by “Body language is everything in life … If you’re not positive in your mind and you can’t accept that you can make mistakes, and how you respond to that, and how you can help when your friend makes a mistake, this kind of thing is much more than tactics. That’s everything in life.”
Pep Guardiola’s recent insistence on Erling Haaland shows the sophistication of his leadership skills and understanding of human nature. This is the culture to build, investing in the long term all the time, even when trying to win the game in the short term. This is where he differs from most other leaders in the sport and beyond. What others may see as “the small stuff” is actually “the big stuff”. The Manchester City manager skilfully works with our most vital human performance tools in our personal and professional lives: attitude and behaviour.
Related: Gaël Clichy: ‘Pep Guardiola has all the details. It was amazing to witness’
This is where one of sport’s greatest life lessons jumps out at us, but it’s a lesson that still goes unnoticed. In both childhood and adulthood, we rarely schedule time to develop our mindset and behavior. But for Guardiola, they come first, not last in his priorities. We often don’t notice how we are thinking and behaving – but Guardiola’s lens always zooms in on these. We are often uncomfortable discussing the way we think and behave – but for Guardiola, talking about them comes naturally. Why? Because it would be madness and very harmful to the performance without. Furthermore, this goes beyond performance, it is how we are wired as humans and is the key to success on and off the field.
Guardiola does not want Haaland to show his frustration on the pitch in his face and movements. “He has to have this mindset where he’s positive and he’s saying: ‘Okay he’ll come, he’ll come.'” At first, there seems to be a paradox between the animated Guardiola we see leading his team from touchline and this philosophy. believing “it will come, it will come”. But it would be a mistake to interpret these words as soft or passive – they acknowledge how our minds work best, and are therefore intelligent and performance-oriented. Guardiola emphasizes the opportunity to notice and understand our human brain and body to improve our mood and behavior in the next moment.
When players beat themselves up after conceding a goal, they directly harm their prospects of playing well once the game resumes. That’s what Guardiola sees when Haaland is frustrated. It challenges an engrained macho narrative that justifies self-criticism as part of being tough and setting high standards. But as various strands of neuroscience are now showing us, accepting the mistake, admitting your faults and focusing on what you can do next is much more helpful for performance.
When I watched or worked in football environments, I was struck by the overwhelming focus on technique and tactics. Minutes of matches (over) analyzed for technique and tactics, but rarely stopping to consider what was going through the minds of the players when showing a clip of action. The game plans focused on technique and tactics, but left out discussions about which players wanted to be on the field, how they wanted to interact, and how they wanted to respond to the game’s inevitable highs and lows. was to come.
TV football analysis focuses on goal moments, which are considered crucial because they are so closely related to the result. But that’s a trap. Guardiola looks elsewhere for key moments – the players’ attitudes on the bench or how players react after they concede a goal, how they hold themselves on the field or on the bench, how they support each other. These are key moments where players affect the game in ways that are within their control, even if they are not what the cameras choose.
The uncertainty of the outcome adds to the allure of football: a goal can be scored against the run of play or a great team can repeatedly hit the bar and not score. We all know this, and it reflects a lot of life off the field as well. But it can be difficult to shift our minds from focusing on goals scored or conceded. Guardiola is undeterred by that way of thinking and makes it a priority to help his players avoid it too.
There is an ever-growing body of research into how the brain and body connect. Philosophers explored this centuries ago. Now with advances in modern neuroscience, we understand a lot more about how the way we move affects the way we think and feel. Somatic theory dispels the false belief that our brain thinks in a separate way from our body and explains how changing our posture and position can change the way we feel and our next behavior.
Related: ‘I’m sorry’: Pep Guardiola apologizes to Kalvin Phillips for comments
Novak Djokovic explains that his mental strength is not innate but something he is constantly working on. How his mental fortitude is never about being distracted, but noticing the distractions when they come, accepting them as whole, and then quickly returning his attention to the next moment in the game.
Too often, I hear coaches telling players to stay focused, making them feel bad for losing focus, rather than accepting that this is how our brains work, and helping them focus redirect quickly.
It is where sport offers us a way to learn about how we can change the course of the game in front of us, whether our job is on a football field or in an office. But I don’t know why it’s not still part of how we learn about sport at school, or part of most coaching courses. Developing an awareness practice that helps us notice our thoughts, feelings and how they relate to our behavior is rarely found on athlete training programs. But this is clearly an area that offers greater performance gains. And I’m hopeful that in a future version of Fantasy Football, points will be awarded for how the players in your team responded on the field when they made a mistake or conceded a goal.
