Wydad Athletic Club coach Rulani Mokwena has revealed what Jurgen Klopp told him when he visited Liverpool’s training ground.
The South African tactician has started life in Morocco with three wins, two draws and just one defeat, as he tries to build a new squad after over 20 changes to his team during the transfer window.
Mokwena is a well-known student of the game and he never shied away from his admiration for some of the top coaches in the game, such as Pep Guardiola, Jose Mourinho and Klopp. He even visited Klopp’s Premier League giants during his time at Mamelodi Sundowns and now recently revealed the advice the former Reds boss shared with him.
“Klopp said to me, ‘know just enough as a head coach not to be bulls**ted, so that people don’t pull wool over your eyes’,” Mokwena told Forbes Africa.
Apart from learning from some of the best in his domain, Mokwena is also up to speed with modern trends of coaching and revealed why his uses GoPro cameras in training.
“I try to invest my time in different areas,” he continued.
“In training sessions, I have had the players wear GoPro cameras so that I can see what they see. I put certain demands on them, and I see whether they think about the rules and the action they have to take.
“You get to see how many scans (of the pitch) certain players do in a period of time. A player like (Mamelodi Sundowns midfielder) Rivaldo Coetzee scans four or five times in 15 to 20 seconds before he receives the ball. That allows him to make the right decision almost every single time.
“The best players in the world don’t think about their actions, their brain just executes, because they have done these things over and over. The motor mechanics in the brain have been developed. They can comfortably perform even the most difficult tasks.”
