The Milan manager, Pioli, returned to the same theme mentioned by Maldini days ago regarding the need to have time to allow players to mature in order to get to be able to handle competitive stress in the most important moments: “The club did not make the wrong signings, they are all talented players. It is simply better to let the most solid ones play in the difficult moments. Everyone has their own growth, and I assure you that our guys are growing.”
Being involved with young athletes/and I too find myself thinking the same things and working with them on developing these skills. What Maldini and Pioli are talking about is the most important difficulty, in my opinion, that athletes have to overcome regardless of their talent and the amount of training. You can train even 20 hours a week but if you do not put in focus this goal if you will keep the same limit intact.
I think most soccer players put in a lot of effort, I don’t think that’s their problem. I think this limitation can be seen in his reaction to a foul. Does he suffer a foul but is he/she immediately ready to follow up the action or does he/shr suffer a foul, protest and resume playing?. The former attitude is a demonstration of psychological maturity while the latter is not. A soccer game, is full of such episodes that allow one to understand the degree of mental maturity of a young player.
At this point my question is: how often do they train the footballers’ awareness of these episodes that highlight their limitations and how the coaches teach them to develop a different attitude on the pitch. The question is rather easy to define. It is the players’ attitude with respect to the game that determines how they will develop on the pitch the tasks they have been given. If the attitude is wrong because they are unmotivated, frustrated by the aggressiveness of the opponents, they want to be the undisputed protagonist without cooperating with their teammates then it is likely that their contribute will be insufficient and will tend to exclude them from the game.
I am not surprised by the presence of these limitations, because they are bottlenecks from which athletes have to pass in order to become top level athletes or very good soccer players. I wonder why in soccer, working with such young people but earning millions, the managers and the clubs do not realize the importance of the loss (economic and performance) and therefore the urgency of limiting to a minimum the time during which players are in this situation that is truly detrimental to the team and to themselves. Pioli says “I assure you that they are growing.”
In the teams where I work, there is a lot of focus on this issue, and we are constantly asking what is the best training for them, how to intervene to improve awareness rather than accountability, how to improve their ability to handle frustrations, and so on. In essence, it is a daily work done to reduce these issues. To put it simply, we teach athletes to be comfortable in uncomfortable situations. Do they the same in the teams? Do they do the same in soccer teams?
