David Wagner breaks into a broad grin, as though the secret of his success as Huddersfield Town manager has been unearthed, in one of those "you got me" moments.
Fifteen months into his reign as manager of the Championship outfit, a famous old club bracketed alongside Arsenal, Liverpool and Manchester United as one of only four English teams to win three successive top flight titles, the German-born former U.S. international is preparing his players to face Pep Guardiola's Manchester City in the FA Cup fifth round at the John Smith's Stadium on Saturday.
Wagner has guided Huddersfield to third place in the Championship, raising hope of the Terriers returning to the top division for the first time since relegation in 1972, and having built a young, vibrant squad in West Yorkshire, the man who worked alongside Jurgen Klopp at Borussia Dortmund admits much of the team's progress can be traced back to a preseason bonding trip to Sweden.
But it was not any old preseason trip.
There were no footballs, just tents, canoes, food rations and fishing trips to ensure his players had enough to eat during their stay on a remote Swedish island.
"When you are in the wild for four days without electricity, without mobile phones, without internet, even without food really, you have to speak to each other and come into contact with people," Wagner said. "It makes no sense to sit alone in the corner, even if you are new.
"Nobody likes to do that. Maybe you can do it for two or three hours, but then you like to speak with somebody.
"And because we put them in two-man tents and two-man canoes -- they were in canoes for eight hours each day -- and rotated who was with who, it helped to gel the group together.
"We had 11 new signings in a group of 23 last summer, so it meant that every second player was new, but I had done this trip before and I knew that nothing is better to bind the group together in terms of creating some first relationships.
"The trip was their first contact with each other because we hadn't touched the ball before we went to Sweden. It was our first day of preseason.
"I worked with this organisation 15 years ago, when I was a player with Darmstadt, and I found it really useful for the team.
"When Jurgen [Klopp] was the manager at Mainz, he came to me and said he had a problem binding the squad together, so I said to him, 'Listen, meet these guys, they have very good ideas and maybe they can help you.' So Jurgen went on the trip to Sweden with Mainz.
"It's funny, because after I went back with Dortmund, I said to my wife: 'I will never do this again.' It was too hard for me.
"But when I came to Huddersfield I felt totally sure that, for this group, for this club and having so many foreign players, that it would be the perfect scenario."
In an era when elite athletes, not only in football, have their every need catered for by support staff and highly qualified experts, the lack of individual and collective responsibility has become an issue that many coaches find difficult to overcome with many footballers.
But Wagner insists that the "back to basics" nature of the Swedish experience helped banish those issues from his Huddersfield squad.
"You'd have to ask the players what they thought of the idea," Wagner said. "But they didn't think it was normal and maybe they thought I was a bit crazy. They still think that!
"I don't think they liked it because it wasn't enjoyable for them. No-one likes to leave their comfort zone.
"It was a risk, but I came here to England and that was a risk. Sometimes you have to do this in your life.
"If you don't do it, you don't get to know it. In this case it wasn't a real risk because I've done it before and it helped me know which players to keep and their characters. I was sure it could work.
"What was it like? Well, there was no toilet. It was an island, so you had to find a tree.
"We had some food but not a lot, and in the canoe, you don't have so much space for the four days!
"We learned how to fish, to eat. We cooked it. We found wood to make a fire, and if you wanted to make a cup of coffee, it took 45 minutes because first you had to find wood, then build a fire, then go to the lake for water.
"We had to push their buttons and take them out of their comfort zone. We are all together in this football business, but we don't really live in the real world. The young guys, sometimes they don't know how the real world works.
"Even the Championship is in the comfort zone as well. They had to leave their comfort zone and we wanted to prepare them for this."
But while the trip worked for Huddersfield, could the likes of Guardiola risk something similar with his highly paid, high-profile stars at City?
"I know what you mean, but in the end they are humans," Wagner said. "People in this business can usually have and buy what they like. There's nothing they cannot have.
"So it's about coming back to your roots, to feel something natural when you do this. It might be an experience you don't like to have every day, but afterwards, you felt it.
"It depends on the group. I know this company did the trip with the European champions in handball.
"There were superstars in that group and some of them said that they felt themselves again. You start to come back and feel humble, how small you are.
"Everyone has to take out of it what they like to."
Huddersfield's players may have proved to Wagner their mental toughness and unity off the pitch, but City will offer a stern test of their resolve and quality on it on Saturday.
And Wagner admits that the only thing he can predict is how Guardiola will approach the game.
"In Bayern Munich, he never changed his identity or style from Barcelona," Wagner said. "And City play more or less a comparable style to his Munich team.
"I think everyone is speaking about how strong they are in ball possession, and they are strong in that area, but their biggest strength in my opinion is how good they are in organisation and how good their balance is behind the ball when they lose the ball.
"They have a very organised structure and it is difficult when you play against them to keep the ball.
"But we will prepare for what we will do against them."
Facing City on a regular basis in the Premier League, rather than on a one-off basis in the FA Cup, is Wagner's priority, however, when asked whether he would choose cup glory or promotion.
"Promotion," he said. "The reason for promotion is that you work a whole year and the Cup is just eight games.
"This is why it feels bigger for me as a manager to get rewarded for months of work and get something out of it."
So what will happen if Huddersfield confound the doubters and reach Wembley in the Cup final and the Championship playoffs -- dates which are only 48 hours apart?
"At the minute, I don't have to think about this," Wagner laughs. "I'll invite you for a beer to discuss it!"