Good morning! Loved watching Italy yesterday. Roberto Mancini is going to work his magic. They were so much more dynamic on the diagonal at speed, especially in transition.

Kyle Boas Author of the Tactics Journal

In today’s email:

• Learning from rejection
• Dejan Kulusevski refused a knee transplant during his 500-day injury

TACTICALLY INTERESTING

Teams and games I am following.

• The Guardian: It’s Happy Harry Kane day as England’s finest seizes his moment in style
  The Ballon d’Or validated the forward’s career and he extended his incredible record for England with yet another goal on his 126th appearance
• The Guardian: Harry Kane spot on to seal England win over Croatia on his record-breaking night
  It was an historic occasion for Harry Kane, the one when he made his 126th England appearance and overtook Peter Shilton as the nation’s most capped men’s player.

Learning from rejection

Seth Godin:

Years ago, I self-published a booklet for political activists. My timing was good, and I had a chance to sell the books from an organizer’s booth at a march on the very topic my book was about. It was a beautiful April day, and I stood on the side of route as the march went by. More than 400,000 passed my table, and I sold four books.

That’s 399,996 rejections. Maybe more.

Was it the price? Halfway through the march, I lowered it from $10 to $1, just to have a good story to blog a few decades later.

Sales did not increase. Perhaps it was the color of the jacket, the page count or the typo on page 32? None of those things.

What did I learn? That people at a march are at the march to march, not to shop.

Watch what people do, not what they say. And if you really want to learn something, change the situation and see what happens the next time.

Learning from rejection begins with understanding the lesson that’s being offered.

Seth’s book The Dip has stuck with me throughout my life to spot, ‘am I in a dip, or am I in a dead end?’ I would highly recommend anyone read it because it is timeless and it will save you a lot of time.

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Dejan Kulusevski refused a knee transplant during his 500-day injury

Tottenham Hotspur forward Dejan Kulusevski in VoetbalPrimeur.nl translated from Dutch:

I spent the whole summer talking to other doctors about a third operation. That would have been a knee transplant. They would replace my knee with someone else’s. Then I said no. I thought: if I’m in pain while playing football, then I’ll just play with pain.

[…] They told me that nobody had ever come back after an operation like that. It was fifty-fifty. Then I said: no, I don’t want that.

[…] Zlatan and Perisic really wanted me to go there. That Serbian has been very important to me. He said: don’t think about other operations, this is what we’re going to do. He was so sure it would turn out well.

Always listen to your gut.

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NEWS

• The Athletic: Mauricio Pochettino to sign two-and-a-half year contract at Manchester United
  ](https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/live-blogs/manchester-united-carrick-sacked-live-updates-pochettino/sMKxjJsvUDPM/)[ Carrick Out
• The Athletic: Jack Grealish returns for Everton in behind-closed-doors friendly after disciplinary breach
  Grealish has missed Everton's last three matches Lewis Storey/Getty Images
• The Guardian: Carrick sacked by Manchester United with team in Premier League relegation zone – as it happened
  The latest news and reaction as Manchester United look for a new head coach after only only three victories so far this season
• The Guardian: Pierre Sage’s failure to fix defensive flaws leaves Crystal Palace seeking new solution
  T he moment that summed up Crystal Palace’s season under Pierre Sage came five minutes before half-time at Selhurst Park on Sunday.
• Some footballers reach personal bests after returning from pregnancy
  “More and more players are now staying through until they’re having families … And they put all this money into research,” she says.
• The Independent: Man United LIVE: Mauricio Pochettino agreement close ahead of expected Carrick sacking
  The former United midfielder was let go today after the club’s worst start to a domestic season in 40 years

RECOMMENDED READING

Everything published yesterday by the writers I follow

• Two days of heat acclimation produced adaptation similar to an eight-day protocol
  Once- and twice-daily training schedules also produced similar heat tolerance and inflammatory adaptation (Willmott et al., 2018).
• Under Louis van Gaal, Manchester United players feared a lost forward pass would be criticised in meetings
  I think players were worried at certain moments.
• Daring Fireball: Jensen Huang Agrees to Testify Before Congress, But Not Publicly (Yet)
  Public reckonings will come next year.
• Daring Fireball: Scott Colom Flips Mississippi
  Mississippi prosecutor Scott Colom officially defeated incumbent Sen.
• Daring Fireball: The Dream of Quibi Lives On
  “NBCUniversal has an unmatched ability to turn the shows, sports and stories fans love into experiences that extend well beyond the screen.
• Daring Fireball: And Every New Boy That You Meet / He Doesn’t Know the Real Surprise
  The Cars’ “My Best Friend’s Girl” is not a bad song to have stuck in your head.
• Daring Fireball: Reuters Raises the Jensen Huang Affair Tally to Three
  Ousted Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang had an intimate relationship with a second employee, according to two people familiar ​with the matter, Reuters has ​learned.
• Compression garments did not lower injury risk in runners preparing for a half or full marathon
  Of the 329 runners included in the emulation of the target trial, 267 (81.2%) registered for the half marathon and 62 (18.8%) for the full marathon (Table 2).
• Students with learning disabilities tracked their own reading by ticking off strategy steps on prompt cards
  Sixteen studies (94.1%) used self-monitoring.
• A hospital alert system was followed by more pharmacist interventions, not fewer
  The odds of a clinical pharmacy intervention were 34% higher after Medi-Span implementation, with a NNE of 31.
• Interesting videos felt less tiring to viewers, but their body measures barely differed
  Twenty-six university students (10 males, 16 females; aged 21–24 years) watched high-interest (comedy) and low-interest (lecture) videos (90 minutes each).
• Low confidence in solving problems partly explains the link between social media use and trauma symptoms
  Perceived social support showed a more selective pattern of association, with higher support linked to lower negative alterations in cognition and mood, as well as hyperarousal.
• Former Porto and Sporting striker Mario Jardel fell into depression and cocaine use after missing the 2002 World Cup
  Even today I cannot explain why Scolari did not call me up to the Brazil national team in 2002.
• Daring Fireball: Trump Weighs in on Huang’s Successor
  NOW THAT Nvidia CEO JENSEN HUANG, who has done a fantastic job, has resigned, there is only one man to take his place — TIM COOK of Apple.
• Almost every Manchester United manager since 2013 had a recovery spell the club mistook for a fix
  One of the most curious features of Manchester United since 2013 is that almost all of its projects went through some period of recovery.
• Andorra FC coach Carles Manso made training voluntary after a tragedy involving his goalkeeper
  It's anything but easy to deal with this situation, because nobody teaches you how to handle something like this.
• Rayo Vallecano tops a LaLiga club index by scoring positive on finances, squad building and coaching
  The Vallecas club is the only one in LaLiga to get a B in the overall assessment of the Global State of Football 2025-26, the report by PLAIER and the University of St.
• Seth’s Blog: ShopPurple
  Launching today: a collection of hundreds of stores that are worth detouring past Amazon to get to.
• Daring Fireball: Jensen Huang’s Advice to His Successor: ‘They’ll Just Have to Reshape the Company’
  Huang: You’re going to build an F1 racer, but you’re going to build it in a way that you can drive.
• Daring Fireball: Jensen Huang Resigns From Nvidia
  Nvidia Board of Directors announced today that Jensen Huang has resigned as President, Chief Executive Officer, and a member of the Board, effective immediately.
• Students who believe skills can grow stayed more engaged in practice where progress is hard to see
  Who keeps practicing?
• Rural Peruvian teachers’ confidence in their own ability tracked only how well they rated their own work
• Youth scout Danilo Augusto Ribeiro never searched the neighbourhood around his club’s training centre
  During my time at a club in Brazilian football, for a period I worked in the “recruitment” department focused on youth initiation, that is, children up to 13.
• Greece requires clubs in its cup and lower professional leagues to field under-21 or under-19 players
  Whereas Dutch talents regularly get playing minutes in the Eredivisie at a young age, their Greek peers, according to Papadopoulos, have more difficulty breaking through.
• Mamelodi Sundowns academy coach Shu-Aib Walters took a UEFA B in Scotland to work towards goalkeeping licences
  It was just a prerequisite for myself, for what I want to pursue, which is obviously having my UEFA A in goalkeeping, and this one gets me one step closer to that.
• Former striker Mário Jardel fell into depression and cocaine use after missing the 2002 World Cup
  I still can't explain it […] I was one of the five best strikers in the world.
• Hajduk’s new artificial pitch at Poljud uses an organic pine-bark infill
  At the end of July this year, the renovation of the new artificial pitch with Pinefill organic infill, that is, pine bark, was completed.
• Inter plan to offer lower guaranteed wages and bigger bonuses tied to team results in contract renewals
  A smaller fixed portion of the salary and a larger variable component, tied above all to the team's sporting results.
• SK Rapid scored 23 of their 39 Austrian Bundesliga goals in the first and last 15 minutes of matches
  With 39 goals, SK Rapid are by far the highest-scoring team in the Bundesliga so far.

Contains information from OpenLigaDB, made available under the Open Database License (ODbL 1.0).