Football is a simple game, tribal, the players chase a ball that is the weapon with which to strike the prey that is the goal. It’s a sport that everyone, at least among males, played as children: To have had direct experience allows everyone to understand how difficult it is to send the ball where you want. Teams like if they are combative, if they run and if at least someone is so good as to make us stand in awe for his play. It’s a game where the goal is a rare event, you do not win 87 – 65 as in basketball, in fact, 1-0, the final score more frequently. For this reason, luck plays an sometimes an important role, as in Brazil-Chile, in which Chile has taken a post of a few minutes from the end and similarly lost on penalties; two posts have eliminated Chile. An inch to the left and the result would have been different. On the other hand, in sport you win and you lose to an inch and this is also a football unwritten rule. We like football also because the most of us over the age of 40 reminds us when every spare moment was an opportunity to play it: at school during the interval with the eraser or with paper balls, in the backyard , oratory, making the doors to the gardens with the coat. Football is in our memories: from Grande Torino, Rivera and Mazzola, to Italy and Brazil in 1970, won the World Cup in Spain and Germany, Paolo Rossi and Schillaci, and much more depending on the team we are /were fans and of course there are also the scandals which continue to ruin it. Football is all these things and why I will continue to watch the World Cup games
Monthly Archive for June, 2014
With the “Win one football, give one football,” Coca-Cola has tried to link the soccer of the superstars to the social: the spark that created this link is represented by the football Brazuca, the same used during the World Cup in Brazil. 3.000 football will be given to Uisp sport clubs involved mainly in ethical and social projects. This colorful balloon was the protagonist of a great festival on the beach in Rimini, where it has been organized the “Challenge collective dribbling” among all participants.
Brazuca was donated at the first. Uisp-Italian Union of Sport for All along with Coca Cola are together to promote the ethical and social football. During the month of June, Coca-Cola has raffled off 50 footballs every day. Thanks to the “Win one football, give one football” to win every football Coca-Cola gave another to Uisp, non-profit association, for football projects with characteristics of ethical and social commitment.
“Uisp football is passion and fun, not forgetting to look around – says Simone Pacciani, Uisp vice-president - this popular sport provides opportunities of relationships and integration, each team is a small community of people who know each other and helps each other. Uisp football is friendship and active lifestyle for all ages. Every weekend Uisp organized throughout Italy 10,000 football matches. A world of social cohesion that does not know no borders.”
Retired soldier Delneri Martins Viana describes himself as Rio de Janeiro side Botafogo’s “most fanatical” supporter and he certainly looks the part, with his body covered in no less than 83 tattoos depicting the sporting love of his life.
The main task that should absolve the parents is to educate their children in the sense of reality. I say this because among young athletes is not well developed, and often these young have totally unrealistic expectations, because they are not based on what they are to do but on what they want to achieve. Unfortunately, this way of thinking is already present in boys and girls 11/12 years. On the tennis courts are seen kids slamming their racket to the ground or kicking, swearing against themselves or get depressed after having made a mistake. In every sport you see parents that when their sons make mistakes, they give some advice to remove even that small anxiety that comes after an error. I’s an educational anxiety that drives to find the solution by themselves but instead it was not taken them this opportunity to learn from mistakes. The parents in this way prevent young to grow, to understand they value as athletes and to react autonomously to the difficulties. How many parents calmly say: “you were wrong, it’s fine, work to improve, keep trying and do your best, everything else does not matter.” You do not win a race because you wants to win. The winning mentality is to those who strive to do their best despite the mistakes that surely will commit during the race. Young need to be educated to engage and appreciate themselves for what they do and not for the results they achieve. The parents, in turn, must accept that their children make errors because only in this way the kids will learn to appreciate their improvements and the effort they did.
In our country the Italian Football Federation is the only sport federation that makes mandatory the presence of a sport psychologist for clubs wishing to reach the title of qualified football school. Sport psychologist in football school speaks in support of different professional roles. He deals with psychological problems with methods and specific tools. The final objective pursued by the sport psychologist is to create a common language among all, that will help all to go in the same direction, building an environment which offers the best sport experiences. The sport psychologist works with the athletes to encourage them as individual, encouraging cohesion, working on motivation. She works with the technical staff to improve their collaboration, to promote effective communication, child development, group dynamics, relationship management. He speaks with the parents about the relevance of supporting educational values and the fun.
The great relevance of social and sports impact of youth football in Italy and the space for the sport psychologist is made even more clear by its numbers
- Clubs of youth and: 2.916
- Young players: 619. 510
- Coaches enabled FIGC: 61.114
(Source: FIGC- data on 30 June 2010)
(by Daniela Sepio)
The Suarez bite to Chiellini is the reaction of those who is frustrated to satisfy his needs as a player and as the only reaction is the physical injury to the opponent. Suarez is in good company, along with Zidane and Cantona in football and Tyson in boxing, belongs to that small number of sport champions who cannot manage their emotions during times of increased competitive pressure. Their response is primordial, archaic, they have not made a simple foul of retaliation, such as the one that claimed the expulsion of Marchisio. They accomplished a rather primitive foul; bite the shoulder, or with the head knock down the opponent without the ball or kick during the game … one fan. The way to overcome these situations is to not live other moments of high tension, but if you’re a player you cannot. For them it’s easy to understand, because we are talking about champions but to control the behaviors, stopping the impulsive reactions is not easy. For them, it’s usual to cope with the obstacles in the satisfaction of their own needs and be able to deal with. But what does the mind say in those moments? It tells him sadly “go and shoot because otherwise you’ll be to succumb and only if you are hard, others will respect you.” They have been hildren whose parents were absents or authoritarians but knowing it does not help, you need instead to recognize that now you are an adult responsible for your reactions, and that whatever the education received is now time to take responsibility for these actions. Suarez has been banned for 10 days for a bite to an opponent and he even went to a psychologist but it was not enough. It does not help to change the being overpaid and being accepted because in any case you scored a lot of goals, but you forget the person to favor the player. How many goals worth a bite, a behavior that is anti sport behavior? Is this the champion style we want to educate our child?
Read it also on: L’HuffingtonPost
In football, the goal is a rare event and as such can be achieved at any time, at the first or the last minute as ever. For this reason it is necessary to be aggressive, determined, motivated and united as a team, to do what it takes to score a goal. Italy yesterday did not show this attitude and it’s not enough to hope in Buffon and in the inventions of Pirlo for Balotelli. Costa Rica is a team that believed instead, in the result to remember for a lifetime: to beat Italy. We too have a dream like Pirlo said and that is to win the world cup, but to reach it we have to fight every game independently from the opponents.’This is the attitude that Garcia and Conte have taught their teams, Roma and Juventus, and that’s what was missing yesterday to our team. Falling 11 times in the offside trap means not being focused as much as was necessary. To say that you cannot expect a gwhen you are on goal if you enter in the match for only 20 minutes, it means not to have realized that instead this is what is asked of you, otherwise the coach would put in another player. To take a booking because you are nervous, it means that you do not have the mentality to deal with the commitments of this competitive level. Too many individual actions and insisted dribbling at the end of the game show little research of others and the desire to become the Saviour of the game. “I Excited? There are no emotions, “said Cassano. Buffon and Pirlo would not statements of this type even though they are accustomed to games so important. A the contrary the emotional charge as a team has been absent. The tension the team feels before going into the field, pushing the commitment beyond thefatigue and trouble because you feel ready. The emotions permit to raise the threshold of physical and mental fatigue. In the words of a famous African saying: every morning, no matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle, the important thing is that you begin to run.
7 Things We Don’t Know!
Coaching Challenges in Sport Psychology and Skill Acquisistion
Jean Fournier and Damian Farrow
Mindeval Canada Inc, 2013
The link to read the first chapter is here: www.mindeval.com/en/
7 Things We Don’t Know! is a book designed for progressive coaches who are motivated to consider and potentially adjust their current coaching or training programs so that they are getting the most out of contemporary Sport Psychology and Skill Acquisition research. I believe it will also relevant for the sport psychologists because the authors talk about coaching problem, imagery, cognitive processes like anticipation and attention from a perspective different from usual. In this way, many practitioners could start to think in a different way your daily job with athletes and coaches.
Second, what makes this book different from many other texts on Sport Psychology and Skill Acquisition is that the content is presented in the most applicable manner to coaches and athletes. It is written with a short and concise style, and numerous practical examples are provided to illustrate how the theories could be applied to practice.
The imagery is discussed in light of its practical application, it’s well explained the use of this skill must match well with the athletes’ needs, integrating this mental activity in the coaching sessions. The second chapter is devoted to the use of mindfulness in mental coaching. Jean Fournier propose a mindfulness program based on his experiences in different sports and the pages on this topic illustrate his approach based on four steps: presentation of the method and assessment, mindfulness training, acceptance training and attention training. The third regards the thinking. He try to clarify: what does focus mean? The readers will find suggestions to find the relevant focus point in different sports and different situations, to improve the focus in training and to apply all these things during the competitions. The following chapter is about the use of the routines, it’s explained why they are useful in sports but there is a new aspect introduced in this presentation, regarding the use of mindfulness in the routine planned by the athletes. The next four chapters are written by the other author, Damian Farrow. His first chapter talks about the relevance of variability during training and the need to organize the drills in a way very near to the competition rules and development. It’s a chapter that I suppose very useful for the coaches, who must always to cope with the dilemma about necessity to integrate the repetitions and athletes’ motivation and about the relation between the standard repetitions and drills more similar to the game characteristics. In these pages Farrow provides information confirming the concept that the athletes learn to anticipate instead to be born with this gift and he talks about a number of training approaches to improve this skill. Goal of the following chapter is to encourage coaches to use implicit coaching style instead to use only an explicit style. Farrow remember that probably the best implicit information an athlete can receive is the Nike motto: “Just do it.” The last chapter regards another relevant question: have the athletes need of a coach feedback provided in a real time? Today coaches with the help of the new technologies have the opportunity to provide information in real time with great precision. The problem they have to cope with regards their competences to use the correct timing without the risk to overload the athletes’ mind. Farrow talks about the definition of the bandwidth of correctness for a movement. Established this range of correctness the coaches will know exactly when to provide a corrective feedback.
Final comment: read this book with the spirit to find some new ideas for our work and to change something in our approach with the athletes.
It ‘s always hard to understand when it’s finished and even Spain has complied with this rule. The result of this team unawareness, that has dominated the world of football over the last 6 years, has been to lose at the world cup the two first matches against Netherlands and Chile, and in the seven goals conceded. Maurizio Crosetti in the newspaper La Repubblica to explain what happened uses the metaphor of the dinosaurs, “This is a geological era that ends … Everyone will say: there was Spain, was the mistress of the universe until one night he fell died as the dinosaurs. So monstrous, so fragile.” The game of thousand assists no longer worked without the intensity and speed. Features that are lost not only to physical exhaustion but also for loss of the will, the desire to continue to be what you have been up to a minute before. When it does not happen, the player continue to play automatically but they have lost that mental spark allowing them to hide the ball to the opponents and hitting when they wanted. Spain has been in the field and started playing in the usual way, by memory, but lost the ball they were not able to take it, because the others were getting faster and combative. Losing the ball resulted in the players only frustration of those who did not understand how it was possible, instead given agonistic anger because their head had exhausted any kind of reaction. The sports competition is tough and it does not leave time for those who does not get up quickly after falling out and for respect of the match the opponents do not give time to recover rather they insist to chew out you until the end of the game. To make errors is physiological, everyone knows that it’s part of the game; not be ready to bounce back immediately instead is a big problem and Spain fell disastrously into this trap and lost. Also, I think that Del Bosque has called up for the World Cup players based on the principle that the team that won does not change, with the addition of the positive feeling will have for these players. This theme relates to the role of the coach is certainly not easy to deal with and now it would be too easy to make him the scapegoat. Guardiola after winning everything and so repetitively with Barcelona left the team because he was exausted but perhaps also for the awareness of having reached a peak of successes hardly repeatable. Del Bosque has instead accepted the challenge to continue, after winning two consecutive European championships and one world cup, trying to reach an almost impossible task but greatest if he could: on what foundation based its decision? Perhaps we’ll never know anyway but hat for having dared so much.
“You did it. Kisses. Mama.” This is the most beautiful message, Marco Belinelli, the first Italian to win NBA title, received just moments after the triumph.
“I love this sport I have always seen the NBA finals, and in my head I own these images of the celebrations with champagne which bathes all. Now, after a few hours, after not having slept almost makes me shiver. It’s all fantastic.”
“I have always been criticized in national and club and NBA. In many told me that I would not have made it, but I’ve never given up, even in the hardest times, and today I took the rematch most beautiful” .
“Here I am fine, it’s a great organization with a great team and then there is Popovich, a great coach.”
“I am proud to be followed in Italy by many people, even young. To them I say: work hard and never give up. Everyone said to me that I would not have ever done and instead I did it.”
