Barcelona sporting director Deco spent a radio interview this week doing something every coach recognizes: campaigning publicly for his own players. Speaking on RAC1, the Portuguese made the case that Lamine Yamal should win the next Ballon d'Or and called the omission of Pedri and Raphinha from the nominees list a scandal.

On Lamine Yamal, Deco was blunt. He said he sees no debate, that the teenager is the top candidate, and pointed to a season in which the winger was decisive for Barcelona. He noted that Lamine had a strong campaign and reached the last international tournament coming off an injury, and that he was central to the club winning La Liga.

The Pedri and Raphinha point is the one Deco leaned on hardest, framing their absence from the shortlist as difficult to justify given their output. Whatever you make of individual award politics, the substance is that Barcelona had multiple players producing at a level their sporting director believes belongs in that conversation, and he was not shy about saying so.

For a US coach, the award itself is background. The transferable thing is the posture. Deco is doing his job when he publicly values his players, and there is a version of that every good coach should practice. Players notice, in a very literal way, whether the person in charge advocates for them. Kids and college recruits are no different from professionals in this: they can tell when a coach talks them up to outsiders and when a coach only talks about the program.

There is a recruiting angle here too. If you run a club or a high-school program and you want players to trust you, one of the most powerful signals is how you speak about them when they are not in the room. Coaches who publicly credit their players, who put names forward for regional pools, all-conference honors, or college looks, build loyalty that lasts. Coaches who hoard the credit find that their best players start listening to other voices.

The flip side is worth naming. Deco is a sporting director, not a coach picking a weekly lineup, so his advocacy has no cost to team balance. In your own room, public praise has to be handled so it does not curdle into favoritism. Backing a player to the outside world is one thing. Anointing one kid over his teammates inside the locker room is another, and it can quietly poison a group.

So the model is narrow but real. Fight for your players in public, where it costs the group nothing and buys enormous goodwill. Keep the internal message about the collective. Deco can shout that Lamine is the best player in the world because it lifts the whole club's profile. Your equivalent might be an email to a college coach or a nomination form, and it lands just as hard with a 16-year-old who suddenly knows you see him.