THE BEAUTIFUL MIND GAME

Football is a common denominator that acts like a language connecting millions of people across the world. It creates interest and sparks emotions in a way that regular conversations usually fail to do.

THE BEAUTIFUL MIND GAME takes metaphors and tactics from the pitch and applies them to work and home life in a powerful coaching experience.

The book accurately describes the life of football.

Nigel Howe

Chief Executive, Reading Football Club

Describes the influences of the game from a fan’s perspective. I hope you enjoy this book as much as I did!

Gary Mabutt MBE

Former Captain, Tottenham Hotspur

Yes mate, I like it.

Jack Wilshere

Footballer for Arsenal, 2008-2018

“Allow me to beat myself up -it’ll save you the trouble”. 8th October 2013

It seems that the ongoing arguments about whether Spurs fans can/should call themselves the ‘Y ‘word will continue unresolved for the time being. My intention here is to keep as objective as possible and add some new thoughts. For a well written and brief outline, I...

Creating a club culture for the England Team

Now England has qualified for Brazil 2014, common wisdom suggests we need to build a greater sense of cohesion. Should we bring people’s differences out into the open or conversely do we focus on the things we have in common? These last few weeks have seen some...

Keep Your Friends Close. Your Enemies Closer Still

When I tell people I both write and give talks on football from a non-football point of view they ask me to explain what I mean... I explain that as a simple, basic pastime, it has so many parallels, so much emotional depth and such a wide ‘contact list’ that it...

YOU MAKE AN OLD MAN VERY HAPPY

This is code for saying that I kicked opponents and demonstrated toughness and gamesmanship. My colleagues liked it and to be honest, I enjoyed their plaudits.

One Hundred

My attention span and train-of-thought have definitely reduced during the pandemic, I believe the major reason for this is that I have had fewer one to one conversations with people outside my bubble

A pre-echo. The sun sets, the game rises

Tonight it all begins. But before carnival joy morphs into the nervous need to win let's look at some salient thoughts from a couple of years ago. http://www.football-italia.net/20264/english-job I am, like many of our regular readers on this website, an Italian who...

WFH, xG and introducing xEMx ©

despite having doubts about these metrics, I’m unashamedly jumping on the bandwagon and taking this opportunity to introduce my own workplace metric, Expected Emotional Exchange© or xEMx ©

False Starts?

The 2013-2014 Season in the English Premiership is all but nine days old and the other Euro leagues somewhat younger. The oddest thing is that very few of the participants actually know who their teams even are. This is all because the so-called ‘transfer window’ is...

Lessons from Leicester

This week the biggest English football competition was won by Leicester City. This was highly unexpected…

The World Cup Who Fell To Earth (is Joe Lycett a bully?)

If he was entirely fair in picking on David Beckham. His reasoning is that Beckham has benefited financially and image-wise as a gay icon, he even wore a dress once, and according to Lycett, ought to have condemned both FIFA and Qatar.