I saw my job as making sure that I developed at least one or two players for the first team. Calling up the right players was vital in that respect. They had to be prepared to go all the way.

Coaching the youth team by myself, I would always tailor the sessions to the opponents at hand. As a coach, you don’t quite experience the highs of scoring the decisive goal. But there’s another feeling, one of deep contentment when you see your plan is coming together. That’s something you don’t get as a player.

I got things wrong, naturally. I was very emotional and quite disciplinarian at first. Later, you understand that different teams need different ways of coaching at different times. Sometimes, they need more courage and support. Sometimes, they need a kick up the backside and pressure.

There is a lot of psychology at play. You need to learn to read your team, by talking to them a lot and observing them closely. It’s also important for a team to be always self-critical.

“It takes time to get to the point where you can trust your instincts to say the right things”

Doing what’s right for your team also means picking the right tactics. In the national team, you don’t have 50 top players, but 25. My favourite set-up was always 4-2-3-1, but the way you play is always conditioned by the players at your disposal.

I liked the way Jürgen Klopp’s Dortmund pressed and how the players always changed positions, but you can’t hope to copy that if you don’t have the right players for it.

It didn’t make much sense insisting on a slow build-up from the back, either, if your team weren’t comfortable doing so. These days, many young players are calmer on the ball than those in my teams used to be. They’re more used to getting pressed. Everyone does it now. Technically, the players are on a much higher level than in the past.

But back then, against a team playing a high press, I made them play beyond the first pressing line with the first ball instead. I would have had a heart attack on the sidelines, otherwise.

The strategies were always evolving, year by year. Sometimes we played pressing in midfield, sometimes we pressed high in specific trigger moments. Sometimes we defended deeper because we had fast players on the break.

To hone our technique under pressure, we used to play against a lot of male youth teams from top leagues as part of our pre-tournament preparation.