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A little while ago a coach told me a story and I’m going to steal it because he’s not on Twitter and said I could. Think it’s true but then again he’s the same guy who told me to apply for the Palestine job…! (A THREAD) 1/9
So this guy's coaching a team in China and he starts to worry that football is taking over his life. Football is all he does day and night, he has no real social group and generally he’s pretty unhappy. 2/9
There’s a week off, so he books himself on a silent meditation retreat in Thailand. Expensive but you can’t put a price on spiritual fulfilment. It’s up in the mountains, run by monks. Nobody can even speak English there, totally off grid, you have to hand in all electronics. 3/9
He does all the things you’d expect, water carrying, silent prayer, they eat at a long table twice a day, 'rice mulch with yellow bits' he dubs it. He can see other westerners, exchanges nods, but obviously they can’t chat. 4/9
First few days are hard mentally. He’s running session plans in his head, he’s mentally selling players. But after 5 days he can feel a sense of wellbeing, his mind clears. He’s at one with the world. He barely thinks about football at all. 5/9
That night he can’t sleep, it’s the middle of the night, no idea what time as there are no clocks, he goes for a walk by moonlight and hears a repeated noise coming from a hut, kind of a chant. 6/9
He stands outside the hut where the noise is coming from and he's so curious he decides to pop his head in, nervous to disturb what he assumes is some kind of sacred ritual. Eventually he opens the door which, typically, creaks loudly. 7/9
Three monks are sat on the floor along with the westerners he saw at lunch. They whip round to stare at him. Then he sees the glow of a laptop. They're streaming a Champions League game, the sound was the crowd noise. It's Liverpool v Napoli. Liverpool are 1-0 up. 8/9
The monk looks at him for a second, then he gestures to sit down. He does. Then the monk utters the first word he’s heard in five days: ‘Salah’ and does a thumbs up sign. The coach leaves the next day. 9/9
