For years, I walked into interviews with a list of pointed questions. I wanted the moment that would make a headline. I thought that was what good reporting looked like: press hard, get the reaction, move on to the next subject.
I don’t think that anymore.
What Changed It
It wasn’t one conversation. It was a pattern across dozens of them. The sharpest questions almost always got the same kind of answer: careful, guarded, safe. The person on the other side could feel where I was steering them, and they steered right back. I’d get a quote, but not a true one.
Then I started noticing what happened in the minutes before and after the recorder was rolling, or supposedly off. A coach would talk for ten minutes about a player he’d cut and clearly still thought about. A parent would mention, almost in passing, why their kid quit a club team after one season. None of that came from a sharp question. It came from silence, and from not filling it too fast.
So I changed how I prepared. Instead of writing questions designed to get a reaction, I started writing questions designed to get a story. The difference sounds small. It isn’t.
The Old Way Versus The New Way
A sharp question sounds like: “Why didn’t the program develop him faster?” It invites defense. People answer sharp questions the way you’d expect someone to answer an accusation, carefully and briefly.
A story question sounds like: “Walk me through the season where you almost gave up on him.” Same subject, completely different door. One asks someone to justify a decision. The other asks someone to remember a moment. People will talk for twenty minutes about a moment. They’ll give you one sentence to defend a decision.
I still ask hard questions. I just ask them after, not first. By the time I get there, I already have enough of the person’s actual voice on tape that a direct question doesn’t spook them. It lands like something two people are working through together, not an ambush.
Why This Matters More In Soccer Than People Expect
Soccer culture in this country runs on a lot of hierarchy. Coaches are used to being asked about tactics and standings. Executives are used to being asked about numbers. Almost nobody sits across from them and asks what a specific Tuesday practice in October felt like, or what they were afraid of the year a program almost folded.
That gap is where the actual material lives. The tactics have been said before, by them, in other interviews, in almost the same words. The specific memory hasn’t been asked for, so it hasn’t been rehearsed. You get something real precisely because you didn’t chase it directly.
What I Do Differently Now
Before any interview, I write down two or three moments I want the person to walk me through, not two or three opinions I want them to defend. I try to find the season, the game, the practice, the phone call. Something with a date attached, even a fuzzy one. Opinions age into talking points. Moments stay specific no matter how many times someone tells them.
I also let silence sit longer than feels comfortable. Four or five seconds of quiet after someone finishes an answer, without me jumping in with the next question, does more work than any follow-up I could write. People fill silence with the thing they were actually thinking, not the thing they planned to say.
The Trade-Off I’ve Made Peace With
This approach is slower. A conversation built around memory instead of reaction takes longer to get anywhere useful, and sometimes it doesn’t get anywhere at all. Some people just don’t have a story ready, and pushing for one when it isn’t there produces nothing but dead air.
I’ve decided that’s a fair trade. A shorter list of usable interviews, each one with something true in it, beats a longer list where every answer sounds like the last press conference. That’s the version of this work I actually want to keep doing.
What I’d Tell Someone Starting Out Doing This
Write fewer questions than you think you need. Write the moments instead. And when someone stops talking, count to five in your head before you say anything back. The best line in the piece is usually the one that comes after that pause, not before it.