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. 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.

In my first article on the NSCAA website, I argued that soccer is a game of mindset and referenced the introduction to my new book Soccer Tough to convince you of the importance of this often overlooked characteristic of the game we love.

Chapter two of Soccer Tough leads a three chapter flurry into the world of self-belief – the soccer players’ must have acquisition. Must have because in my decade of working with players across Europe I feel that it’s a mental skill that mediates so much of soccer – not only performances but also the speed and effectiveness by which technique and subsequent skill is developed. Yet few players know how to develop this most important mental quality, and, if I may be so bold to add, too many coaches believe that the training ground is the sole determinant of self-belief.

The great news is that coaches can go beyond training ground drills to help build their players’ self-belief. Chapter two of Soccer Tough, which is entitled "How Elvis Found Graceland," introduces you to a key determinant of self-belief and delivers some techniques to add to your stable of coaching interventions.

To begin let me pose a question: when you think of yourself as a soccer coach what rests on your mind? What images flash across your inner photo-book? I’d like to ask the same questions if you’re a soccer player or if you’re a soccer parent. What do you see when you image yourself in one of these roles?

This is an important question to ask because your life is impacted by the image you house of yourself in your mind. As I describe in chapter two of Soccer Tough:

Our lives are heavily influenced by the images we have of ourselves in our mind. We all have lots of self-images. We have a specific image for being a husband or wife, a son or daughter. These images may be different to the image we have of ourselves in our job which in turn may vary from the images we hold of ourselves as a friend.

The person who has a strong image of himself as a husband may have a weaker image of himself as a public speaker. The different images help and hinder us as we make our way through life. There are many variations and no hard and fast rules. Self-image can be quite chaotic. Feel free to take a little time to think about all of your self-images. It’s an interesting exercise to do.

Of course if you play soccer you have an image of you as a soccer player. This is your soccer image. Your soccer image refers to the pictures and movies you have in your mind related to your soccer.

How soccer players "see" themselves is a big deal to me. I firmly believe that the soccer image heavily influences self-belief and subsequent development and performance. The soccer players who ‘see’ themselves as inferior, incapable and incompetent will lack self-belief and find it more challenging to learn the skills you want them to learn and will perform with greater inconsistency. The outcomes you see on the training pitch and on match day may not be a measure of their actual ability to learn and compete – but an indication of their underlying soccer image. This is worth repeating because it is so important to grasp as a coach:

The outcomes you see on the training pitch and on match day may not be a measure of their actual ability to learn and compete – but an indication of their underlying soccer image.

Chapter two of Soccer Tough introduces you to the case study of Elvis, a young goalkeeper I worked with at an English Premier League club.

This shot stopper’s progress had stalled:

Elvis reasonably assumed that his self-belief would grow as his technical ability and tactical understanding of the game improved. He had, after all, always been a confident goalkeeper never needing to spend time managing his thinking and his temperament. He didn’t even know how to. But Elvis was training at a club which competed at a level much higher than his previous teams. He had very few opportunities to play and when he did - he played poorly, at a standard that the coaches assured me was well below that which he displayed during training. Elvis was able to do it, but not with enough consistency and certainly not in the heat of battle.

In our first session together Elvis told me that he had lost the belief he always had in himself. He didn’t see himself as capable of being a professional goal keeper anymore. At night he would think about making mistakes and when he woke up he would reinforce failure by rehearsing those mistakes in his mind again. He looked around the training ground and saw better players than him. To him the other goalkeepers who trained at QPR were unbeatable, while he felt he was slow, sluggish and scared. Injury hadn’t helped and by the 30 minute mark of our first session it was obvious that the goalkeeper who had once seen himself as destined for the stars was fragile, mentally lost with a shattered self-belief. The image he had of himself had changed. My job was to reverse this mental trend.

As a coach I challenge you to take a little time to climb inside the minds of your players and have a good think about what their soccer images may be. Are they healthy? Do they see themselves as confident, no limit soccer players who can compete with players from other teams you play against? Do they see themselves as able to learn the skills you are trying to help them develop? Do they see themselves as an important team or squad member? Do they see themselves playing well in their next match? Do they see themselves making great saves, scoring or completing passes?

If the answer is no to any of the above then you need coaching techniques and philosophies to help your players foster internal change. You need a communication channel between you and your players that enhances what they see when they image their soccer game.

Elvis, the goalkeeper in chapter two was able to turn things around by re-training his memory banks. It turns out he was brilliant at remembering the bad stuff, but pretty hopeless at reminding himself of his strengths, his best games and the praise he’d had from coaching staff and team mates. By shifting this subtle mental focus he was able to nourish his soccer image. Feeding his image with positive, helpful and confident pictures not only helped him turn around a flagging confidence, but also built a greater sense of resilience into his soccer mindset. Soccer Tough details exactly how he did this.

Memory is one of your many weapons as a soccer coach. A simple and very practical thing to do following a training session is to gather your team around and ask each member to recall their best moment during training. Ask them to make that moment big and bold and bright in their mind. Then ask them to hold that image or set of images in their mind for the remainder of the evening. This simple 2 minute exercise primes the memories your players have of their session. It helps them remember the stuff that builds and maintains high performance confidence.

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