If something that needs to be done that we don’t feel confronting, we do it through the manager.
Phil Neville could be on the road to one day, maybe, becoming the England manager. I know him closely. He was a great captain, a great leader. He’s had great experience.
I am a lucky man because when I was young, I wanted to be a footballer. Suddenly, around 30 years old, I thought, ‘I want to try to be a manager because it’s different.’
After my first video, I went out and had chicken noodle soup with my sister and manager. We were like, ‘How rock n’ roll are we? Celebrating the first video with chicken soup.’
I almost never pitch myself. Me being an independent producer, never having a manager and never being signed, I pretty much just did my own thing: go out and search for the new talent, and when the new talent blows up, it just kinda brings everyone else to me.
But I think the Champions League Final puts a massive pressure on every player and the manager, but we’re enjoying the pressure and hopefully we can go there and win it.
From the start, the promise of Jurgen Klinsmann as manager of the U.S. men’s national team was revolution: gritty, plodding American soccer would give way to attacking flair; the parade of journeymen would end; an era of skilled stylists would begin.
You need doors to open, you need a chance – and you have got to have something, to take your chance when the door opens at the right time. My first port of call was to be a manager, then it was a successful manager, then it was a Premier League manager.
Everybody thinks when I say a guy is a good game manager, that’s a negative, but I think it’s a real positive. You have the ball in your hand every time when you’re a quarterback. Whether you’re handing it off or throwing to somebody, I think that’s extremely important.
Whenever your agent and your manager are on the phone with you at the same time, you know they’re either going to give you the most amazing news or the worst news.
I think what’s important in a good manager and a good agent is that they know your vision and that they are passionate about you and believe in you. Because if they don’t, then they’re not going to work hard for you, and they’re going to send you out on things that you don’t want to do.
Coming back to Tottenham, you feel confident with these players and the manager – the way he talks to you and wants you to play.
You give me someone with the right personality, and I’ll give you a bar manager in three weeks. You give me someone who has been a lousy bar manager for 30 years, and in three weeks, you’ll still have a lousy bar manager.
As my manager says, ‘These are wonderful problems.’
Something I realized when I moved to America: people get these general American accents, but when they get angry or upset or excited, their original accents come out. It’s something I noticed with my manager, because he’s from New York, and the first time he got angry, he suddenly had this accent.
I go to the grocery store with my wife. She goes off to buy something. Where is she, anyways? So I ask the manager, ‘What aisle do they keep the wives in?’
When you’re winning games, everyone thinks everything the manager says and does is fantastic. Then it goes the other way, and those earlier criticisms of players can backfire.
The most important thing that I tell myself is that no matter where I go in this journey, the humility is what’s gonna keep me honest and real. And perhaps a better manager.
I know that nothing can be taken for granted, and there is still a lot of hard work ahead of me. However, I am looking forward to the challenge of trying to prove to the England manager that I am worthy of a place in his team, and hopefully continuing to progress my career in the right direction.
I was contacted through MySpace to come and jam out for Michael Jackson. I thought it was a joke. I forwarded it to my manager, and it actually was legitimate, so I went the next day.
I am much more a pitch manager than a general manager. I am one of the few managers who is bored by the transfer market. Our task is growing the players that we have.
Prince’s manager once told me that I was the only person other than Prince who can recruit from the streets. Which was very flattering.
The horizon is a little bit blocked with Didier Deschamps as manager. I respect his choices, but the French national team doesn’t make me happy any more.
When you’re a young manager and trying to build something, you work very, very hard.
Hire people who are smarter than you, and don’t be afraid to work with them as partners. Make it clear that you plan to learn from them, not just the other way around. The right, smart, motivated people respond very well to that approach, particularly coming from a younger manager like I am.
One of the workshop participants had shown me a single 8 X 10 photograph of a power plant where he actually was the general manager of this power cooperative. It was quite magical to me.
I said ‘no’ nine times when Kanye asked me to work with him because I liked being friends with him. Then he put me in a position where I couldn’t say no: He just told everyone I was his manager.
We originally developed ‘The Client List’ along with Lifetime as a TV movie – my manager and I became partners on the project. Then, we brought in Howard Braunstein on the project and produced it along with Lifetime.
If I had any interest in coming back to baseball, it would be as a general manager and not as a manager.
It’s not important to me where I’m playing, just as long as the manager is happy and trusting me to go out on the pitch.
Rob Goldstone is a talent manager for Emin Agalarov, who’s an Azerbaijani Russian singer who performed at Miss Universe and later performed at the WGC championship golf course tournament that we held at Doral.
Every time I sit with our general manager at a baseball game, and there’s number-cruncher and statistician guy – I’m sitting around – they start talking about stuff, and I say, ‘What’s that? I’ve never heard of that one before.’
You can’t be the candidate and the campaign manager.
Who’s been with me longest? Kevin Blackwell. I signed him as a goalkeeper at Scarborough in ’86 and he’s basically been with me my whole career. He’s been my goalkeeper, reserve goalie, now my assistant manager.
There has been only one manager, and his name is John McGraw.
A manager has to convince his hitters that they have to get on base for the next guy and that no player can do it by himself. Sometimes that isn’t easy. In the playoffs, you can get into trouble because everybody wants to be a hero.
I was not a project manager who was managing and executing the day-to-day operational work of building HealthCare.gov. I didn’t have the kind of comprehensive, detailed, deep knowledge of that project that a manager would have.
But the manager’s bought wisely – the players who’ve come in have taken us on to a different level and the players who won promotion have also performed at the top level, so long may it continue.
The double sessions are tough. The manager wants us to get fit, wants us to work hard. And that’s because the Premier League is so tough. We need it. Something we have to do.
I think, for every player, it is important he knows the manager believes in him, and it is important he has the confidence of the manager. That helps you to find the best form.
I remember my manager telling me, ‘Be myself, be humble, keep rooted, keep God first’. Those words were very helpful.
I was in the tennis bubble. I wasn’t thinking about the big picture. I didn’t notice what they said on television, I wasn’t reading any papers. I had a coach and a manager, and they kept me in the bubble.
The upside to smoking is that you get to be social. I was looking for a light when I bumped into Ben Harper’s manager. A couple of days later, Ben and I were in the studio.
The passionate fans they have and also the ambition of the manager and the chairman. It was an easy descion to choose West Ham. London is also closer to my wife’s side of the family – so provided her more help to raise the kids. Everything made sense and I’m extremely happy.
My first pet at home in Edinburgh was a dog my dad had called Glen. He was a small sheepdog and went with my dad every day to work as manager of a cooking centre, which made the children’s lunches for schools.
Granted, it’s not easy to be a super-tall woman in Hollywood. But there are times when it works in my favour. In ‘The Night Manager,’ for example, both of my co-stars, Hugh Laurie and Tom Hiddleston, are also well over 6 ft. and it was lovely to look a co-star in the eye and not have them standing on an apple box!
‘Get up and hit a home run,’ has never been a part of the usable technique of any manager.
What I normally do before going on stage is pray – normally we do a group prayer with the crew or whoever is around, like our security guard, our tour manager and whoever else is back there and wants to pray with us.
I moved to Princeton, Indiana, and became a professional Farm Manager for that Princeton Farms.
It’s critical that the manager has the respect of players so he can make the moves that he feels is appropriate without having somebody go to the papers. They respect you. So you respect them back.
My favorite comic book growing up was ‘Thor.’ It was one of my three, favorite comic books. Obviously, Marvel is such a huge name, but for me, to book a role in a Marvel movie, and for it to be ‘Thor.’ When my manager told me I booked ‘Thor,’ I literally didn’t know what to say.
