Dan Abrahams is a sport psychology consultant who specializes in soccer. He is based in England and has worked with some of the leading soccer players, teams and governing bodies across Europe. Examples of his work to date includes helping Carlton Cole go from forgotten West Ham reserve team player to England international in just 18 months, and helping Anthony Stokes go from scoring just 4 goals in a season to 20 goals in 5 months. This resurrected his career and earned him a significant move to Celtic. Dan’s passion is to de-mystify sport and performance psychology for the soccer community: players, coaches and volunteers at all levels. Dan joins the National Soccer Coaches Association of America to share his insights into soccer psychology. All thoughts and opinions in this regular feature are that of Dan Abrahams and not necessarily reflective of the NSCAA. You can find out more about Dan’s new book Soccer Tough at www.danabrahams.com

Soccer is a game of mindset.

“Really? “I hear you say. Surely soccer is a game of technical execution, tactical understanding and instinctive play. I agree. They are all of the above. But how well these are performed under the lights, in the arena with the burden of pressure is determined by the small ball between your ears – your brain.

The introduction to my new book ‘Soccer Tough: Simple Football Psychology Techniques to Improve your Game’ presents the reader with compelling reasons as to why it’s so important to train the soccer mind. In it I talk a little about a quirk of the brain and its effect on soccer performance:

Whenever I sit at the bottom of a stand at ground level, or stand beside a pitch and watch a game in full flow I marvel at the speed of soccer. Players at the top of the world game today have approximately two seconds on the ball to make a decision before they are challenged. Every action they take, every motion they make must be executed at tremendous speed.

But when I watch soccer players competing I know there is something on the pitch working quicker than the game itself. Science has taught us that whilst soccer works in seconds the brain works in milliseconds. In fact we can be more accurate than that. Brain science has discovered that the brain makes sure people feel emotions 200 milliseconds after an event happens, and think consciously 500 milliseconds later.

It’s mind blowing stuff. When a referee makes a decision a soccer player feels emotion as it’s happening, and thinks about the decision instantly. And this is the same for any event on the pitch whether it’s a goal conceded, a bad pass, or criticism from a team mate. Every event in the heat of battle brings with it an immediate emotional reaction and a set of thoughts designed to influence the player’s next action.

As we will explore in this book, our response to events is not always what we want and not always the best for our soccer game. As this book unfolds you’ll learn that a soccer player has to be fantastic at dealing with his emotions and managing thought processes every single second of every single match. With feelings and thoughts rising to the surface in the blink of an eye – soccer performance is tough to manage. Technique, anticipation, awareness and decision making are affected, in the moment, by the functioning of the brain and by mindset.

So your brain can trump your soccer game. And there are more compelling reasons to help players work on their soccer mindset. One is ‘’the inch that makes the difference.’ As I write in ‘Soccer Tough’: When I watch soccer I’m constantly in awe of the small differences that affect the result. A mistimed tackle, a poorly delivered pass, a weak shot, an over-hit cross, and a poorly timed run are a few of the things that factor together to win or lose games. An observant soccer fan will see this week in, week out, in parks and amateur soccer right the way through to games played in the English Premiership, La Liga, and Serie A.

It’s exactly the same in college games and in the MLS. In fact there isn’t a game that goes by that isn’t influenced by ‘the inch.’ The 21^st century soccer coach helps players cover this inch by ensuring their team members are equipped with simple psychology techniques to deal with the breaks of the game, the debatable decisions and the near misses that soccer constantly delivers. Being ‘Soccer Tough’ is a soccer player’s critical essential on and off the pitch.

I am a full time soccer psychology consultant based in England with a commitment to reach out to players and coaches around the soccer globe. My passion is to de-mystify the psychology of soccer and my life’s work is dedicated to providing very simple tools and techniques (underpinned by science) for players to acquire skill quicker and high perform more consistently under pressure and for coaches to help them with this process.

I am honoured to write over the coming months about soccer psychology and mindset for the NSCAA website, and will be borrowing passages from my book ‘Soccer Tough’ to illustrate my articles. We will explore psychology specific to soccer with an emphasis on self belief, performance confidence, focus and effective training enabling you to build a library of tried and tested techniques to add to your playbook.

Find additional coaching education resources in the NSCAA Resource Library.

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