YouTube / Michal Probers at the legendary Krakow conference
He grew plants at conferences, spoke German, and gave a language course to the opposing coach. At the same time, he resisted taking this position for a long time. With Michał Probierz, one thing is certain: it won’t be boring.
After unsuccessful adventures with two Portuguese coaches, one of whom turned out to be a fugitive and the other retired, devoid of ideas and enthusiasm, the Polish fan was able to rekindle his love for Polish coaching ideas and hesitate to aspire to more foreign inventions. The perfect embodiment of all these feelings is the new coach of the white and red team – Michel Proppers.
– If the Polish coach says something, there will always be a problem. The coach will say that you need to train, and everyone will say: “What is he talking about?” Because first you need a German coach – he was shocked in 2014, after a Premier League match, at a press conference that he started… in German. Again, after a meeting with Ligia, Henning Berg gave… a Norwegian-Polish course.
– I’m surprised that Poland is so criticized when it comes to training, that we are made to look like idiots, so to speak, ugly. “It’s sad,” he said in an interview with goal.com at the beginning of the year.
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If someone wants to restore confidence in Polish coaches, Michal Probers is the ideal candidate. Or at least he’s been portraying himself that way for years. However, the crusade against foreign colleagues is only a small element of the colorful personality of the coach, who was able to surprise journalists and fans several times.
Change perspective
Polish representation. The most important team in the country. A dream come true for almost every Polish coach. barely.
Michel Proppers has been trying to take over this position for years, although these attempts have recently lost momentum. However, the coach himself did not want to hold the most important coaching position in the country for a long time.
-I don’t want to be a coach at all! I’m too young a coach to separate myself from this profession now. In my case, it would be a regression in development – he said in a 2012 interview with “Piłka Nożna”.
One might say that more than 10 years had passed since that statement, and Probers, richer in his many experiences, could have changed his position. Yes, that’s true, although a few years ago, when the fate of Adam Nwalka’s successor was at stake, he stuck to his guns.
– I was not interested in this job from the beginning. Nowadays, I don’t like going for coffee, watching the players and making selections. However, I like to watch how they develop every day, what mistakes they make and how to correct them – he answered questions about a possible position in the national team.
However, it seems that today, at the age of 50, he is finally ready to take on new challenges.
Whiskey, seedlings and rose-colored glasses
With Touchstone at the helm of the national team, fans can be sure of one thing – that press conferences with his participation are often more interesting than the matches themselves. Especially if he fails to clean up Fernando Santos’ mess quickly.
Touchstone, while still a major league coach, was one of the league’s most colorful figures.
– I remember that 20 years ago, when I came back, I was the first to talk about training all the time. And they kept making me look like an idiot – he started the conference before Cracovia’s match with Lech Proppers, pouring soil into a prepared pot, adding seeds, and watering everything.
-Looking at it now, maybe something will grow in 5 minutes. It’s not growing – Probers commented on what happened. He added – This is an example of our patience – stressing that this is an analogy for the Polish training situation.
Another time, he decided to attack the training conditions and the fact that Polish teams lost to everyone in the cups. – I have rose-colored glasses here and say that Polish football should finally see the light. It’s time to say a few honest words about what she looks like, he said as he put on a prepared piece of clothing.
Another time, in response to a question about a referee’s action which, in his opinion, had harmed his team, he responded with perhaps his most famous quote: – I’ll go home and drink whisky, because that’s all I have left.
He is not afraid of confrontation
You may like Touchstone or not, but you definitely can’t deny its personality. He has shown this many times, and not only in conversations with journalists.
When in 2016 the Jagiellonia-led side suffered another painful defeat, this time 0:3 to Podbeskidze, the local fans decided to express their displeasure by chanting after the match with military words about what they thought of the team. However, Touchstone had no intention of remaining passive and moved towards the stand filled with angry fans. The talented coach had to be restrained by several Jagiellonia players.
In addition, he loved to show personality even in his youth. In one of the interviews reported by Onet, he revealed how he ended up in German custody in the past. -The manager couldn’t decide what to do next. She announced that if he didn’t find me a club within a week, I would come back. He didn’t accomplish anything. I ran out of my apartment in Beverin and got into a car. He said that the manager told the police that I had stolen his clothes.
– They arrested me in Kassel. They made sure I didn’t steal anything, and it wasn’t my size, but I spent 24 hours in detention. I wouldn’t say I was a badass. (…) I came out of prison and the police bought me a train ticket because I had no money. And so I reached the border. I did not have a visa, but I asked the customs officers to let me into Poland,” Probers recalls.
Once again, in defense of Bartłomiej Drągowski, who came under fire for his theatrical fall after being hit by something from the stands, he decided to take the blame entirely on himself. He wrote on Twitter: “I, as coach Michel Proppers, take full responsibility for the incident, as I provided information that the player simulated an injury and knocked the Lechia player out of rhythm.”
Self-confidence is a quality Touchstone has never lacked. When he was asked at the end of last year on the “Turbokozak” program whether the Polish coach would adapt to Barcelona, he had no doubt. – If you answer, it will be commented on on Twitter again and it will be widely talked about. He added: I think he will deal with the matter and will not have any problems with it.
He now had an excellent opportunity to prove the superiority of Polish training ideas over foreign ones. However, there is not much time, because the next matches of the Polish national team will be held in October, and the mess that needs to be cleaned up after Fernando Santos is exceptionally large.
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