Vincent Tan Tells His Cardiff Players To "Be Like Ugly Men With Beautiful Wives"
The Malaysian billionaire's advice to players is at best bizarre and at worst silly.
By Sadho Ram — 13 Feb 2016, 11:58 AM
Earlier on Thursday, 11 February, the Cardiff City owner, Vincent Tan visited the club's training ground to give some advice to his players
The Malaysian billionaire's "pep talk" to his players, who at the moment aren't scoring enough, used an unusual analogy to illustrate his point.
While speaking to Wales Online, Tan, who took over Cardiff in 2010, revealed that he had a talk with the players, demanding that they inject "more excitement" into their game by adopting a "trigger-happy" playing style. He insisted that they should learn from the example of "ugly men who have beautiful wives." From the Guardian:
“I gave them a pep talk and said they have got to start shooting,” he told Wales Online.
“Have you seen ugly men walking around with a very beautiful wife? Well, that’s because they’ve asked 30, 40, 50 times before getting a yes.
“On the other hand, you’ll see a handsome man ask once, get a ‘no’ in response and that’s it. So the more you try, the more success you’ll have. We need a lot more goal attempts, we’ll score more and win games. Not only that, the fans will love it, too.”
Tan, who has made similar demands of his players before, argued:
"What's the point of passing, passing, passing and hoping to get in the box that way. Unless you're Lionel Messi looking for a tap in, it's not going to work. The law of averages says the more you shoot, the more you'll score. If you shoot 30 times you'll get three goals, 40 times will be four goals, 50 times and you'll get five goals."
The Malaysian businessman, who has been dubbed as "the worst owner in sports" by Deadspin, added that he watches every Cardiff match and that they shouldn't respond by saying he knows nothing about football as he has "learned an awful lot" from watching "players regularly scoring in the Premier League from distance"
Tan, whose pants are higher than his expectations for the club, it seems means well.
But, as Billy Haisley of Deadspin aptly points out, what the Malaysian owner of the club is probably not getting is that the question of where the shots are taken from is often more important than how many, and the Cardiff City players aren't going to get in a good scoring positions without passing their way there.
