Kelvin Sampson Quotes

Hiddink really taught me a lot. We talked every day at Anzhi and I saw how he dealt with difficult situations, how he always seemed to know what the players needed. He was a great teacher. I hope I can be as successful as him.

You don't have to be popular with the players to be a good manager or coach.

High school coaches sometimes are better coaches than I am.

I hadn't trained to be a coach. That takes great training. Being an assistant under a Coach Lombardi or a Tom Landry or whoever, that prepares you to do a better job when you become a coach. I hadn't received that training. It showed.

It's very rare to find a basketball coach that gets both: that gets the Xs and Os and also gets life.

Wenger is the best coach I've worked with.

Van Gaal is the kind of guy who can really make individual players better.

He went about things a certain way, but no one can say Thibs wasn't a good coach. He was a hell of a coach.

I've always been a point guard, so being a coach on the floor, I've had to connect with every one of my teammates and find ways to motivate them, find ways to build them up.

With Mourinho, I learned a lot.

The big element I think that I bring is that I am a veteran coach.

I can't compare myself to Phil Jackson in any way, shape or form. His view on the world and his intellectual approach, I don't have that in common with him.

To have long term success as a coach or in any position of leadership, you have to be obsessed in some way.

True basketball coaches are great teachers and you do not humiliate, you do not physically go after, you do not push or shove, you do not berate, if you are a true coach. If you humiliate or curse them, that won't do it. Coaches like that are not coaches.

The book is actually called 'A Mentor Leader, a Different Way to Lead.' It really talks about my experience in the way I tried lead our football team, things that I learned from, basically, the coaches that I played for and my parents about leadership. And it is a little bit different, counter to maybe what society says about great leaders.

Teaching is very important. The nature of your personality isn't that important. Lombardi was very extraverted, very bombastic. Landry very quiet, reserved. Both were great teachers and great coaches.

When I first became captain of the Indian cricket team in 2000, many well-wishers and journalist friends gifted me the classic Mike Brearley book, 'The Art of Captaincy.' I mean no disrespect to the book or Mr, Brearley, who I admire a great deal, but books or team meetings don't make you good captains.

I only worked with Rafa Benitez for a short time, but he's a great manager, and he showed it from the first moment he came. He worked with the players and made us a better team. He's a good person, always trying to help players out.

My previous bosses - Louis van Gaal and Marcello Lippi, to name two - have all taught me something.

I think the coaches have to play a big role in the players' development.

One of my strengths is connecting with the players.

Guardiola improved me a lot as a footballer. He taught me a lot of things, and that's why, in every interview I'm asked, I always say the same thing: He is the best manager that I have worked with.

Obviously, being in the league for so long, you do have something to offer as a coach.

I think there is a lot of experiences you have in coaching, and if you learn from the experiences as you go through them, whether it's as a coordinator or position coach, a quality-control coach, a head coach, whatever it might be, and you learn from those mistakes you make.

Man-management is my biggest asset, to help the players enjoy themselves and be better than they already are.