The first question is for you, Pep - to read.
- Yeah, to read. - For you to answer!
OK, guys, we have some questions from some of the guys at Axa
about management and leadership.
The first question, Pep.
There's a difference between confidence and self-belief, no?
So you have different kinds of confidence, and we search for proper confidence.
Like, almost to earn it by working very hard.
They have to be convinced of what we want to do, our philosophy, our way of football.
And then to perform on that level.
Absolutely.
No, we have to, but how did we create it? First and foremost I think we treat all of them
exactly the same way. Mo Salah gets the same things as Curtis Jones.
But that gives the younger boys confidence,
and the older ones don't struggle with confidence and self-belief!
So it's all about treating them in the right way,
teaching them respect for all the people around.
Yeah, you are important, but you are not the only important person in the team.
- Do you need my glasses? - No.
Off the pitch.
Yeah, off the pitch is a reflection of everything we do on the pitch, of course.
The boys, over the years, they wanted to trust us.
You hope this will be the manager who leads you to, I don't know, the glory,
that's one thing, and since then we earned the trust, and we don't lose it now.
We treat them completely as adults, and they trust that the decisions we make
are always based one one thing - at the end of the week we have to win a football game.
I believe everything around the team - around training, around games
has a winning mentality. You learn to live as a professional,
learn to win and develop this mentality and do everything for it.
But the name and the image of the club helps as well.
So when you come to Liverpool, we were all faced with the history of the club,
and what we said then - "We want to write our own history."
And the character of the leader attracts character players,
so we have a lot of good, good boys.
Self-educating!
Great.
That's easy - each game gives positives and negatives.
One saying I read a few weeks ago was, "You can never lose, you can only learn."
Even from games you win, you try to learn,
so that's the way you stay confident and stick with your principles.
A defeat is only a waste of time if you don't learn from it.
If you learn from it, it can be the most important game in the whole season.
So it's not so complicated to stay confident after that,
it's sometimes really necessary to make the next step in your development,
becasue the boys... Human beings are weak sometimes,
especially when we only think about ourselves,
and in these moments you have to be strong and show them an opportunity
to change the situation again immediately.
Number four.
Being injured in our sport is part of the deal.
It's always about faith and patience, no?
Players say it very often: "I will come back stronger."
That's what you wish in the first moment when you get injured,
and we try to give them that opportunity to come back stronger.
Role models, like other players who came back, help the boys as well.
It's a blow, but if you see, for example, Oxlade-Chamberlain,
he had a really bad injury,
how positive he was from the second day of recovery was unbelievable.
And be yourself, I think. Many times you get doubts,
the most important thing is that you don't change, know what I mean?
You have that problem, that sometimes players get a bit of fear in their mind,
because of the situation and how it happened,
and it doesn't work - you cannot worry if you play a contact sport.
That's how it is.
By focusing small.
Small things make big things happen.
Come on, go on, I love it!
I love it, really.
No, but it's true.
For me, it starts with our attitude, that we say, "OK, are we the best? Probably not.
"Is it easy to beat us? Nope."
"Can we beat the best? Yes."
This is the attitude we developed.
You only come that far in football when you don't stop.
Gini Wijnaldum was probably one of the biggest talents in Holland in his time,
then he played for [Feyenoord] Rotterdam, [PSV] Eindhoven,
coming to England, if there would have been one moment where he thought,
"I don't want to make the next step", it's gone.
So then he comes to us, every day makes the next step,
and he will never kill that until he finishes his career.
So that's how it is, it's in us, it's in sportspeople, it's in footballers.
In the good ones. But as long as the boys have that,
and again, it's how we all live it together.
It's easier here in the club to stay motivated on the highest level,
because we didn't win the league for 30 years, so that makes it easier!
In the moment when you've did it, the question is how you deal with it?
Are you happy? "Yes, we did it, done"?
Or do you think, "This is a wonderful feeling, winning the Champions League,
"I want to have that again and again and again."
That's what we are there for.
This is what I believe happened with our team now,
after winning the Champions League, putting this pressure away but still having the feeling
"Yes, we can do it, and we can go on and improve and give them that feeling."
So the moment you can think about if it's possible,
that's the moment you can achieve it as well.
Absolutely.
Yeah, thanks, guys, keep the questions coming,
it was great to answer them and hopefully you took something from it.
- That would be cool. - That would be really important as well.
Listen and learn, from the boys, that's what I do every day.
Come on.
THEY LAUGH