Douglas Costa Interview: Inside the life of Douglas Costa
This is the exclusive SOCCERCOACHCLINICS Interview with FC Bayern Munich and brazilian national team Soccer Superstar DOUGLAS COSTA and his fitness coach LUCAS KRUEL
SOCCERCOACHCLINICS:
You beated Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and team-mates Thomas Müller and Robert Lewandowski in a recent poll of players in the German top flight. You were named best player in the german Bundesliga. What is your key to success?
DOUGLAS COSTA:
Here are a lot of people nowadays that get to a professional level, that manage to succeed without real talent, because of hard training, because their struggle to get there. So I think if you have talent, certainly you’ll be able to get one step further, you will achieve greater things, maybe, even without real talent, you can also get there.
So I think the training nowadays is the key for success. If you don’t enjoy training, you better not even bother to come, of course I enjoy it. I have fun, I feel good doing it.
LUCAS KRUEL:
Training for Douglas is no longer felt like a punishment, he enjoys training, he makes the most of it.
DOUGLAS COSTA:
I train more than everybody else because I want to be one day, the world’s best soccer player. Maybe I can’t get there, but I will keep training because I know I’ll give the best of me in order to be the best in the world. And if I don’t get there, at least I tried. I believe that regadless the sports, whatever you do, you must have confidence on what you do. So I’d like to say to all the children around the world that may want one day to succeed in life, to train hard, struggle and always persevere, so one day their time will come. I think that being a role model for someone is something very important. I’ve had mine, I still have it to this day. Whenever I see my role model I get butterflies in the stomach. I wanted one day to be as good as he is: Ronaldinho.
LUCAS KRUEL:
If I had to define Douglas, the definition would be kindness, that is a good word to defines him, because he is a real good guy, with a big heart. He is a good person, he does things to help people. I never saw him doing something to win something in return. He does things because he likes to do them, I’m kind of biased when I talk about him. But we went to a futsal game these days, and I had asked him to go there with me, to help the team, so the children could see him. So he went there, and was there for almost five hours with me, without getting any money for it, nothing, it wasn’t for money, it wasn’t for marketing, nothing like that, it wasn’t work, nothing. He went there, signed a thousand T-shirts, spent the whole afternoon there, on his day off, simply to go there with me, help me out and give joy to the kids, So, Douglas in this respect, he is awesome.
DOUGLAS COSTA:
It is cool, because probably someone my age when I was a kid like these boys, I would be very happy to see the professional guys getting here up close to share this moment, I think this is something very special.
SOCCERCOACHCLINICS:
What do you think about your development?
DOUGLAS COSTA:
So far, everything is going well, my dreams have been coming true, one step at a time our dream continues. I must keep dreaming, dreaming high… dreaming big, I’ve been dreaming and so far it has been coming true. And best of all I’ve been living my dream day after day, and of course individual titles are also important, but first, I want to help my team to win. That is the most important thing to me. Then, it will come the time for individual achievements. I liked to do some training on the field but real training, I just got into it after I realized that I needed to train hard to succeed in life. So I think that ending the day like that, regardless of the weather, regardless of the circumstances, regardless of whether I am feeling good or bad with myself. I think I have to come here to end my day.
SOCCERCOACHCLINICS:
How is your relationship to your personal coach Lucas Kruel?
DOUGLAS COSTA:
Lucas for me, he is like a wife, am just kidding… I’ve had several friends and to be able to work with somebody that happens to be your best friend, who understands you, understand your needs, knows your daily routine, that lives it, breathes it. So the best part of it, is that my evolution is also his evolution. So, he’ll always want to evolve, and regardless we’re friends, so, Lucas for me is a person in whom I blindly trust. So I think everyone should have somebody like Lucas. But I am the only one to have him, sorry.
LUCAS KRUEL:
I can live my dream without actually playing. I can be part of the game, without playing. He leaves everything in my hands and he says “Lucas it is up to you.” So just from the fact that I feel trusted by a guy like him, for me is… I can’t describe the feeling,
but there is also a lot of pressure, but feel pressured working, because I am not working with just anyone, I’m working with him, a guy that I’m sure in a year time, two years is going to be the world’s best soccer player. So it is really rewarding to work with him and to be part of his daily life.
SOCCERCOACHCLINICS:
Can you describe your specific training with Douglas?
LUCAS KRUEL:
I started working with functional training six years ago. With the direct participation of my boss, Leonel Villeroy, which is the brand’s name where I work, which belongs to the Villeroy team. I lived my life there, played futsal, I kept working with functional training there. And then, I went back to Brazil to return to my office, to my work and immediately, after a week that I was in Brazil, Douglas invited me, and I went to Kiev to work. We went out for dinner, I hadn’t seen him for a while and he wanted to play with the national team, to aim higher and he said that he was prepared to train every day. At first, I didn’t quite understand, I thought he was just telling me what was going on, but then he invited me to work with him. So I moved to Kiev, I lived in Kiev for a year, a year and a half. Daily hard work, it was very cold, but it was an amazing experience. We worked with several players there, we still have two coaches there, who live there and work with athletes in Ukraine and that was it. It was a great experience. Now I’m here in Germany, living that dream together with Douglas, which for me is really exciting.
SOCCERCOACHCLINICS:
Why is it exciting for you?
LUCAS KRUEL:
It’s exciting first, because I love soccer, I love soccer like everyone else in Brazil, and as everyone else, I dreamed of becoming a soccer player, like any Brazilian boy, so, it is amazing. We always work with the athlete’s specific needs in mind, together with my company. So the work I do with Douglas here in Germany is the same work that the guys are doing in Ukraine, Turkey and England, with other athletes. Only that each athlete is different, every body is a different one, so, of course with Douglas we do a specific work, based on his needs, he needs strength, speed, so we try to work these kinds of things with him, to cater to this specific needs.
Always talking through things with him and trying to realize what specific needs the club can’t fulfill, what are his main needs at a certain moment , what his difficulties are. And we try to work on that.
And always, Douglas is an explosive player, so I always work with explosion, with agility, which is important to him. We work, depending on the week, everything is related to FC Bayern, to his club, we try to work around four times a week, maybe five.But there are many games, so, now and then we may end up working three, two times, depending on his week schedule,but we always try to keep a good level of training and always keep our focus on training.
No, this kind of work is good for any athlete,any workout that I do with Douglas, with any soccer player, any regular person can do it as well. But, of course our work is oriented to soccer players, for those who live abroad, the coaches that live abroad, but any athlete can do those routines, it is just a matter of willpower and wanting to do it.
I always say that, to be a soccer player… there are several, so many, but few of them are real athletes. You can count them with one hand, the real ones, the ones who are totally commited, who deprive themselves of certain things in order to become a greater athlete. I think that is a matter of willpower, if a person has a strong willpower he can get where he wants.
DOUGLAS COSTA:
In Ukraine was cool, it was like, a period of time that I needed to evolve, you know? Because I think if I’d come here right away, I wouldn’t be ready in my mind to become who I wanna be, you know?
SOCCERCOACHCLINICS:
When you first got to FC BAYERN MUNICH, were you mature already?
DOUGLAS COSTA:
Yeah, I was, it was good timing. I was in the right mind. I started training almost three years ago,so I kind of started long ago, and things started happening… So I guess that… It is a surprise for everyone. But, to people like us, who live it on daily basis, I was kind of expecting that this day would come, and it came sooner than we planned. The best thing happened in the right moment. The brazilian national team & FC Bayern Munich. Now, it’s all happening. So everything is okay, the training goes on and we’ll get over there. We’d like to give thanks once more to everyone who helped us evolving.
SOCCERCOACHCLINICS:
With the age of 19 you moved to Ukraine/Europe. How important are friends and family for you?
DOUGLAS COSTA:
I think I play soccer because of my father. He is this kind of guy who is crazy about sports. And he always said that if I wanted to play soccer, I couldn’t drink, I couldn’t smoke, so much so that–He gave me advice that he himself didn’t follow as he used to drink alcohol, he smoked. He used to say, “If you wanna play soccer, you can’t do that stuff.” So my whole life, I am now 25 years old, I don’t smoke or drink alcohol. I had him as an example. In my family, my sister, she is my best friend, so much, that she lives with me. She helps me a lot, as well. We complete each other.
LUCAS KRUEL:
I’m working with him, a guy that I’m sure in a year time, two years is going to be the world’s best soccer player. So it is really rewarding to work with him and to be part of his daily life. All the success that Douglas is having here in Germany, and also in Brazil, for me it is not a surprise, we planned on it we planned on it a year and a half ago, two years ago, we made a plan to take good care of his career. So we planned, we put it on paper, we wrote down what we wanted, and this is the result. He trained more than anyone else, he wanted it more than anyone else and now he’s reaping the benefits of it. And that’s Douglas Costa. An amazing guy. Awesome. Training, on the field and as a person. The three of them.
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