Milan goalkeeper Mike Maignan says is being the best goalkeeper in the world for one year is ‘easy’, but being the best for several years is not. The 28-year-old Frenchman was speaking with ESPN about his role, and revealed how he initially found it boring playing in goal, but working at Clairefontaine made him change his mind:
“For me it was boring. You watch others play, you don’t have fun and you get angry. Then I went to Clairefontaine with a coach who told me, ‘If you make it to the last round, stay in goal.’ I made it to the last round, so in the end I had to stay in goal.”
“My role? You have to have personality, you have to be creative, you have to have a mind. The mind is fundamental. Being the best goalkeeper in the world for one year is easy, but being the best goalkeeper in the world for several years is not. That’s why you have to work a lot mentally. Every day I work three times as hard. I try to keep these basics and work on the details.”
“I wake up every morning to work and to be the best. My teammates are with me, we play in the same team on weekends, but when I come out of training I have to be better than them. When there is a game, my team has to win. If it doesn’t, that’s a problem.”
“Competition? Sometimes I get notifications that I don’t really like, like that a goalkeeper is better than me and things like that that annoy me because I know it’s not true. Then what do I do? Sometimes I go crazy. At 11 p.m. I get up and go to the gym.”
