Glenn Crooks, the host of “The Coaching Academy” on Sirius XM FC, has begun compiling highlights of his interviews in book form. Below are excerpts from five of the 40 interviews published in Volume 1 of Put it on Frame: Stories and Strategies from Top Soccer Coaches and Experts.
• Emma Hayes, the U.S. women’s national team coach guided the USA to the 2024 Olympic gold medal. (Interview: Jan. 7, 2025):
GLENN CROOKS: What’s your approach at the interval, and how do you influence second-half performance?
EMMA HAYES I’m responsible for the team’s attacking play, Denise [Reddy] handles defending, and Stuart [Searle], our goalkeeper coach, covers set pieces. We have an analysis team that prepares clips for those three areas.
We meet with the analysts for a couple of minutes to decide what needs improvement for the second half. The clips usually match those points. Then we go into the locker room, each of us with about a minute or a minute and a half.
I usually start and I’m always future-focused. We don’t go backwards. In the second half, you’ll see these areas; we might want to explore them further. Set pieces, it might be this; the opponent is doing that. We adapt and show the adjustments.
Then we give another minute for quick individual check-ins. It’s very streamlined, very succinct. The players already know: mark on, chat, one click, two click, three click, a couple of points, individual detail—then out they go.
It’s so easy to be emotional at halftime, and that’s why you need people upstairs who can zoom out from that emotion. I always use a combination: how I feel about something, the clips, and sometimes the data.
• Guillem Balagué, the Spanish journalist who authored the Brave New World: Inside Pochettino’s Spurs, a 2021 Sunday Times bestseller. (Interview: Sept. 17, 2025)
GLENN CROOKS: Culture seems to come before lineups with Mauricio Pochettino. What stands out in how he manages that?
GUILLEM BALAGUÉ: He leads without punishment. He’s never fined a player for lateness — he talks instead. Yet he controls the environment obsessively. At Spurs he installed cameras at the training-ground doors, recording faces as players entered and exited. He’d compile those clips and ask, “Why are you happier leaving than arriving?” Even breakfast choices mattered — lasagna in the morning suggested a poor night before. Small details reveal mindset and readiness.
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• Michael Beale, after launching a futsal club in his hometown of Bromley, South London, coached in the academies of Liverpool and Chelsea, and in Brazil. (Interview: April 13, 2017)
GLENN CROOKS: You’ve often pushed back on the idea that every training session has to be full throttle—“train like you play.” Why?
MICHAEL BEALE: There absolutely has to be a point in training where the intensity matches the game. But I also believe there has to be space to explore. If it’s all “foot on the accelerator” from the first minute, then when do players get the chance to try something new?
Think of Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo. They became who they are by trying things, failing sometimes, and eventually producing those “wow” moments. My old academy boss at Liverpool, Alex Inglethorpe, used to measure a good session by how many “wow moments” there were: a brilliant pass, an unexpected dribble, a defensive recovery. If you don’t allow space for creativity, you deny players those chances.
So yes, train how you play, but also rehearse, experiment, play. Coaching with purpose means balancing both.
• Bob Bradley won an MLS Cup with the Chicago Fire, coached the USA to a first-place group-stage finish and round-of-16 appearance at the 2022 World Cup, and coached the Egyptian national team as well as clubs in England, France and Norway. (Interview: June 15, 2021)
GLENN CROOKS: You’ve used a Springsteen moment to describe building a team— freedom inside a shared idea. Tell that story.
BOB BRADLEY: I have occasionally used Springsteen in Leipzig. There’s a really good part of it where he’s taken requests from the audience. And so he picks up a sign that says, “You Never Can Tell.” It’s a Chuck Berry song. And he says, every now and then you play a song that you haven’t played in 20 years or maybe never.
And now he starts trying to figure out what key they’re going to use. And the guys in the band are kind of looking at him weird and they’re saying, no, it’s too high. And he’s going, no, I can do it. And then little by little, they figure out the key and now he starts trying to get the horns going and he’s going to that. And now all of sudden the horns start playing and now he starts to get the audience to do it as well.
Eventually, the whole thing comes together and they hit it and it just rocks. And so I sometimes have used that as an example: that’s actually how you build a real team.
You come up with an idea, that in this case was the song. You start to engage the people around you. That’s his band. Little by little you get the crowd involved. You could see it. Everybody in Leipzig was having a great time. And then when they finally got into it, man, it just took off. And I think that that’s how you work. That’s how you build something.
• Put it on Frame: Stories and Strategies from Top Soccer Coaches and Experts By Glenn Crooks. Foreword by Tony Meola. Hardback | Paperback | Kindle
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