Are international shipments a thing for daylilies? I figure it would come down to the country they're being sent to, but I have a strange thought that customs here would consider a plant a 'biohazard'? - like what if it had a spider on it or... something...snake? (we don't have any snakes or dangerous spiders or anything in NZ).

I just read a really interesting interview with the manager of Arsenal football club. I chose to support Arsenal about 6 years ago because they were closely aligned with my personal values as a sports team - they have a sustainable business model, turn a profit, have a manger who has now served 20 years (more than all the other 19 managers combined), they don't go into debt to fund player purchases nor rely on extravagant billionaires throwing money at them like they're a toy - financial doping (same owner as Denver Nuggets - Stan Kroenke). The article though, I thought, was rather fantastic. It highlighted really well how important vision, educating and opportunity are requirements for both a leader to educate and a follower to successfully achieve results. The principles in sport are very similar, or the same to anywhere else in the business world, and one would not normally expect such business sense from a sports manager (they do call him le professor for a reason however, and he is well educated). Here are a few highlights of what Arsene Wenger had to say (the last one I think, being the most important):

[Interviewer: Will you one day move from coach to educator?]

"I don’t want the will to educate to be opposed to the will to win. That makes the educator sound like an idiot. Any manager’s approach must be to educate. One of the beauties of our job is the power to influence the course of a man’s life in a positive way. You and me have been lucky enough to meet people who believed in us and led us forward. The streets are full of talented people but who didn’t have the luck of finding someone who placed their faith in them. I can be the one that facilitates life, that give an opportunity."

[And when, during a game, you’re confronted to an opposing manager for whom only the result matters, and not the means…]

"I’ve been called naive on that level. In any case, there’s only one way to live your life. You have to conform to the values you believe to be important. If I don’t respect them, I would be unhappy. And in any case, I’ve always been a man who was completely committed to the cause. With my good and my bad sides."

[Biggest pain?]

"Being questioned on everything that has been done after every single loss, despite the consistency we’ve put in our work at the highest level. The immediate “chuck it all out” reaction. You have to find a balance between your masochistic capability to endure what you’re being put through and the pleasure of accomplishment. Today, my masochistic capability must be bigger so as to express my passion. I’ve reached that point. I do many things that make me suffer."

[You say you’ve been described as naive. Do you not prefer to be called an idealist?]

"A guy said: “There is only one way to live with the idea of death, it is to try and transform the present into art”. That works with what we’ve just been talking about."

[Art is not necessarily a source of universal beauty. Some works can be popular, or be shocking depending on the relation one has to beauty.]

"I chose a team sport. There is a kind of magic when men unite their energies to express a common idea. That is when sport becomes beautiful. The unhappiness of man comes when he finds himself alone to fight against the problems he must face. Especially in modern society. Team sport has a value, that of being able to be ahead of its time. You can play with eleven players from eleven different countries and offer a collective work. Today’s sports can show what the world of tomorrow will be. We can share fabulous emotions with people that you can’t talk to. That is not yet possible in daily society. When tennis becomes the Davis Cup, it carries something it otherwise doesn’t. Same with golf and the Ryder Cup. People feel it. The vibration is there."

[You don’t have other passions? (retirement)]

No. That’s where my anxiety comes from. I’m not Ferguson (retired from Manchester United at 71). I don’t have a substitute and I’m not interested in looking back. Like writing a book on what happened to me. I live it as a suffering when former players come and see me and they’re not fully happy. Being introduced as Mr. X, former Arsenal player, and not for what he is today, that hurts. Being what you were is a suffering. I hope that in my life after football, I can be something else than the former Arsenal manager. Coach kids. Be useful.

[Is it harder for a modern manager to convince than to win?]

"To win you have to convince. Society has switched from verticality to horizontality. In the 60’s a coach would say “lads we’re going to do it this way” nobody contested it. Now you have to convince first. The player is rich. The characteristic of the rich man is the need to convince him. Because he has a status. A way of thinking. People nowadays are informed. Therefore they have an opinion. And they think their opinion is right. They don’t necessarily share my opinion, so I have to convince them."

I found that last one really interesting...


For anybody that wants to read the full thing:

http://news.arseblog.com/2015/11/arsene-wengers-full-interview-with-lequipe-sport-and-style/