policy reforms for the country, wouldn’t you?
Football is my priority. It’s a short career, and you have to make the most of it, which is why making the World Cup squad is such a big deal and something I will never take for granted.
We want to progress and ultimately win something. You can’t do that with 11, 12 or 13 players, you need a squad.
I was part of an Under-15 squad training at the National Cricket Academy in Bangalore.
I am not obsessed, but it is natural that doing well for PSG is the only way I can push back into the squad.
My job is to prepare the squad.
The subject matter is very tricky. It’s about the Munich massacre and what Mossad did afterwards with the assassination squads. I think it’s a turning point in history, especially for the Palestinians.
I was a bowler – left arm, smash it down as fast as I could. I did a lot of work with Damian D’Oliveira, and I probably had a chance of doing that for a living. But when I reached 16, I knew I couldn’t carry on playing both football and cricket, and I was already in the Shrewsbury squad.
When the Wales squad met up for the 2005 autumn internationals, I was already concerned that we were slipping into bad habits. And, yes, the role of head coach Mike Ruddock was, in my opinion, becoming a problem that would eventually need to be addressed if nothing changed.
Managers now don’t just use 11 players; they have to care about all the squad of 25 or more players.
You talk about demand, and these are big-name NBA players fighting for spots to be in the BIG3. So you gotta bring your game to make a squad, and that’s what Ice Cube’s envisioned when he started the BIG3.
We talk about the Arsenal ‘Invincibles’ of 2004 and the team who won the Double two years earlier and drool over their attacking play. It is easy to forget, though, that virtually the same squad had won nothing for three years.
‘Vice Squad’ needed to be real if it was going to have the impact that I wanted it to have.
‘Goon Squad’ took about three years to write and that’s the short end. My second novel, ‘Look at Me,’ took six years.
I was 22, and getting into a World Cup squad is what you dream about as a kid, so finishing third was fantastic.
Dressing up and doing photo shoots was a side of the industry I really didn’t think I would like. But now I’ve got a glam squad; I love trying on new outfits and experimenting with different looks.
When you come from younger teams, and you reach the main squad, there are always difficulties you have to deal with, like the intensity, the maturity, and the experience of the players.
When you have a small, balanced squad, you can work better. First of all everyone is involved in every squad list, a meeting can be a good training session.
I listened to classic rock and roll, and punk rock. ‘Goon Squad’ provides a pretty accurate playlist of my teenage years, though it leaves out ‘The Who,’ which was my absolute favorite band.
To win the World Cup is not about one player, it is about a squad.
I’ve shown I am deserving to be in the England squad, but I don’t just want a place in the squad; I want to be in the team.
Manchester City have been the best side in England over the course of the last decade. Coming here is a dream for me. This is a top side full of world-class players. Everywhere you look in this squad there are big names with international pedigree.
I knew as far back as 2001 that I would write a book called ‘A Visit From the Goon Squad,’ though I had no idea what kind of book it would be.
For me, I have always thought a squad comes before everything. I always make decisions for the good of the French national team.
I’ve played against a lot of the guys who have got into the England squad – Scott Parker, Jimmy Bullard, people like that – and I feel like I’m holding my own.
Sales teams use social media to generate leads and track clients as they move through the sales funnel. Operations and distribution teams forecast supply chains, while research and development squads brainstorm product ideas.
I’m always playing jokes, even on the manager – some, not many. I want to try and keep my place in the squad.
The more you play, the more you feel part of the squad, and then, in turn, you end up playing better. I think it’s a psychological gap as well – if you don’t think you’re a first-team player, then you won’t be.
I’ve always got that determination, to get back in the squad and get back playing.
In the NFL, there’s never really that moment where you’re like, Hey, I made the team. Or: Hey, you made the practice squad. You just kind of show up the next day and go to work. Nobody really says anything. You just kind of go to work.
The Selecao squad have always been a great bunch, ever since I was first called up.
When I was in the T20 squad, I was the only one short of experience, everyone else had over 100 T20 caps.
Dembele has things that nobody else in the squad has – self-confidence, one against one, shooting with both feet, personality.
