Quote Originally Posted by lquiquer View Post
I was only referring to keepers. I do remember Theo being one of them: He knows he has Young on his arse and gets motivation from it. It seems to be working for him......Same with Barthez in 2006 when he was in competition with Coupet ......Anyway all I am saying is I believe it's beneficial to a team to have 2 keepers competing for number 1 spot. But hey I might be wrong?
Barthez is a great example. He had a good first season with Man U and once Howard arrived he went to shit and was never the same again. Started taking too many risks as he panicked to stay No. 1
With respect to Coupet -the competition between him and Barthez for the national GK spot essentially led to a fight between Coupet and Domenech when Barthez got the nod ahead of him. That's the problem when you have two guys of similar skill competing for a position - one has to lose the battle and it can sometimes come down to a coin toss or off field factors more so than who is doing a better job.
Professional sports persons often come with big egos so it's not a good situation.
It's bad enough at national level but at club level it's a disaster because players are contracted for longer duration and have to play a lot more games per season.