Football | Renato Fantoni

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

To be a gay footballer or not, that really is not the issue in question.

However, in the context of football equals life, life equals football, it throws up some important issues about society. The context of this item has little directly to do with Thomas Hitzlsperger , but I use his story to make the point that football (like...

You’re up but You’re Down

Depression. It's everywhere. Gazzetta dello Sport, the Italian daily sports paper recently carried an article (and it's adequately translated into English here) discussing how 58 per cent of top level footballers suffer from depression. Considering people can be...

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...

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...

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 ©

Not My World Cup

global darlings Brazil, conceded seven goals to the eventual victors Germany. Everything else has been wisely forgotten

Football; The sport of Apollo. It’s a messenger that speeds up when the journey’s end is near

As The Football World Cup is damned on the front pages for financial corruption and sexual exploitation and lauded on the back pages in anticipation of the forthcoming on-the-pitch carnival, it can still offer valid parallels for life and work. As a coach who extols...

The Language of Football| Blog 2010

This is a partially edited compendium of the blogs I wrote during the 2010 World Cup. No smoke without fire, no sting without bee Momentum begins to gather as football coaches name their final FIFA World Cup Squads. I, however, am not here to discuss that just yet...

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...

Walk This Way. Life lessons from Walking Football

Arriving at Barnet’s Hive to play Walking Football (WF), I felt that same trepidation and excitement as when I first played. I hadn’t kicked a ball in eight years and I later learned that others hadn’t done so in decades. As I looked around at this sample of...