Jürgen Klinsmann famously likes to set his players stiff challenges.
The broad agreement, negotiated by the US and other world powers, is facing stiff opposition from Republicans on Capitol Hill and received only a lukewarm reaction from Democrats.
Despite stiff competition from a succession of crises during his 17-year tenure as president, Blatter admitted that the charges of "rampant, systemic and deep-rooted corruption" presaged by dawn raids in Zurich and revealed by US authorities on Wednesday were "shocking and unprecedented" in their scale.
I'm a wreck and I need a stiff drink.
His public demeanour was stiff and formal in movement and speech.
You need a stiff drink, and then unfortunately you're in a place where you can't really get alcohol".
Woodward, who conducted a February poll showing Rubio polling in single digits, said the senator faces "stiff competition" but will improve as voters get to know him better.
"At the moment there's nothing in between us writing a charity a stiff letter, which they can and do ignore, and using formal powers in a statutory inquiry".
He has a brisk, stiff air of wishing he was somewhere else.
In March, for the first time, Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, dictated the stiff terms that would have to be met for Berlin to accede to a Greek bailout.
Clarke fought his stiff back and Cook battled a technical fault but neither panicked nor changed their method.
