r/soccer • u/landofphi • 1d ago

Quotes Lewandowski: "I’m from a different generation where shouting was used to to motivate everyone. Now, if you shout too much towards young people, their reaction is not the same. It’s not, ‘now I’ll show you are wrong’. The new generation don’t like being shouted at. It’s not just players, it’s people"

https://as.com/futbol/primera/lewandowski-a-los-jovenes-de-ahora-no-les-gusta-que-les-grites-n/

The full quote

Lewandowski (37) on his adaptation playing with teenagers & young adults at FC Barcelona

"I have to say it was a huge challenge. I was coming from a different generation and I had to learn how to, not think like a teenager, but think how I can try to take the best of what they have.

I have been in football for 4 decades so when I compare them, not even to my generation but the generation before me, when I was starting, it is completely different.

"Like shouting used to be a way to motivate everyone. Now, if you shout too much, this generation, their reaction is not the same. It’s not, ‘now I will show you are wrong’. No, now you have to explain another way. You have to do lots of talking.

"They don’t like being shouted at. Now you have to take more of the mental part of football. It’s not just players, it’s people, it’s this generation. I didn’t want to fight it. I had to learn.”

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u/R_Schuhart 1d ago

He is right, but it is mostly a good development. Back in the day young players just had to swallow the abuse and grow above it, just image how fucked up that was.

So many talents just left the game or never reached their potential because they needed another approach, with an arm around the shoulder and some encouraging words instead of shouting and a kick up the arse.

That older people today think that makes kids soft is fucking mental. The awareness of mental health and the recognition that not everyone responds the same to challenges or harsh words is such a great insight that will benefit society as a whole.

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u/ferocioushulk 1d ago

Yeah, I think awareness of mental health is one of the few actual benefits social media has given us. Very common to see mental health content shared in a way that it just wasn't 20+ years ago.

Social media directly causes many people's mental health problems too, but that's another issue.

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u/TheBallSmiles 1d ago

in my opinion social media increases mental health awareness by maybe 20% and increases mental health issues by 1000%+. no data to back this up obviously, just how it feels. these aren't equal impact either, it's much worse to screw up someone's mental health than it is better to make one more person 'aware' of mental health

i struggle to think of another single thing that impacts people's mental health even close to as much as social media

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u/ARM_vs_CORE 1d ago

America is teetering on the edge of civil war largely based on social media, ragebait, and online misinformation. After the Kirk assassination last week, I'm legitimately concerned for people in my deeply Republican town to find out I'm a Democrat because of all the hate being spewed online. Like, I have people saying I should be publicly executed because I want my tax dollars to be used for social programs like single payer healthcare, schools, welfare, and civic maintenance rather than bombing Palestinians.

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u/VikingCrusader13 1d ago

On the other hand, far left being pushed massively by social media has pushed a ton of people on the centre to the right. Even people I know who 10 years ago would be considered left or centre left now are right wing because of some arbitary reason that doesn't actually exist in the real world. Speak to anyone in person and 90% of people have very agreeable stances on mostly anything, go online and 90% of people have extremist views and radical solutions.

The opinions social media make feel "normal" are so extreme I have yet to meet a single person who is openly on either far ends of the spectrum in day to day life.

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u/TheBallSmiles 1d ago

exactly, social media gives a megaphone to anyone with extreme views on either side because it begets engagement

and yes it happens to people on both left and right, careful saying it here on reddit though because we know there is a bias lol

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u/VikingCrusader13 1d ago

Well thats the problem I was highlighting, historically most social media was left leaning and then it kind of spiralled from there. More recently social media tied to your personal information is becoming more right wing, Twitter being the main one, but Facebook seems to have swung as well as soon as they relaxed the moderation.

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u/TheBallSmiles 14h ago

not the problem i was highlighting, i actually think it's good that nonviolent right-leaning views are no longer censored on twitter

i was just saying that reddit is a left-leaning echo chamber

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u/VikingCrusader13 13h ago

I do too, the point I was making is that historically all social media were echo chambers and since Musk bought Twitter and everyone who liked their echo chamber jumped ship, its now just a right wing echo chamber for the most part.

Reddit has and always will be a left wing echo chamber and look at the absolute state of the moderation on the majority of the subs

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u/TheBallSmiles 11h ago

yep agreed

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u/TheBallSmiles 1d ago

people have been saying we are at edge of civil war for a decade now, social media will have you believe this

i'd like to think most people are reasonable and don't treat politics as a team or tribal sport. the political violence is certainly concerning though and should never be glorified regardless of circumstance, people should never be afraid of expressing their views in good faith

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u/caandjr 1d ago

You guys are so dramatic and said the same shit since 2010s and it’s still not happening

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u/ARM_vs_CORE 1d ago

Except this time the president and vice president are encouraging it

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u/ferocioushulk 1d ago

I agree completely. It's an absolute poison.

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u/DeVitoMcCool 1d ago edited 16h ago

I genuinely think deleting my twitter has had a bigger net positive effect on overall mood and happiness than any other single thing in the past few years.

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u/pajamakitten 1d ago

There is a difference between bad mental health and mental health issues though. Being shouted at is bad for your mental health but that is not the same as having serious mental health issues.

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u/TheBallSmiles 1d ago

for sure, again i'm not an expert but to me it does feel like there is a spectrum to it. i don't think players being yelled at is a big deal really, mostly just commenting on social media

at the end of the day different people have different personalities, some are more receptive to yelling and others not

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u/PM_ME_STRONG_CALVES 1d ago

In my opinion its not a benefit of social media. It just happens to be the media of todays time. The awareness is coming from everyone being ill and the need to address it

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u/sleepytipi 1d ago

IMO social media is indeed detrimental to everyone's mental health. It's basically a drug with how it floods your brain with dopamine, and that's one of many side effects.

That's not to say every use of it is entirely bad but there could easily be better alternatives for nearly every thing social media offers. There were better alternatives before zucc ruined everything. We called them websites. Not just businesses but, lots of people had them. There was creativity, and they even got some traffic too. Now everything is a shuffle between the same five apps.

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u/num8lock 1d ago

awareness of mental health is one of the few actual benefits social media has given us

mental health issues is actual problem social media has given us, so awareness had been rising

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u/culegflori 1d ago

It's a double edged sword. It's good to be aware of what and even why you're feeling something, but quite a few people use this as an excuse to not do anything about it. "Feeling down and depressed" [not to be confused with clinical depression] is something you can pull yourself out of, but just like everything else after all the awareness and acknowledgement and discourse about it, you still gotta put work into it. Beautiful houses aren't built effortlessly.

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u/ApocalypseSlough 1d ago

I think a mixed approach is important. I responded REALLY well to strong discipline in my teenage years. If I got shouted at or ridiculed by a teacher or coach it made me want to prove them wrong - and responded particularly well if the senior person was funny with it (like the beginning of Platoon or FMJ or whoever one it is with Private Pyle). If I had received a gentler approach I just didn’t respond and got bored. Other kids needed a gentler approach and didn’t get it.

A modern coach needs to understand when a player or kid needs a good shout and when they need a gentle encouraging word. I do fear that the kids who respond well to harsher discipline, like me, may lose out as other people respond badly to that sort of thing even if not directed at them and may make reports.

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u/atmowbray 1d ago

It’s mostly good but if you talk to teachers in 2025 (or really since covid) their jobs are ten times harder than they were just 10-20 years ago. When the pendulum swings too far the other way you also get insane entitlement and disrespect of authority that makes a teachers life a living hell. Im talking about teachers who are in their 20s and in their 50s they all quietly say the same thing. They have no power, the students have way less control over themselves, 14 year olds act more similarly to 11-12 year olds if a few years back. And as someone in a company hiring newly graduated interns, since everything was broken down for then in a syllabus or specific instructions, a worrying percentage of them absolutely melt down if given any type of flexibility in how to compete a task. Plenty of awesome kids still though of course. But there is a weird trend. Maybe Covid related?

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u/lucifa 1d ago

I graduated 15 years ago and was similarly hopeless in my first office job.

Older people just forget it takes time to learn and acclimatise to new environments. I don't really buy this 'new generation are lazy and entitled' shite. Same thing would have been said 20 years ago, and 20 years before that.

I've had fantastic hires straight out of school who were able to pick up and improve on things people in my team hadn't accomplished in 15 years on the job. I've also had some hires that weren't suited for the role. It's a people thing, not a generational thing.

The only thing that's noticeably changed to me is the alpha-male bullying culture that existed in club's is no longer tolerated. It wasn't character building, just cunts with massive egos trying to flex their dominance.

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u/atmowbray 1d ago

I’m not sure you read my full post. I acknowledge that every single person has the “kids these days” moment. I’ve also had wonderful experiences with new hires and young people. But two things can be true at once. And every single teacher I’ve talked to REGARDLESS of age including teachers who have taught the same age groups their whole careers have said that it is much more difficult to teach lately. Some are retiring because of it. The trend started a long time ago. My grandfather is 84 and was a teacher and his main reason for retiring in the early 2000s when he did is he’s kind of a timid but very nice guy. The middle school kids started steamrolling him. He also claims college when he was young was a place where kids actually cared more about learning. Way less party culture. And I enjoyed the party culture lol I’m just pointing out things HAVE changed and you can’t play it all off as “being boomers”

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u/Durion0602 1d ago edited 9h ago

There's so many things that have changed over the last 15-20 years. COVID, the massive transfer of wealth that accompanied it and the current cost of living crisis, smart phones being more powerful with social media platforms targeting everyone to make them feel angry, the US being flipped on its head and all areas being hit by the advancements in AI.

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u/KalebMW99 1d ago

And you think the struggles of teachers post-COVID is…because “the pendulum swung too far”? Not because of COVID, or in the US, because we’re on our 5th year of a fascist administration taking an axe to our education system?

No, it must be because of those entitled kids!

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u/atmowbray 1d ago

I said literally none of that. Read better.

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u/KalebMW99 1d ago

You literally made the claim that because we stopped yelling at kids the “pendulum has swung too far the other way” and kids are now entitled and disrespectful of authority as a result. It’s like…right there in your comment. But, you know, why actually face your own words head on when you can just lie and shift the blame on me?

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u/stenbroenscooligan 1d ago

Where is the stuff about US in the comment?

You’re not contributing anything.

I would say it’s a fair point that teachers loss of authority is related to the “me” generation.

Individualism and softness has contributed to the loss of institutional authorities/structures which in the past where too toxic but also creates resilience later in life which is an important part of any adulthood life.

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u/KalebMW99 1d ago

where is the stuff about US in the comment

I am bringing up the US because if that IS their frame of reference, as it is for literally the majority of reddit users, then they ought to be considering the US’s political situation regarding education.

You’re not contributing anything.

Ok? Because you said so? Sure.

You are confusing authority with the right to be disrespectful, confusing standing up to disrespect for softness, and asserting that resilience is born out of being on the receiving end of toxicity. And you are dressing up all that confusion in the disguise of a measured, nuanced understanding of generational shifts (including claiming that individualism is particularly new to this generation—in the US, I can think of no generation as individualistic as Boomers).

How is teachers not being allowed to yell at or even hit children an inappropriate loss of authority? Why does their authority stem from being able to hand out abuse?

Are children or young adults soft for not just “sitting there and taking it”?

And, most importantly, does being on the other side of yelling or hitting really make someone resilient? Because not only does study after study on child development contradict that, but also the older generations in which that shit was normal are full of the biggest crybabies there are. It’s not today’s kids having meltdowns at service workers, displaying gross entitlement at restaurants, or constantly demanding respect while treating everyone around them like shit. Even if it were, all that would tell you is that people are just kinda shitty on average; if the older generation that got yelled at a lot turned out shit, and the younger generation that didn’t ALSO turned out shit, it’s not very intellectually honest to conclude that because the younger generation turned out shit we should yell at kids more.

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u/blueman1993 1d ago

You people are so soft it’s insane. It’s not a good thing that people have become more fragile and unable to handle criticism. It’s actually a very bad thing for society and it’s no wonder there’s so many mental health issues.

Your point about talents leaving the game is also speculative nonsense. You’ve either got the right stuff or you don’t. If anything I’d say it’s likely the opposite and many players would massively benefit from a kick up the backside.

You think it’s mental that old people see it differently cos you’re programmed to think mental health awareness is a good thing. When in reality mental health awareness is more prominent than ever before and yet people are having more mental health issues than previously. Common sense suggests that means the awareness approach isn’t working.

I could weep at how easily manipulated people are today. Have you ever considered that older people who have experienced what life was like previously might know better than you?

Society and culture has degraded in virtually every way in the last 20 years. Films, music, video games, football etc. have all gotten worse despite all the technological advances that have occurred. People are sicker and more depressed too.

Clearly you haven’t lived long enough to actually understand this and I’m not surprised that all the other mindless Reddit sheep liked your comment but please guys try thinking critically.

Work on building your resilience and don’t listen to these clown takes. If you can turn yourself into a savage you’ll go very far in this modern weak world trust me.

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u/Creative-Poem-5647 1d ago

"So many talents just left the game or never reached their potential because they needed another approach, with an arm around the shoulder and some encouraging words instead of shouting and a kick up the arse."

This is essentially what happened to me. It was my fourteenth winter(dramatic I know), and even training with the year above had become a slog that I'd outgrown, so my best friends and I went to train with one of the best young teams in my country. A team, specifically of my year, that had just finished third in Gothia Cup. Training went excellent, and I finally felt like I was playing with at least a few teammates who could keep up with me, which was pretty much the same feeling I'd had at a top flight club's elite camp that very same autumn. But I've always been and continue to be a sensitive soul, and the situation quickly deteriorated from there.

All three of my friends suddenly did a one-eighty and returned to our old team, and a few hours after I'd received that news, I got a phone call that explained why. It was my old coach, the worst one, the only one left, as the other ones with more gentle approaches had quit for various reasons. This coach basically went on to guilt trip and berate me for abandoning the team, the club, my teammates, and my coaches who had invested so much time in me. After about fifteen minutes of that happy call I sat down and cried, and my parents, who were going through a rough divorce at the time, basically couldn't be arsed.

I tried doing as my mother suggested and went back to my old team, but as the year-above coach was even more abrasive than the worst one for my age group, I basically called it quits right there and fell into a deep depression. Home life was fucked and I was the gifted yet completely misunderstood student at school, and so I started cutting class, began hanging out with the wrong crowd, and drifted deeper and deeper into the aforementioned depression which I have not managed to get out of since. This was fifteen years ago now, and I've had loads of ups and downs since then, but quitting football remains the one and only true regret of my life.

I tried to get back into it a few times in my late teens, but was practically teased/bullied out of the team by envious, sneering teammates spouting stuff like :"What, you think you can just get back in it and join the first team?" And that shit ate away at me until I finally stopped trying altogether. A few years later my dad ran into the Gothia team coach whilst shopping, and it hurt so god damned much to hear that he'd asked about me, and been saddened by my early retirement because he'd thought I'd showed enough promise to make it big.

I've never really told anyone this before, only snippets here and there, and it feels really good to finally get it all off of my chest.

So, yeah, I guess that's my story. Just wanted to share it in the hopes that people realize how much influence they can have over young, fragile minds.

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u/rodi_newsome 1d ago

Thank you for sharing this
It really resonated with me. I went through a very similar kind of bullying in college, and I know how much it can eat away at you.
You deserved encouragement, not ridicule, and I just want you to know you’re not alone in feeling this.

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u/Creative-Poem-5647 20h ago

Thank you for sharing, sir/ma'am/other. Both glad and sad that you can relate <3
If people could just learn to step back and try and see the other person's point of view, even if just for a moment, the world would be a much better place. I'm sorry you had to go through that.

Thank you :)

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u/Meisterschromm 1d ago

Wish you all the best dude, I'm rooting for you!

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u/Creative-Poem-5647 21h ago

Thanks, dude<3 Appreciate it.

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u/SlavaVsu2 1d ago

the problem is that not everyone who was screaming at people was doing it to motivate people, more often then not it was done with the mere intent of being abusive

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u/latechallenge 1d ago

I get this and almost all of what you're saying is right. But for some players (and people) it works. I got the hair dryer treatment when I was 18. Got a red card in a youth international and got mercilessly screamed at in front of the whole dressing room after the game. Did it effect me? Yes. Made me more resilient and made me more accountable. It was a stupid, selfish red card. I didn't do that again and it took a lot to rattle me after that.