image Julio Velasco was the coach of the Italian Volleyball National Team around 20 years ago: in that period he made the biggest step ahead in the history of Volley (at least in Italy).
He is a real leader and an innovator: a real inspiration for me as a man.

This summer he was a commentator of the Olympic Games TV shows in Italy. Talking about how we lost the semi finals with Brazil he said more or less this:

I hate when we talk about our competitors in term of admiration: it’s a physical thing. When we praise our opponent our brain switch to a ‘we cannot beat them’ mode. And when I say WE, I don’t mean just the team itself, I mean team, managers, journalists, friends everyone who can have a contact with the team. Because we can work with players, we can convince ourselves … but then we receive a phone call from home saying ‘hei, they are unbeatable: they have won the last 20 games in a row’ .. and we are all doomed.
We surely have huge respect for every competitors, and I want everybody to think as a GREA TEAM.
This means that we must think at competitors only in terms of ‘how can we beat them?’, ‘what can we do to beat them?’, ‘what else can we do more to beat them?’, ‘what we have to do that we have not jet done to beat them?’

Focus!

PierG