Tag Archive for 'Juventus'

Juventus crisis

The psychological situation of Juventus may be interesting to understand, as in my opinion it demonstrates an established idea of psychology. The idea would be that when expectations are disappointed by not having achieved the result for which until recently they were striving, subsequent performances are undermined by the establishment of the thought that there is nothing more to be done.

In the absence of direct knowledge this is a hypothesis, which seems to me in any case quite probable. No longer able to fight to try to win the championship, Juventus has reverted to its usual tired way of playing, which needs to find itself in trouble to find the motivation to change.

It is curious that quality players fall into this psychological trap, created by themselves, without putting in place forms of resistance to this motivational fall. A team should not reason in this way, which lead to losing to teams obviously of lower levels, but this is of no use if the opponents are playing and they are limited to ordinary and slow management of the game.

This mental regression of the players should be countered by the coach and staff. It was seen to have lasted for at least three games after the defeat to Inter. That’s more than 270 minutes played at the least worst. How can players and team justify to themselves individually and as a collective this prolonged negative moment?It sounds to me like Al Pacino’s words as a coach in Any given Sunday when yhe tells the players, “Either we rise up as a collective or we will be annihilated individually.”

Juventus has to renew its values and social responsibility

The accusations against Juventus involve artificial capital gains, false salary news, false corporate communications, market manipulation and others. These charges, which obviously need to be proven, lead back to the concept of deception, which is the basis of fraud.
Deception is an action knowingly carried out for the purpose of keeping others from having true and relevant information of which they are unaware. It is an action that is characterized in terms of deliberately seeking deception strategies and ways to implement them.
In addition, deception and fraud are actions that make sense only within the social context in which they are implemented, represent a violation of rights, and take the form of aggressive acts, which in turn are aimed at gaining an unfair advantage over another entity in favor of one of an organization. Corporate fraud has always been a fairly widespread phenomenon that does not only affect the last 15 years of sports history, and those promoted by the management or ownership of the same company represent one of the most frequent types.
Thus, a deviant subculture is formed within the organization for the purpose of separating those who perpetrate it from other people in the company who instead follow the rules and regulations In the case of Juventus, the football players belong to this second category of employees. What they think is hard to imagine and in any case it is their private matter. Certainly there are many situations they face. They concern the future and social image of the club, the effects of the current situation on their contracts, how much their personal sense of ethics and social responsibility will weigh on their work, the possible damage to their public image for playing in a club accused of financial fraud.
It seems to me that I can say that, the team, having to continue the competitive season effectively in any case, can succeed if as a group it renews its values of cohesion and those of social responsibility it has toward other teams and the broader social context they represent.

The different mindset between Napoli e Juve

Knowing the mentality of a collective allows one to predict how a team will react when faced with emotionally intense situations. In this soccer league, Napoli and Juventus represent the two extremes of a continuum in which success and team cohesion are opposed to failure and lack of cohesion. Those who want to understand the reasons for these differences between the teams should analyze the following factors:

  • Organizational quality of the football Club - The organizational system consists of the set of organizational strategies and structures, decision-making system, planning and control system, leadership style, culture, climate and values. The better the efficiency and effectiveness of the organizational quality, the better the ability of the team and coach to play with a winning mentality.
  • The quality of the image of the football club - This refers to the satisfaction of the membership and identification needs of the team and its stakeholders. This dimension is mainly concerned with, the authority of the corporate leadership, its credibility, the personality and professional competence of its key figures, and the results and prestige gained over time.
  • Team goals - This refers to the goals of the current season (winning the championship, ranking among the top four, staying in Serie A) are result goals. Then there are also performance goals (achieving a certain individual and collective performance standard) and process goals (centered on improving individual technical-tactical, psychological and physical skills). It also concerns the development of a team mentality that is able to give itself new goals on the field in relation to the different phases of play in a game. It involves knowing how to use the positive moments of a match to one’s advantage, as well as requiring the presence of a pre-ordained plan for dealing with the negative phases of the game or phases of increased competitive tension.
  • The technical-tactical quality of the team - This refers to the stock of football skills and their integration into team play, which determines much more than simply the sum of the qualities of individual players. The greater the team’s technical-tactical competence combined with an optimal degree of physical preparation, the greater the likelihood that the team will be able to cope with the different, even emotional phases of the game.
  • Collective effectiveness - It is expressed through performances that are superior to those that each could provide individually. Technical-tactical quality is part of collective effectiveness; cohesion and conviction refer to its relational and cognitive-social aspects. So the question that needs to be asked is, “How should players interact on the field for the purpose of showing unity and confidence in their skills as a team?” Napoleon was accustomed to say that he also won his battles with the dreams of his soldiers; this phrase is an effective metaphor for what should be meant by collective effectiveness.
  • Players’ motivational orientation - Players and the team as a whole must manifest a growth-oriented mindset. An example of the application of this concept to soccer may involve the purchase of a soccer player. Generally this is done on the basis of technical and tactical background; thus, it is believed that a player who performs well on one team will manifest the same effectiveness on another. In many cases, this phenomenon has not been repeated, and this can probably be attributed to this static conception of mentality, which does not take into account the different conditions between one club and another and how these affect the players’ adaptation and consequently the quality of their performance.

Juventus: the failure of the management project

The situation of current  Juventus will become a case study. It will serve to explain how one can go from winning 10 consecutive championships, being a finalist in the Champions League to today’s situation where the team can no longer win a game.

The strategic plan developed by the post-Alllegri era of consecutive championships was evidently wrong. The intentions were to change the team’s attitude toward a more proactive formation more akin to that of Europe’s elite. However, this was not addressed in a rational and systematic way. I understand that it is not easy, but it should be expected of professionals who earn millions of euros to do this job. Who was the manager of the project and what were his projections at 3 years based on the setting of this change?

The players are, in my opinion, the last issue. The first should be how do we enhance the resources that the society provides for this change? How much time will we give the coming coach to lead it? What are the mistakes that we will have to avoid right from the start? What could go wrong and for what causes?

I am convinced that these steps have been skipped and that the company’s responses have been dominated by the fear of not achieving the expected results and finding the scapegoat from time to time. in this way a company collapses.

Juventus’s problem

Juventus’ problem is one of continuity of play and the inability to break out of the insecurities brought about by the reduced quality of some players. Juventus’ DNA is to play to win the competitions it participates in, starting with the individual games. Not only the past but also the recent history of 10 consecutive championships are proof of this.

In winning teams when there are problems of lack of commitment or fears emerge, it usually happens that the most representative players talk in the locker room or the coach himself and these problems are solved as pride, the desire to win and the will to prove that one is superior to these difficulties are leveraged. This is what is not currently happening in Juventus, as it is a team almost entirely devoid of champions and where many of the starters have never won anything.

In turn of Allegri was used to working with players who were easy to talk to, explain what was expected and they put it into action. Having Juventus now have players who are not used to winning but feel an obligation to do so by wearing this jersey, the mental block and insecurity manifest themselves as the gap between how they evaluate themselves and expectations is too wide.

Allegri’s leadership style is not tuned to leading a group, lacking leaders, that starts well in games but then fades away. The reason is that those who lead excellent groups have difficulty leading teams that instead repetitively lose. This is an interesting issue I was confronted with when I went from working with winning athletes to athletes who did not have this mindset.

The topic is an open one.

Inter e Juve crisis

A team’s crisis occurs when problems with play and a reduced collective cohesion between players and coach weld together. This resulted in yet another bad performance by Juventus against Monza and Inter’s third defeat in the league.

If the game is negatively influenced by injuries, the inclusion of new signings, the tarnished state of form of some starters the team cannot produce the game it would like to. In these situations what must sustain the team is cohesion, unity of purpose, and collective work. In practice, players must interact on the field for the purpose of showing unity and confidence in their team skills even if they are not optimal at that stage. Napoleon was accustomed to say that he also won his battles with the dreams of his soldiers, and this phrase is an effective metaphor for what should be meant by collective effectiveness.

This mentality must be fostered by the behaviors and statements of the coach, who aware of the limitations of the game, must act to arouse the psychological strength of the players as a team. As Al Pacino says so well in the movie “Every Damn Sunday” in the role of the coach of a team in crisis, “So … either we rise up now, as a collective, or we will be annihilated individually.”

My impression is that Allegri and Inzaghi think too much about the schemes, the game and less about making individuals and the team proactive. The motivation to help each other, to get out of difficult situations and to want to move forward together, comes before the game. One cannot hide behind the thought that because players are very well-paid professionals they should always express themselves to the fullest or know how to behave in moments of nervousness or depression. One cannot say as Allegri said in relation to the Champions route that the decisive game would be the home match with Benfica, it means throwing sand in the delicate gears of a team. Or to remain puzzled, as Inzaghi said, after the Udinese game. They seem to have lost awareness of the psychological condition of the team and individuals. It is not the game forms per se that make a team great but how these are played. As with an actor, it is not enough to have learned the part by heart; his success will depend on how he plays his role. Performing implies a strong psychological involvement. This is what coaches need to work on, and perhaps they might even realize that working with a sports psychologist might help them.

Juventus-Inter

What this game says.

  • 5 minutes to shoot a penalty. Final recovery in the 1st half of 10 minutes. ù
  • The goal is a rare event and then suffer it has an effect on the mood of the team.
  • Who marks even if in undeserved way acquires endured more confidence and challenge more the adversary.
  • Soccer is the only team sport where you can play very well compared to the opponent and lose. This does not happen in basketball and volleyball.
  • It is difficult to understand the referee’s decisions: a player on the ground holds another player by the leg preventing him from moving and is not warned.
  • Absolute level of competitiveness between the two teams.
  • The winner is the one who did enough but with continuity and solidity. It is confirmed that in soccer when you waste too many goal occasions, you risk to lose for an episode in favor of the opposing team.

Juventus: a match of adrenaline and ambition

Massimiliano Allegri says Juventus need adrenaline, fun and ambition to win tonight against Villareal.

Said in other words, he affirms the need for motivation, pleasure of the challenge and emotional intensity and play.

In fact, the control and quality of actions on the pitch is based on this emotional mix driven by reason.

Playing a game with this mental approach is not easy and requires that the ambition (motivation) continues to be high regardless of the result. The team must be able to give itself instructions if, finding itself in advantage, will tend to reduce the adrenaline, to defend the result, thus playing not to lose and not to win. The adrenaline and therefore the emotions must be managed to avoid that it leads to play without thinking. A problem the latter that Juventus has shown less while more frequently fell into the former. The one in which slowing down the game passes from an attitude oriented to win to one centered on the defense of the positive result.

We will see what will happen.

Gratitude and solidarity: absolutely not trivial

Gratitude and solidarity are two values that are absolutely not trivial, indeed indispensable in any team. They represent a necessary factor to keep a team united, especially in moments of crisis like those Juventus is going through. If the head and the heart are the basic elements of the success of a group, the first concerns tactics and the second refers to the values that support a team. Putting the group before the interests of individuals, wanting to give back what the club has given is not rhetoric, nor is wanting to feel united in the difficulties of teammates, the coach and the team.

The sense of belonging is often associated by the rhetoric published in the media to the lack of pride of the teams and the lack of respect towards the jersey that you wear.

Instead, it is a fundamental concept underlying team cohesion in any organizational environment. Its relevance was focused on by former General Electric CEO Jack Welch, who to build a high-performance, world-class culture developed a performance-value matrix to guide GE’s rise. Welch’s matrix assesses people along two critical dimensions:

  • Performance: how well the person leads and achieves important results
  • Values: how well the person embodies and exemplifies the team’s core values

Welch and GE executives have been evaluating employees and managers along the Performance-Values Matrix for years to see how well they performed and how well they fit GE’s culture. As a result, any coach can adapt and adopt this practical and proven Values-Performance Matrix to evaluate, rank and coach team players.

“You never walk alone”  say at Liverpool … let’s think about it.

What are they doing against racism?