U.S. Route 51 enters Wisconsin along the Illinois border at Beloit. It traverses 316 miles through the middle of the state, nearly to the top before ending at a roundabout a few hundred feet from the Michigan state line
About two hours south of Lake Superior, the road runs through downtown Minocqua. It’s a town of 5,000 people, but depending on the time of year, any visitor would joke that it seems more of an estimate than a fact.
In the summer, the sidewalks are bustling with tourists packing local resorts or those escaping Wisconsin’s southern cities and Chicago for summer homes to enjoy the lakes and woodland trails, including stars like Elizabeth Taylor and Chris Farley, who spent their teenage summers there.
When Rich Fortier’s Lakeland Union High School basketball team began practicing each November, the town’s population already dwindled. Most of the resorts were shuttered for a harsh winter already bearing down, but late-fall hunting opportunities kept a portion of the snowbirds local through the end of the month.
By the time his seasons ended, winter still suffocated the area and kept the lakes frozen for seasonal-permanent ice fishing shanties. But the snowmobile trails closed and many local supper clubs and restaurants went dark with them until the summer population started trickling in for the summer.
It was Jan. 30, 2018 that Fortier provided an answer to me as a young reporter that remains burrowed in my brain. Fortier’s Thunderbirds slogged their way to a three-point road win over an inferior Northland Pines team following a 26-mile bus ride winding through the Northwoods that was their closest conference road game on the schedule.
I asked him afterwards if he scolded his team for their subpar performance, especially after a heartbreaking two-point loss to rival Rhinelander — a program Fortier once coached to three state tournaments and hadn’t beaten since switching schools in 2012 — four days earlier. They had also thumped Northland Pines by 29 at home a month earlier.
Fortier shrugged.
“Winning is hard,” he said. “So any chance we get to win, we’re going to enjoy it.”
In hindsight, I probably should have expected the answer. Fortier was intense and loved winning (and was good at it). But the elementary school principal also knew he didn’t have to take himself seriously all the time.
One time that season an out-of-bounds ruling wasn’t called to his liking. His 6-foot-4 frame stalked down to the baseline to where I was sitting and he asked me if it was the right call. I smiled wryly, knowing my opinion wasn’t going to change his mind, nor the referee’s.
I especially should have seen the answer coming that night after glancing over to another court in the cavernous field house near the end of the preceding junior varsity game to see Fortier rebounding free throws for a boy with Down syndrome, the brother of one of his players.
I haven’t encountered many coaches who could have been bothered with anything other than the impending game at that moment. But I’ve met a lot of coaches who would have chewed out their team after a close win over a subpar team.
Coaches (and fans) tend to live in a fish bowl. Coaches push the one-game-at-a-time narrative to the brink of death, all while claiming bad habits from one game or one practice can spill into the next. Fortier seemed to know something, because his team won its next eight games by double-digits and by an average of 21 points per game.
Wherever I’ve been or whoever I’ve covered since, Fortier’s words creep into my mind again at least once per year. But I needed a refresher when I went into the locker room after the Buffalo Bills beat the New York Giants on Sunday Night Football in October 2023.
Coming off a dismal trip to London, the Bills were stuck in the mud in Brian Daboll’s first trip back to Orchard Park. They trailed 6-0 to the lowly Giants entering the fourth quarter and Josh Allen threw two touchdown passes to win 14-9, but not before Taron Johnson knocked away a Tyrod Taylor pass intended for tight end Darren Waller in the back of the end zone on the final play.
The Bills were superior to the Giants and entered the game as 15 ½-point favorites. Part of me expected a quiet and somber locker room, as if the Bills should have been ashamed of winning. I was quickly reminded that winning is hard — hard in the NFL, hard anywhere.
That’s the last time I’ve doubted what Fortier told me in that hallway outside the gymnasium in northern Wisconsin. And I was reminded again listening to England manager Thomas Tuchel’s postgame interview Saturday.
England won a 2-1 match over Norway in extra time to advance to just its third World Cup semifinal since the tournament began in 1930, and yet Tuchel wasn’t happy with his team’s performance..
“The commitment is there. But we made life very, very difficult for us in the way we played, how we played,” Tuchel told ITV Sport. “Sloppy, tactical mistakes, not fast enough. Not repetitive enough. We were lucky enough.”
Well, that’s a good way to lose your players’ respect. And Tuchel likely should have learned from his mistakes by now.
The German-born coach is renowned for his strategic acumen, but often criticized for his treatment of players. Despite winning over 65% of his matches, Tuchel’s had four stops since 2015, none lasting more than three years, including one-year stops with powerhouses Chelsea and Bayern Munich.
A moment that should have been about his players and their country beating a gifted Norway team boasting Erling Haaland, one of the best players on the planet, was shifted to Tuchel, even if it was brief.
Tuchel would be a terrible coach if he wasn’t interested in correcting mistakes. But he’s either a fool or the most arrogant man on the planet if he thought calling them to the carpet to a television reporter 10 minutes after the match was a prudent teaching moment.
He’s not the first coach to take that route — there’s a long list of college coaches who have done it unsolicited — and every time it shows the coach is more interested in stroking his ego than the team.
Sure, Tuchel backtracked his statement during his postgame press conference a short while later. But his players already heard his original comments.
“Yeah, well. Whatever,” said star Jude Bellingham, who scored both of England’s goals. “It’s a tough shift, so my thoughts and appreciation go to the players who’ve put a tough shift out there.”
“Read the room” is the phrase that comes to mind when trying to simplify Tuchel’s comments. At some point every player needs tough coaching, but there’s a time and a place to do it.
It’s one thing for a coach to do it after a friendly or random regular-season game or to be honest about if asked about some poorly-executed part of the game. But not immediately after that win, in that moment, at that stage of soccer’s biggest tournament.
If a coach chooses to send a message through the media after a monumental win, it’s not going to resonate and certainly won’t resonate after a loss or a real learning moment. Players just assume the coach is never going to be happy no matter how they perform.
Former Bills coach Sean McDermott rarely blasted his team unsolicited after a win and didn’t after that Giants win in 2023. McDermott’s a man who lives by the one-game-at-a-time mantra and often wound spring-tight. He still knew better because his tactical strengths meant nothing without respect from the locker room.
Looking back, it’s embarrassing to think a team should have felt some morsel of shame for winning. There may be moments of luck that help determine who wins or loses, but there are no lucky wins.
Any team ahead on the scoreboard when the game ends made more plays than the losing team. It doesn’t matter how poorly the winner played or how well the losing team played, the winning team did more to win the game, obviously.
Not every win can be pretty or perfect.
“We’ve tried to create a positive environment, and we should continue that into the final four,” Bellingham said. “I can’t speak highly enough of the lads. You’re not going to win every game popping the ball and making a thousand passes. Sometimes, you have to win dirty.”
Tuchel can cure tension with players if England wins its first World Cup since 1966, but it will be interesting to see if he returns as manager afterwards. Because if that’s what Tuchel said on television, he’s said worse privately.