Toronto FC coach says there’s no rift with his striker.
Should we believe him? It might be an easier question to answer, if it weren’t for Finnish Sauna Syndrome.
At the World Sauna Championships, a competitor died from sitting in the sauna too long (that’s the point of the competition). Why? Because if you ask a sauna competitor, “Is it too hot for you?” there’s only one answer they’ll give you.
There’s only one answer they can give you. If they thought it was too hot, they wouldn’t still be sitting in the sauna, would they?
I was discussing this with my IT colleagues – it’s the same for IT projects. You can’t ask the project team, “Will you get it done on time?” because they just can’t be objective. That doesn’t make them bad or malicious or incompetent – it just means that they are strictly constrained (whether they know it or not) in the answers they can give.
Going back to the TFC coach, my immediate question is, “If there was a rift, would he know it?” Maybe the rift is that the player thinks the coach is completely out of touch with the players and with the team situation!