Agent of Natural Selection

🚨 Mikel Arteta on his conversation with Max Dowman after his red card against Fleetwood Town: “When Max was coming off, I could see he was upset. He had his head down, and I stopped him before he went into the tunnel. I asked him, ‘Max, what did we speak about before the game?’ He didn’t answer. I said, ‘Look at me. What did we speak about?’ He said, ‘Not reacting to the tackles.’ I told him, ‘Exactly. And what have you just done?’ He was trying to explain what happened, that the player had caught him and he was frustrated. I told him I didn’t want to hear it at that moment. He had to go inside, calm himself down and think about what had happened. I know people saw that conversation and thought I was being too hard on him. But I couldn’t stand there and tell him everything was okay when he’d just made a mistake that could cost his teammates the match. After the game, I went looking for him. He was sitting in the dressing room, still in his kit. Most of the boys were getting changed, but Max was sitting quietly, looking at the floor. I sat beside him and asked, ‘Have you spoken to your parents?’ He shook his head. I said, ‘Why not?’ He told me, ‘I don’t know what to say to them.’ That was the moment I realised how much it was affecting him. I told him, ‘Max, you’re 16. You’re allowed to make mistakes. You’re not allowed to pretend they didn’t happen, but you’re allowed to make them.’ He started apologising again. I said, ‘Stop apologising to me for a moment. Tell me what you learned.’ He said, ‘That I can’t react like that.’ I asked him, ‘And if somebody makes the same tackle on you next week?’ He said, ‘I get up and keep playing.’ I told him, ‘Good. That’s all I wanted to hear.’ Then I asked him something else. ‘Max, do you know why I was so angry with you?’ He said, ‘Because I got sent off.’ I told him, ‘No. Because I know how good you can become, and I don’t want you giving people reasons to take football away from you. You’re going to meet defenders who are stronger than you, older than you, and some who will spend 90 minutes trying to upset you. If they discover that all they need to do is make you angry, they will do it every single week.’ He was listening properly now. I told him, ‘You cannot control what another player does to you. But you can control what you do next. That’s what separates very good players from the ones who stay at the top.’ Before I left, he asked me, ‘Are you still angry with me?’ I said, ‘A little bit.’ He finally smiled. Then I put my arm around him and told him, ‘But I’m still your manager tomorrow, Max. And you’re still my player. One red card doesn’t change that.’ He asked whether he’d be playing again. I said, ‘Of course. Once you’re available. What did you think, I was going to send you back to school?’ He laughed. And I told him, ‘Now call your parents. They’ll be more worried about you than the red card.’ That’s the part people don’t always see. Sometimes you have to be firm with these boys because the world is not going to be gentle with them. But you also have to remember they’re still boys. Max made a mistake. He knows that. My responsibility isn’t just to make sure he never does it again. It’s to make sure he doesn’t spend the next few days believing that one bad moment has changed what I think of him. Because it hasn’t.”