Sparta Prague: Coach Gross’ Third Stint Begins

Even if he gets into a difficult situation, he is never arrogant. As if Pavel Gross compared to every media output in his head what he wanted to say and where he didn’t want to get.

When Sparta dropped out in the seventh semifinals, he filled the headlines: “I take responsibility for being not mentally prepared for the series. I think it decided together with the first match.”

Usually, the cadre and the performance of the stars would be solved. After a hard defeat, however, there was much more in the ether the sentence of the coach and the theme of how much one man affects the whole series and events in the match number seven. Gross is strong in that he can play with words.

Virtually no question will refuse. On the other hand, if you want a specific rating of players and the season right after the semifinals, it is too early. At the start of summer preparation, he says it is too long ago. Each statement is naturally acting naturally, but together you feel that it may be a plan.

He just won’t let go. This is also part of the coaching skill. Being elegantly grind from topics you don’t want to answer.

Is training sometimes dreaming, or does stress get everything in another sphere?

You have to count on stress and demands when you want to do such a job. It has everything, good days and hard days. Sometimes there is a lot of stress, but there are very beautiful moments, we must not forget it. At the same time, sometimes there is a great disappointment. All this together is training.

Isn’t it that you are more trying to knock those nice days on players, that it’s their job, and you take the bad days for yourself that you haven’t prepared the team?

But no. Do you know what a coach’s job is? To monitor the development of the team’s performance. Even if he wins three times, watch what is wrong. Watch if you feel a clerk somewhere and where there are small things that pull everything down.

And when he loses twice?

So you’re looking for a way to kick the team. You always want to cut off the defeats and start collecting winnings.

Are you going to be the winner that defeats will come?

I’m not here to get about losses. (smiles) Rather, I think that our task is to keep the wins line as long as possible. Always look for a new way to keep the team in mode, that it works to the maximum.

As a coach you won three titles in Germany. Does this profession have the same position and respect in the Czech Republic and there?

The question is how we would measure it. I do not have parameters where I could find out respect.

For example, it is possible to appeal how often the coaches recall, because few people in the extraleague trade two whole season in a row, although you start the third in Sparta.

We know about it. But I take this thing as normal.

As a coach, you must not be naive and think you are in the club for eternity. The coach’s work is always for a definite period of time, only we never know how long the time will be. But in the end someone will come to you anyway and say it’s time to end. For myself, I will tell you that as coaches we are not engaged in this, so it just is.

Either do you have a job or do you want to work?

You can say that. And when you are with the team, you want to concentrate on your work and pull the best out of players. Everything then has some consequences, but it is good to accept them as a fact. You always try to do things best as you can. And if you end up, you just end up.

It seems to me that you can feel quite a different environment where you lived for a long time. You are rhetorically very strong, just like Uwe Krupp in Sparta sooner or like Brian Priske in Sparta. Have you worked a lot on the ability to speak and formulate your thoughts?

Yeah, yeah. (smiles) But maybe it’s just a coincidence that things somehow affect you. Primarily, I never want to go into any sensations. The season is such a marathon that I live at that moment.

And in it you can spell quite skillfully with words. I have noticed several times that if you don’t want to talk about something, you don’t say it, but you can drain the attention smoothly. Is this a coaching skill today?

I don’t know. (smiles) If you say it is ever, so…

If I find it important, I would like to remove pressure from the team. I think players are already wearing the real pressure, when they are required for specific performance. It is also related to social media pressure, they are under it too. To add even more pressure? No, I don’t want that.

Only when the media pressure takes on itself, it also does not have to feel completely cool at the same time, isn’t it?

I manage not to let this pressure together. I read very little newspapers, I don’t have social media at all.

And how glad! I feel beautiful without them. You won’t even trust me how beautiful it is without them.

Nor does it attract you to monitor them, what is happening?

I don’t care. At all. Everyone needs the real pressure, I am a person who makes him a lot of him. There is a good thing that no one else can cause me more than I do. Why should I feed something else? No, I don’t need this.

On the other hand, there is also inspiration there…

I have a lot of sources that make me move. But I can omit social media. I have a site focused on a hockey coach. I am a lot there and I enjoy it a lot.

Did he leave something in Prague, where you were part of the Radim Rulík team and the pressure had to be coaching enormous?

Wonderful thing. And do you see? I didn’t have social media there either. We lived in a bubble between the hotel, the stadium and the cabin. I didn’t really know what was happening outside.

So if it is written now and talks in podcastech that Sparta, or Pardubice, you two have to grab the title, just such a speech just goes around you?

When you sign a team in a team like Sparta, what do you expect? That someone would be content with the semifinals? Probably hard. That’s just that. These are teams where they want to win. You sign in Sparta, it doesn’t matter if as a player or coach, and expectations are high. We live with that.

Is it possible to turn that it is more of a privilege, that the club has chosen you and you have to think of the way to the title?

It’s a reward, this is beautiful. We go to one goal and see how it will turn out. I can only say that we will prepare the best way we can.